Saving Simona (Alone In The World Trilogy) (2 page)

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Leeds, Early December 1870

“Come on ladies, rise and shine! Those bodies won’t sell themselves!” A heavy fist rammed against the door, the sound echoing as a man p
erformed his daily wake-up call. “Up! Up! Up!” Three more knocks sounded before the footsteps faded as the knocker walked away.

Gia, as Georgiana had shorted her name to when Leander was not around, slowly opened her eyes, shivering as the crisp air of the room hit her consciousness. She shifted from her bedroll on the dirt floor before sitting up, squinting around the room at her sisters as they too arose from their fitful sleep. All around her, thirty or so young women were pushing themselves up off the floor, the scraps of cloth they were laying on bunching up around their figures as they moved in the dirt. Of the girls,
there were four others that were given the luxury of having a stuffed roll rather than the fraying pieces of fabric that the rest were forced to sleep upon.

“You heard him, ladies. We better do as Mister Fingers requests, or we shall see ourselves locked away with him this fine cold night,” a voice came from the corner before light erupted from an oil lamp as the speaking girl turned the knob. A second and third light came from two other corners as well, bathing the room in a light orange as the flame flickered back to its full power.

Giggles echoed throughout the room at the nickname for Leander’s oldest henchman. His name was really Franklin Cloverfield, but the eldest of the girls had taken to calling him “Mister Fingers” because of his tendency to show up back at the house in the wee hours of the morning, drunk and filled with a desire to get his stubby, sausage-like fingers on every girl that passed him by as they went off to work. He had gained the nickname in his early twenties when he began working for the man who was once Leander’s boss, but even now, nearly twenty-two years later, it was the name that he was best known by to the youngest of Leander’s girls. Gia, herself, did not know Franklin by anything else until her third year in the ring, when she heard one of Leander’s other henchmen chiding him one night for drawing the authorities too near to the house. Even after Gia knew his name, though, it was easier to just stick with Mister Fingers.

Gia glanced over at her sister, Molly, who was the one who had made the announcement.  She was a few years older than Gia at twenty-three, and had dishwater-blonde hair and dark blue eyes. She had been brought in around the same time that Gia was. They had been broken and trained together, and had worked in close proximity to one another the entire first year after they had first been put out onto the street a few weeks after adapting the identities Leander had bestowed upon them.

After a moment, Gia turned back to her mat before standing up and shaking out her aching muscles. It had been years since Gia had been allowed to sleep in an actual bed, but she had never grown used to the hard-packed dirt floor of the basement of the building that made up
her
bed. The mat helped some, but it had such a minimal amount of cotton within its confines that it barely felt like she was sleeping on anything. Granted, it was still better than the cloth. Gia arched her back and felt her bones pop as she walked over to the chamber pot in the corner of the room.

When she
was finished relieving herself, she walked over to Molly, who had just begun to pull through her long, flowing locks. “It should be an uncomfortably numb night out there,” Gia commented as she, too, pulled a broken hairbrush off a crate that rested along the wall. She winced as the boar bristles pulled at the tangles in her hair, the dust matting her curls. She pulled harder as the brush became stuck, the strands wrapping around the wood. She groaned as she let go of the handle, the brush hanging limply in her hair, shaking her head to try and loosen it before reaching back up.

Molly laughed and set her brush down, reaching over to Gia. She gestured for the other girl to remove her hands so that
the other girl could help. “It will be,” the blonde agreed, slowly pulling Gia’s hair away from its entrapment as she went quiet. After a few minutes, she spoke again, repositioning her hand on the newly-removed device in order to properly brush Gia’s hair. “God knows it is cold enough in here without the additional wind chilling our bones. It might even be snowing, for all we know.”

Gia shook her head before she was scolded by Molly for moving. “Sorry,” Gia apologized, sighing. “I hate the snow.”

Molly nodded and agreed before going silent.  Gia let her eyes wonder around the rest of the room, at how the other girls were getting ready. A few of the younger girls had trickled in from the adjacent room so that their elder sisters could assist them with their look for the night. It always amazed Gia just how adult some of the women were able to get their younger counterparts to appear, although she could remember being made more mature when she was that age.

The police would question any woman who appeared to be under the age of sixteen and in the streets late at night and by now, most the girls knew to stuff extra bits of cloth into their chemise and
pantalets to fit the shape of the corset better and therefore make themselves appear more womanly, mixed with longer dresses and more elaborate hair styles. Currently, though, everyone was still in their nightclothes: their unstuffed chemises, pantalets and, for those who Leander was pleased with, thick woolen socks that bunched under the hem of the pantalets and blocked out the December chill.

Gia was pulled back to herself when Molly tugged on the ends of her hair playfully, handing her the brush. “There. I did yours, now will you do mine? Then we can help each other pin our hair up, just like we did when we first arrived here,” Molly asked, shyly.

