Inamorata

Chapter Eighteen - Birds of a Feather

Chapter 18 - Author's note: Hello, my lovelies, thank you for the huge, incredible support - and thanks for sticking around! Did you know I have a Patreon and a Ko-Fi account? By supporting me on Patreon or Ko-Fi, you're allowing me to turn a passion into a career!

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A few days passed in a fairly normal way. Things were a bit better around the bordello, as Bobby was much happier. Nightingale learned she had become something of a legend in the bordello business, and, based on how cheerful Bobby was, her fame had spread. She had new clients competing with her old ones for her attention.

Also, the masquerade had been a success, so much that Bobby was considering doing it again.

But it was not all happiness in the bordello. There were the usual beatings, shockings, and kickings. Though Rose's bruise went away, she managed to earn herself another one - this one to the inner thigh - which Nightingale and Caramel worked hard to cover up.

When Rose had started crying about it, Caramel immediately hushed her.

"I'm a failure," Rose had moaned, sounding so piteous that it took Nightingale back to her first days of fucking clients. "They're going to kill me."

"Shush," Caramel had snapped. She was a callous but well-meaning creature, one of Magenta's school of thought; that was to say, mouth off as much at Bobby as possible without being killed, but enough to get shocked at least once a day. "Give it a rest. Everyone's first days are like that. Even Nightingale got the shit kicked out of her for the first little while."

Nightingale had nodded, her hands curling into fists and her eyes narrowing viciously. "I did."

Caramel had nodded, too, her head bobbing like a bird's. "I remember Nightingale showing me one of her bruises, back when I was new and she was a few months old. It was nastiest one I've ever seen," she said. "Made this bruise look like a scratch."

Nightingale flinched at the memory. "One of those bastards kicked me in the ribs," she said to Rose, as she stroked the girl's tear-stained face. "I was marked for weeks. I covered it up after a few days, but not before Bobby saw it."

"What did he do?" asked Rose in a hushed voice.

Nightingale did not respond, partly out of a desire not to frighten Rose, but also because she thought that reliving it might make her angry beyond the point at which recitation could help her.

Caramel must have sensed this, for she quickly changed the subject.

And so a few days passed. Nightingale's clients, now the highest-paying men possibly on the Western Continent, were nothing out of the ordinary. Life in the bordello went on as usual - cruel, nasty, brutish, but with a tinge of sisterhood that made it barely bearable.

Besides, being outside the bordello had given Nightingale hope. And so in her spare time she sat daydreaming like a fool, hating herself for being so idiotic when she knew she was more sensible.

She dreamed of the outside, dreamed of the tall buildings, dreamed of Clarence and Robin and David and even Michael, whom she had not seen and whom she was worried hated her for her abandonment of him.

As her dreaming had occupied so much of her time, it was not until Thursday afternoon, after a long day of comforting both Rose and Emerald, who'd both been fucked rather nastily the night before, that she opened Pride and Prejudice for the first time since she'd been outside.