Belle - Lesley Pearse [182]
She had dismissed that thought as preposterous earlier in the day; she’d even imagined him coming back and apologizing, or saying he’d done it just to teach her a lesson. But as time went on it seemed much less ridiculous, for it was the only sure way to guarantee her silence.
Who did the house belong to? She felt it was unlikely that it belonged to Philippe Le Brun as there was no possible reason why he would want her imprisoned in it. She was sure it wasn’t Pascal’s; a mere concierge would not be able to afford such a place. Was he in league with the owner, and the pair of them planned to sell her to another brothel? Or send her overseas again?
These thoughts went round and round in her head until she felt she would go mad with them. She’d tried banging on the walls and stamping on the floor. She’d listened intently, hoping to hear someone, if not in this house, next door, but there was just silence. She suspected this house was taller than its neighbours, and perhaps the walls in this room were not joined to another house.
She felt Gabrielle must have been concerned when she didn’t return home, especially after the warning she’d given her. But would she do anything about it? What could she do? She didn’t know who it was that arranged Belle’s meetings with gentlemen.
She wondered though how long it would be before Gabrielle searched her room and found the money hidden in the space beneath the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. There was one thousand, seven hundred francs there. Enough to deter any hard-pressed landlady from reporting her guest missing.
It seemed to Belle that she was jinxed, for whenever she thought her life was about to take a turn for the better, something horrible happened.
Back in Seven Dials she’d been so happy to meet Jimmy, but that very night she witnessed Millie’s murder. After the hideous ordeal in Madame Sondheim’s brothel, she thought it was all over when she found herself in the nursing home with Lisette looking after her. But then she was sent to America.
There was that small window of happiness with Etienne in New York and on the way to New Orleans, but it wasn’t long before she found herself trapped at Martha’s and believing Faldo Reiss could be her ticket home. That turned out to be another form of imprisonment, but working with Miss Frank at the milliner’s made her feel hopeful yet again. Then Faldo died, and Miss Frank turned against her.
She trusted Madame Albertine in Marseille, but she had betrayed Belle by setting her up with Clovis.
Then finally, just when she was about to go home to see her mother, Mog and Jimmy, Pascal did this. Why did he? He must have made a lot of money out of her, why wasn’t that enough for him?
Would it have turned out differently if she’d been enthusiastic about going to bed with him?
Somehow she doubted that. He knew this room was up here, he must have planned to lock her into it. Maybe he’d been getting frightened that he’d lose his job if it got out about what he’d been doing on the side?
She should have known after that evening in the café in Montmartre that he wouldn’t just give up on his desire to have his way with her. She’d felt deep in her bones that there was going to be trouble ahead. So why hadn’t she acted on her instinct and left France then? What sort of a fool was she to think seeing Paris in the spring was so important? But if it had really been just that, she could have stopped accepting engagements and moved to another hotel so Pascal would think she’d gone for good. She had enough money, but she wanted still more because of her stupid pride and not wanting to go home empty-handed.
A sick feeling welled up inside her as she faced the truth about herself. She knew many prostitutes had been forced into the work in the beginning, and others got into it through desperate need or even plain stupidity, but every whore she’d ever met had remained one because they were either lazy or greedy.
She began to cry then out of shame. She was an innocent when she was snatched by Mr Kent and sold