Inamorata

Chapter Ten - Lady Macbeth

Chapter 10. Author's note - Another chapter! Comments and votes are always appreciated and always make me feel loved.

As Nightingale corrected Rose's tripping pronunciation of one of Cyrano's monologues, she watched the girl's fingers quivering on the book cover.

Sighing, she knew the girl was afraid. Not just afraid, petrified in a way that defied words or description. So intense was the emotion that it seemed to roll off of her, infecting Nightingale like some poisonous, noxious gas.

It was so intense that, in a flash, Nightingale remembered her own first client. Her entire body spasmed in instinctual - if Inamoratas had instincts in their perfectly engineered bodies - terror and her fingernails dug into the rug, raking deep scratches in it like the claws of a cat.

Suddenly, and just for a moment, Nightingale was again five days old, curled up on her side in the bed she was sitting beside in the present. Her shoulders were aching with the effort of not sobbing at the pain centred between her legs. As much as she wanted to howl and cower and scream her sorrow and pain, she knew that the man who was now grunting as he rolled over would hit her again if she did.

And so she stayed quiet.

"Nightingale!" she heard Rose saying.

Her back arching suddenly in fright, she gave a soft shriek and jerked away from Rose. In that instant, she did not see the five-day-old, exquisitely-lovely, sister-Inamorata, but the man who had taken her roughly, stripped away what few feelings of security she'd had, and left her to bleed in that bed.

After a moment, she recognized Rose. And with her chest heaving dramatically, gulping large breaths of air, she put one hand on Rose's arm.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm..."

Nightingale could not explain away what had happened. There were no words for it, no words that could be strung into a weak excuse to pacify Rose.

And Rose took one look at what must have been the expression of a madwoman on Nightingale's face and burst into hot, panicked tears.

"No, Rose, shh," she said, hearing the girl's wailing rocket up a few octaves the moment one of Nightingale's fingers brushed the skin of her forearm. "You've got to be quiet! If you do that in front of a client, you'll make it worse in ways you don't understand!"

That did not seem to comfort the poor girl, whose howling increased in volume in response. Nightingale watched desperately as the girl descended into hysterics, her breast fluttering as she attempted to draw air into her hyperventilating lungs.

Nightingale knew the source of Rose's panic: it was fear of her. Rose had taken one look at what life in the bordello had done to Nightingale, and was terrified because she knew the exact same thing would happen to her.

But Nightingale could not pity the girl, or let her sob her heart out. Rose's screaming was loud enough the Bobby might hear it. And so, hardening her heart, Nightingale backhanded Rose across the face in a technique she had learned from Bobby and her first clients. That is, before she had learned to avoid their violence through passive, winsome lies. It wasn't a hard enough slap to give Rose a bruise, but it certainly could shock her out of hysteria.

Rose immediately stopped, clutching her face and looking at Nightingale with her lovely eyes.

"I'm sorry, Rosie. But I had to. Believe me, if I client - or Bobby - ever catches you doing that, you'll get far worse than I just did," she said.

"Why?" whispered Rose, eyes filling with tears. However, as if in fear of Nightingale's right hand, she wiped them away. "They rape us nightly but can't stand to see us cry? Why?"