Belle - Lesley Pearse [42]
It wasn’t until she was in the carriage and Kent hit her for screaming that Sly saw she was little more than a child, and a very pretty, well cared for one at that. He wanted to demand that Kent stop the carriage and let her go, but Kent had pointed out earlier that if he was to be charged with murder a great many others’ crimes would surface too, many of which Sly was involved in. He felt he had no choice but to go along with it, and hope that later he could talk Kent out of it.
Last night, after the girl was locked upstairs, Sly had pleaded with Kent not to go ahead with his plan. But he could not be persuaded. He said there was too much money at stake, and besides, if they did back out they’d have no choice but to kill her as she knew too much.
It was bad enough that they were taking her to France, but Sly was sickened when Kent wanted her put in the trunk. Waiting so long at Dover had been one of the most agonizing times he’d ever known. If she’d woken up and started hammering on the trunk and alerted people, Sly knew he’d be facing a very long stretch in prison.
But looking at her now in the candlelight, his heart ached and he wished to God he’d never got involved with Kent. She was very pale now, but he still thought he’d never seen a prettier girl. She had such shiny dark hair, curling delightfully all around her face, and plump red lips. But it wasn’t just her looks, he admired her pluckiness too, for most girls of her age would have cried continually from the moment they were snatched. She hadn’t been afraid to try to appeal to his better nature either, and now, when he thought of what lay in store for her, he wished he’d been brave enough last night to help her escape from his farmhouse.
Kent hadn’t told him how much he was going to get for her in Paris, but Sly knew that young virgins were worth a great deal to anyone who had such tastes. And one as pretty as Belle, who still had a childlike, underdeveloped body, would fetch a small fortune.
Sly’s personal taste was for well-rounded, grown women with some experience and he had no time for men who wished to ravish children. But he could guess that the kind of brothel owner who was a party to this unpleasant trade was likely to be cruel and mercenary too. She would almost certainly pass Belle off as a virgin several times, then later, when the girl was just another whore, and an unwilling one at that, she was likely to be beaten, starved, drugged and constantly ridiculed until her spirit was broken.
His stomach lurched and he had to take deep breaths to avoid being sick.
‘Where are we?’ Belle asked as she opened her eyes.
‘In France,’ Sly said, and put his hand beneath her back to help her sit up in the trunk. ‘Are you thirsty?’
She ran her tongue over her lips and frowned. ‘I don’t know. I feel very strange.’
Sly made no comment. He wished that he could be a real man and stand up to Kent. But he averted his eyes from Belle’s pretty face and tried to tell himself that it wasn’t his fault she was here.
It was some time before they reached a town, Belle couldn’t guess how long as she’d kept dropping off to sleep, but she knew they were in a town for the carriage slowed right down, which suggested it was going along narrow streets. She could hear laughter, bursts of different kinds of music, singing and shouting, and there were also pungent cooking smells.
‘Will anyone speak English where I’m going?’ she asked.
‘I doubt it,’ Kent said, and smirked as if that thought pleased him.
Because she’d been so groggy after she woke, she didn’t really feel scared, but all at once she was jolted out of her doped state by Kent’s smirk. It said that he had something lined up for her that was really bad. Her terror came back tenfold, and when she looked to Sly for reassurance he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
‘You might as well admit where you’re taking me,’ she said, her voice quivering with fright. ‘After all, if they don’t speak any English I won’t understand them, so how will I be able to do whatever