Belle - Lesley Pearse [139]
Mog’s face brightened just a little. ‘I hadn’t thought of that! I’ll wait for the postman tomorrow and ask him what they do with letters they can’t deliver,’ she said. ‘But where in America is she? It’s a big country.’
‘It’s bound to be New York,’ Noah said. ‘That’s where everything happens.’
‘I could go there and find her,’ Jimmy said.
Noah noted that the lad had that crusader look in his eyes again. ‘You couldn’t,’ he said gently. ‘New York is huge, and you wouldn’t have the least idea where to start looking. The best thing we can hope for is that Lisette gets some further news from the man who took Belle there.’
Everyone fell silent. There was not a sound other than chewing and coals moving in the stove.
It was Mog who broke the silence. ‘Are we going to tell Mrs Stewart that you think her Amy is in Brussels?’ she asked Noah.
‘I suppose I must,’ Noah sighed. ‘But I don’t relish that chore – she’ll be inconsolable. As will the other mothers.’
When Noah woke next morning at his lodgings, the first thing he thought of was Mog’s stricken face. He lay there for a moment or two, wondering if there was anything further he could do for Belle and all the other missing girls.
He knew his editor would be delighted to publish a follow-up article based on what Noah had been told in Paris, but that would only please readers who revelled in white slavery stories. It wouldn’t bring forth any information on where any of the girls were being held, or get them released. In fact, if anyone involved with the abductions was to read the article, Cosette and Lisette would immediately be implicated as informers. This might also happen if Noah went back to the police, and it wasn’t as if he had anything concrete to give them to start an investigation.
He couldn’t bring himself to risk Lisette or her son being hurt. He kept seeing her face, hearing her voice, and it was all very reminiscent of how he’d felt about Millie. He wished he’d asked for an address he could write to her at, that way he could at least say how much he’d liked her, and remind her that he’d meant what he said about getting her out of France. But it wouldn’t do to write to the nursing home – a letter from England was bound to be intercepted. He supposed he had no choice but to wait for Lisette to contact him.
He wondered why it was that he seemed destined to fall for women with problems. Day after day he met girls and women who did ordinary jobs like nursing, needlework, working in a shop or an office. Girls liked him, he wasn’t ugly, he had good manners. So why was it he didn’t get that magical spark with one of them?
Belle was considering her fate too, for Miss Frank had been given an order by the two sisters who owned Angelique’s hat shop in the Quarter for a dozen hats of Belle’s rose design.
‘I shall have to give you a paid position now,’ Miss Frank said with a smile as wide as the Mississippi. ‘Otherwise I couldn’t possibly use your lovely design or ask you to help me make them up. I boasted to the sisters that I had a new designer and they’re wild to see more of your work.’
Belle wanted to be thrilled and excited by this, but instead she felt a pang of sheer terror that Martha might go into Angelique’s to look at their hats, and the sisters might tell her that their regular milliner had just found a new English designer.
‘Did you tell them my name or say that I was English?’ Belle asked.
‘I wouldn’t have told them you were English,’ Miss Frank responded. ‘They like to pride themselves on their stock being chic and French. But I was so happy they liked the hat I was quite talkative, so I might have called you Belle. But why do you ask?’
‘I would just rather my name or that I’m English was kept out of it,’ Belle said nervously, aware that might make Miss Frank distrust her.
‘You are an extraordinarily secretive girl,’ the older woman remarked, but she flapped her hands as if that didn’t concern her, and began talking about which colours they should make the order up in.
A little later Miss Frank