Belle Read Online Free PDF Page A

with your sweet talk, fed me lies and more lies. I’ve made plans for us, and now you say you were pretending!’
    ‘Us girls are told to be nice to our customers,’ Millie argued.
    He hit her again and this time she yelped with pain and begged him to let her go.
    ‘I’ll let you go all right,’ he responded. ‘Straight to the devil where you belong.’
    Just the crazed way he spoke suggested to Belle that he was going to kill Millie. She so much wanted to be brave, to get out from under the bed and whack him over the head with the chamberpot before alerting Annie to what was going on. But she was frozen with fear and unable to move a muscle.
    ‘No, please!’ Millie pleaded, and there was a sound of thrashing around as if she was trying to get away from him. But gradually the sound abated, and as Belle could hear heavy breathing above it she thought her fears had been groundless because he was kissing Millie again.
    ‘That’s better,’ he said softly as finally the struggling stopped. ‘Just give in to me. That’s how I like it.’
    In her fear Belle had retreated to the centre of the bed, so she could no longer see them in the mirror. But the way the man spoke suggested that the nastiness was completely over and he was about to start fucking Millie again. Belle thought she would wait for the thumping, slapping sound to begin again and then she would creep out and make a run for the door.
    But some little time passed and there was no thumping, just the heavy breathing, so she wriggled to the side of the bed so she could see their reflections in the mirror. What she saw was so shocking that she almost cried out.
    The man was kneeling up on the bed, completely naked now and rubbing his cock while holding it to Millie’s face. Her chin was jutting upwards, exposing her white neck, but she wasn’t reacting to what he was doing. Her eyes seemed to be almost popping out of her head and she looked as though she was screaming, only there was no sound coming out of her open mouth.
    Belle forgot her own terror in her fear for Millie. Silently she turned beneath the bed until she was facing the door, crawled down to the end of the bed, then gathered herself while still out of his line of vision for the last dash to the door.
    In one swift movement she leapt to her feet and to the door to pull back the bolt. She heard the man roar out something, but by then she had the door open and she raced down the two flights of stairs two at a time.
    ‘A man is hurting Millie! Save her!’ she shouted as she got to the last landing and saw Annie coming out of her office.
    For just the briefest second her mother’s expression was so fierce Belle thought she would strike her. But without saying a word she moved swiftly towards the parlour.
    ‘Jacob!’ she called out. ‘Come with me to check on Millie.’
    The bald, burly man was a newcomer to the house, Belle had seen him just once about a fortnight earlier when he was putting a new washer on the tap in the scullery. Mog had said he’d been hired to do odd jobs, but also to make sure there was no rowdiness upstairs during the evenings. He looked smart tonight in a dark green jacket, and he responded swiftly to Annie’s order, racing up the stairs.
    Annie followed, but she paused, looking down at Belle and pointing to the door to the basement. ‘Down there, and stay there. I’ll deal with you later,’ she barked.
    Belle sat at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, wishing that Mog would come down because she knew she could explain how this had all come about much more easily to her.
    The kitchen clock said it was ten past ten. Clearly she’d been asleep in Millie’s room for much longer than she’d imagined. But she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t been woken up by the girls getting ready for the evening, or why Mog hadn’t come upstairs to find her when she didn’t return from cleaning the room. Mog was like a mother hen; she normally got frantic if Belle was