Chapter 1 #2
Mimi had just pushed him through the door to her room when Madame Maxime herself stuck her head out of the door on the landing below.
“What the devil are you doing, you stupid girl? Some of us have been working all night. Have you lit the fires?”
“Oui, Madame, I have. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I tripped on the stair.”
The door slammed shut without another word and Céleste breathed a sigh of relief.
Up all night working, bah, she thought to herself, scowling.
The other girls had been working perhaps, for work it indeed seemed to be with some of the disgusting characters that passed through Maxime’s door.
But the Madame herself would simply arrange and swallow enough brandy to keep her sour temper sweetened for the benefit of her paying customers.
Céleste scurried up the narrow, curving stairway to her attic room, where Mimi had laid the smuggler down on her pallet bed.
Everything seemed even more cramped than usual with the two big men taking up all the available space, and she squeezed past Mimi and ducked the rafters as she moved around to the thin, straw-filled palliasse that served as her bed.
“We must get these wet clothes off him,” she said, reaching forward to get started and yelping as Mimi smacked her hand away.
“Merde!” she exclaimed, rubbing her stinging knuckles, and then began to laugh at the mutinous look on Mimi’s face.
“Oh, Mimi.” She giggled. “I’ve lived in a brothel for the last six months.
I promise he has nothing I haven’t seen before. ”
Though she began to rethink that particular statement once Mimi relented, and they began to peel away his sodden clothes.
She had seen plenty of men, and women, in various states of undress, and a bewildering array of positions, some that seemed undignified.
It was hard to miss such sights in a house like this one, no matter how hard she’d tried, to begin with at least. By now she believed she was unshockable; there was nothing left in the world that could possibly surprise her.
And yet her curiosity was piqued as the layers were stripped away to reveal a hard, muscular body, quite unlike those she’d seen up to this point.
His large frame on the mattress shivered, his skin puckered with gooseflesh, and she reached for the dry scrap of coarse linen that served her as a towel.
“Alors, you go, Mimi,” she said, rubbing the linen hard over the man’s heavy arm, both to dry him and to warm him. “You need to fetch the bread from the boulangerie and get some water on to boil. If they don’t get their breakfast, there’ll be hell to pay. You must cover for me.”
Mimi glowered at the unconscious figure and Céleste huffed. “Oh be reasonable, he’s in no position to do me any harm, now is he?”
Mimi left, though clearly unhappy about it, and Céleste returned to the job at hand, relieved to be able to look her fill without an audience.
She rubbed dry one muscular arm before moving onto this chest. His skin was smooth but marked in places with scars that spoke of a violent life.
One was perhaps a bullet wound, high on his left shoulder.
She paused for a moment to place her hand flat on his chest, feeling the reassuring thud of his heart, strong and steady under the heavy muscle and coarse hair on his chest. Forcing her attention back to the job at hand she moved to his feet and dried them, rubbing them with vigour to get the blood moving and carrying on up his legs.
She ground to a halt as she came upon the sodden under drawers which clung to his massive frame.
They would have to come off. With difficulty and much cursing, she finally managed to wrestle the damned things off and then swallowed as she turned back and looked at the naked man, sprawled on her bed.
“Mon Dieu,” she whispered. He was perfection in masculine form, and she couldn’t help but take a moment to admire him, from this thick dark hair, square jaw, full mouth and the slight cleft in his chin.
Her gaze drifted lower. She took in the impressive width of chest and shoulders, the sculpted belly and the intriguing trail of dark hair that led to his manhood.
This she lingered on with interest, for she had been truthful in her words to Mimi, but she had never had the opportunity to see a man in repose, and so close.
She bit her lip considering the things she had seen with the whores if he was this size before he was roused . ..
He shivered again and she scolded herself forcefully, the poor devil would die of cold while she sat there staring at him like a fool.
Chastened, she covered him as best she could with her only blanket and piled every scrap of clothing she possessed on top of that.
Then she lit the tiny stove with what remained of her driftwood.
Maxime allowed her the room and a meagre supply of food in return for working her fingers to the bone from dawn till late at night.
But she had to provide her own fuel, and so collecting driftwood from the beach was always an early morning chore if she didn’t want to shiver all night.
She coughed as the tiny space filled with smoke until the fire caught and the little chimney drew.
With one last look at the handsome smuggler she sent a prayer to whatever cruel God seemed to look down on her and begged that he let the man live.
She would work twice as hard, she would be very, very good, if only he would live.