Belle - Lesley Pearse [60]
Then, once the house was left to her, she made the transition from whore to madam seamlessly. Her natural dignity and poise commanded respect. She used just the right amount of frost with men who had once been her customers to make them know she was now off limits, yet they were still welcome in the house.
But now she was wallowing in self-pity her dignity was all gone. She looked and smelled as rancid as some crone in the workhouse. The sad truth of the matter was that women on the wrong side of thirty weren’t likely to get many new opportunities, and even though there was sympathy for Annie now because of Belle’s disappearance and the fire, that would soon wither and die if she didn’t get up and start fighting back.
‘Only a maid!’ Mog said with a deep sigh. ‘Thank you for that, Annie. It’s nice to know I’m valued. I have dealt with the police for you since the fire, I’ve emptied your chamberpots, brought you meals, got you clothes, and all the while I’ve been grieving about your daughter too, as if she were my own. Yet I haven’t heard you say one word about her!
‘Only a maid, you say! Well, I sure as hell don’t know any other maid who has done all I’ve done for you. So maybe it’s time I looked out for myself, and stopped fretting about you and yours.’
‘Oh, you know I didn’t mean it like that,’ Annie said with a toss of her head. ‘I’m down, what do you expect?’
‘I hoped you might be glad we’ve still got one another,’ Mog retorted. ‘I expected that you’d start to think about what we can do to that bastard who took Belle and burned us down. Young Jimmy, Garth and Noah are all on your side, but it’s time you got yourself up and looking good again, and fought back.’
‘I can’t,’ Annie whimpered. ‘I’ve got no fight left in me. I wish you’d left me to die in the fire.’
‘There’s far worse things than losing a house,’ Mog said in bewilderment. ‘Having Belle snatched by a murderer was one. But you didn’t fall apart with that – surely the house don’t mean more to you than her?’
‘You don’t understand.’ Annie looked up at Mog with tear-filled eyes. ‘Owning that house compensated for all the other horrible things that were done to me. When the Countess left it to me it healed my wounds. I could stop dwelling on the men who raped me, and all the men I had to pretend to want because they were paying me. Now it’s gone, all those memories have come back. I’m nothing now.’
‘You are nothing if you can’t fight for your Belle,’ Mog retorted, tempted to slap some sense into Annie. ‘You should be down at Bow Street now making a fuss about the fire, not lying here festering. Demand to see the most senior man there, insist he investigates the fire and Belle’s disappearance. Why not use some of that money in the cashbox to offer a reward for information? There’s bound to be some little weasel around here who knows something – money always brings them out of the woodwork.’
‘The Falcon will just do something else to me,’ Annie said weakly.
Mog rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘What else can he do? He’s already done the two worst things I can think of, there is nothing else to do.’
‘He could kill me.’
‘Well, you said you wished I’d left you to die in the fire, so that won’t be so bad,’ Mog said tartly. ‘Now, I’m going to fill up a bath for you down in the scullery. If you don’t get up to have it then I’m afraid you and I will have to part company.’
Chapter Twelve
Mog leaned across the counter and aggressively stuck her face up close to the police sergeant’s.
‘Why haven’t you been to Kent’s house or office and questioned him?’ she demanded to know. ‘He’s murdered a young woman, abducted a child and burned our house down. What more does