Belle - Lesley Pearse [109]
‘But I wouldn’t mind doing it,’ James said eagerly.
Noah smirked. ‘You are a novice, aren’t you?’
James hung his head and admitted it. Noah had explained everything about Belle witnessing Millie’s murder when James agreed to come to France with him, but now he felt he had to tell his friend how he met Millie and how he felt about her.
‘I was totally smitten with her,’ he admitted. ‘She was so beautiful, warm-hearted and kind, not the way people think whores are. It’s because of how she was that I must find out where Belle is, and all those other girls too.’
‘Did you love her?’ James asked. He had agreed to come on this trip because he felt he and Noah would be rescuing girls from moral and physical danger. But his sheltered upbringing made it hard for him to accept that any decent man could have had romantic ideas about a whore.
‘What is love?’ Noah said with a wry smile. ‘If it is having someone on your mind so continuously that you can’t eat, sleep or think about anything else, then yes, I loved her. But I think my father would insist that what I felt was lust. I suppose that if I had been able to whisk her away from Annie’s Place and been on my own with her, then maybe in a few weeks I might have discovered that’s all it was. But I didn’t get the chance to find out. So I suspect I’ll always be hoping to find another woman that makes me feel the way she did. Have you ever felt like that?’
‘The closest I’ve come to it is having very lurid dreams about one of the girls I saw in my father’s factory in Birmingham,’ James admitted. ‘If I hadn’t had one or two glasses too many I wouldn’t tell you, but this girl was testing out the height of the saddle on a bicycle. Her skirt was rucked up and I could see her black-stockinged leg, right up to her knee, surrounded by the lace on her petticoat. I thought it was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen.’
Noah sniggered. ‘But what did she look like?’
‘Just ordinary really,’ James admitted. ‘I only see her leg in my daydreams, not her face.’
‘Well, James, along with finding out what happened to Belle and the other girls here in Paris, we’ll have to make sure you get something more substantial to dream about than a girl and a bicycle.’ Noah grinned. ‘Now, let’s go for a walk and get to know the area before we come back here tonight.’
The two men returned to the square at eight that same evening. Darkness had fallen when they came out of their hotel on to the Pigalle, but they found themselves plunged into brilliant light, noise and action. They were astounded by the huge numbers of bars, cafés and restaurants which hadn’t been apparent earlier in daylight. A tout outside the Moulin Rouge was yelling out that it was the top show in Paris, and tourists of many different nationalities were standing outside gawping at a huge poster showing a row of female legs high kicking out of a froth of net petticoats.
As they walked up the steep, winding lane, music from pianos, accordions and violins wafted out of dark, smoky bars. Cooking smells from the restaurants vied with those of street traders with their hot chestnuts or crêpes, and added into the pungent mix was the odour of horse droppings too.
James and Noah’s eyes popped many times as a tout shoved a picture of statuesque showgirls wearing little more than a few sequins and a large feathered fan under their noses. There was no shortage of prostitutes either, they were accosted several times during their walk, and whatever it was that the girls said to James they got him blushing furiously.
James said that the doorman had warned they should be careful as it was still a dangerous place, full of thieves and thugs, even though many of the old dwellings had been pulled down in the last ten years as the Sacré-Coeur was being built. But Noah thought it was the most thrilling place he’d ever been to. It was picturesque, colourful and vibrant, with a strong overtone of sauciness thrown in and less squalid