A Fine Profession (The Chambermaid's Tales Part One) Read Online Free PDF Page B

not some wide boy with no idea what fidelity was.
    That fated day, w hen I arrived home after resigning from my chambermaid job, I went straight up to my bedroom, locked the door, and did not emerge for hours. I just lay there motionless. My mum brought up some soup at around 10pm, but after that, the next thing I knew was pain. I succumbed to pneumonia in the night and was rushed to hospital. I remained unconscious for the next three days. When I woke up, I did not speak for a month, such was the trauma of hospitalisation for me.
    The thing about my encounter with Cody was that, within a few hours, everything I had previously held true had been shaken down. Such a small, chance happening had changed me forever and there was no turning back. I knew I needed more from life. I had been avoiding it for too long. I knew just those few kisses with Cody were worth risking myself for. I dreamt about him constantly and something was awakened inside me that day. It was unfortunately just my luck that my first experience had to be with someone so insincere. That was all I had to go on. He made me feel shameful in a sense and, idiotic. I'd had my head turned so easily.
    When I emerged from my illness in hospital, the doctors spoke to my mum and asked her whe ther anyone in the house had been suffering flu. She said she couldn't remember any of us catching anything in months. Everyone in our house, except me, was unnaturally super-fit and healthy. But I remembered Cody. He may have been carrying some virus or something, unwittingly. Cody would not have known, however, how weak my immune system was and how something he could easily fight off could become so detrimental to me should it be wrought upon me at a time of vulnerability. I could not help feeling that he had wronged me in more ways than one, but I also blamed myself for kissing a footballer of all suitors. Where his mouth had been, I could not tell, nor would ever want to imagine.
     
     
     

Chapter III
Heath's Release
     
     
    Heath, having read about those events, was disbelieving. He had to interrupt her, despite knowing she might vehemently object to questioning. As far as she was concerned, she had written down everything she wanted to say. She thought herself a much more eloquent scribe than speaker.
    “ Do you expect me to sympathise with all that?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
    “I don't expect anything,” she drawled, teasing fingers through her hair.
    She gestured at his nether region and he quickly crossed his legs.
    “That is not the point,” he insisted.
    She raised her eyebrows, “No?”
    She sucked her thumb and his face flushed. He coughed and adjusted his seating position.
    “Very funny. Listen, Miss Lottie, or Charlotte, or whatever your name… you slotted that dream in for one reason alone!”
    She fiddled with h er nails indifferently.
    “ Anger. Not becoming of a man. I know your sort. Judgemental, passionless, viciously inquisitive. A slave to martyrdom. Happy to be beleaguered. Blindsided by cynicism. You obviously begrudge the fact that my tale arouses you.”
    “I… ” he trailed off, putting his hand to his mouth to stop himself. Words would betray him. This girl was clever for a chambermaid.
    “ You wanted to know the story. Yet, there is much more to tell. Perhaps if we are to continue, you should go to the bathroom and avail yourself of what is certainly now causing you agony.”
    “Why do you talk like that? Like you are in some sort of novel? Why do you… have that air of superiority? That, I don't know, coolness.”
    “ Please Mister Heath, please ask yourself what it is you actually know about me? Please reconsider that question. For if you answer it truthfully, you know nothing. You really do not. And here I am, trying to enlighten you. You must suspend your disbelief if we are to continue.”
    “ But I have the right to my own opinion,” he insisted, with what she knew was definitely a rhetorical, self-conflicted