Gia smiled at her sister. “Of course,” she answered, gently turning the blonde around and beginning to run the brush through her hair. Unlike Gia’s chocolate hair, Molly’s locks were like spun gold, and had the consistency of silken thread. It was much easier to manage then Gia’s matted mess. It also took a third of the time, which meant that within a couple of minutes, Gia was able to pull Molly’s hair back, braiding it into a singular plait, which was then wrapped tightly around itself several times in order to form a wheel-like shape against the back of Molly’s head. Gia instructed the girl to hold her hair in place while the brunette went to Rhody, the eldest of the women, to gather a few pins to secure the wheel in place.

Once Molly’s hair was complete, Gia turned back around
so that her own hair could be pinned up. However, as it was, there were not any mirrors in the dingy room, so Gia was unable to see what Molly’s final work looked like in comparison to what Gia’s hair would have looked like if she had done it herself, like she had done for so many nights over the years. Leander had become so particular with his luxury girls’ appearances that the brunette had been forced to learn what it was that he expected of her. She ran her fingers lightly over her hair to see if it felt correct. Fortunately, it seemed as though Molly had taken notice of what Gia’s hair had normally looked like, and was able to recreate it almost perfectly.

“Get dressed, everyone!” Rhody exclaimed. The red head glanced at the pocket watch sitting beside her, her eyes growing wide. “If the time is  true, then Leander should be here within the quarter!” She finished doing the hair of the youth in front of her, and quickly ushered the rest of the women to the far wall of the room, where mounds of dressed and corsets of every shape and size were thrown beneath the single boarded window, the gowns damp from the rotting and leaking
wood that made up the wall.

Gia rushed over as quickly as she could, desperately hoping that tonight she would be able to grab one of the few corsets that fit her full breasts.
For nearly a full moon, Gia had been unlucky enough to get one of the corsets designed for the younger women, and had often found herself struggling to breathe as she made love to one of her many customers. Occasionally, there would be a man here or there who encouraged her to remove her bindings but, on a normal night, she was only required to remove her petticoat and pantalets so that her customer could access his purchase with the easiest of access.

Gia considered herself lucky in terms of her life, though. After the first initial year of selling herself on the street and making Leander as much money as she could, Gia had been pulled from the streets and exchanged into a more luxurious business
due to the shape that her body had developed into. Any of the girls who grew with a much more womanly figure than the rest had been assumed to make more money, and therefore pulled for Leander’s gain. There were multiple girls like them in their room: the girls who Leander sold out to the wealthy men who came into the town off the ships from faraway lands, the men who were
only
staying in Leeds for two or three personal days away from their wives and children back home.

Sure, these girls were still exposed to a different man nearly every night,
but Leander took much more care in the health of the men before he would agree to sell them any of
these
girls.  It was also these same girls who were awarded the bedrolls and occasional presents from Leander, such as the woolen stocking warming Gia’s feet. The girls were also occasionally gifted presents by their more prestigious lovers when they felt especially pleased with their purchase.

One of these men
specifically had taken quite an interest in Gia, and had been requesting her for four or five nights during his weeklong stay every other month. His name was Owen Boyd, and he was the son of a wealthy factory owner in Bristol. Owen swore up and down every time that he purchased Gia for a night that
this
stay would be the final time that he would purchase her as a lover, and that he was saving up enough money so that he could pay Leander a large sum of money that Father required for one of his daughters to be married. Gia always laughed and agreed with everything that Owen said, out of fear that the man would report her for being insubordinate, but she never believed that he would
really
bother with purchasing a girl like her. He may have felt a connection to her, but she was not worth the tens of thousands of pounds required for her hand. 

Gia shook the thoughts away as she felt another girl
lunge towards her, trying as well to get to the corsets. Gia pushed through, though, and managed to snag the one correct-fitting shaper that was left in the pile. She let out a sigh of relief before she leaned over and snatched a dress off the top of the closest pile in order to find her usual dress below it, the damp material from one dress bleeding into the next around Gia’s hand until her fingers looked as though she had been playing in the grass first thing after the morning dew had fallen. Fortunately, the dress was not too far down, and Gia was able find it within seconds.

The dress was just as cheaply made as the rest, out of satin, but it had the allusion of being worth more than it really was by the intricate pattern of flowers that was woven into the material. The bodice and interior of the skirt
were an ashen blue, while the sleeves and outer edges of the skirt were a dark reddish-orange. There were ruffles all along the bodice and neckline, as well as around all the hems of the dress itself, be it the collar or wrists, or dragging along the ground. To the other girls, the dress was hideous, but to Gia, it was beautiful. It was also one of the few dresses that Leander approved for his special luxury girls. If he did not approve of their choice for the night, he would make them remove all their clothes and let
him
dress them. Gia had made the mistake of chooses a lesser dress once, and she vowed to do so never again. Feeling Leander’s threatening hands roam her body in his dress was more than enough for her. 

Gia stepped away and moved back over to Molly, holding her breath when the other girl pull
ed the laces of the corset taut against Gia’s back. The boning dug into the brunette’s ribcage, constricting her lungs and making it feel like she was breathing through a thick layer of smoke. “Gracious, Molly, could you make that any tighter?” she breathed out once the lacings had been finished. She ran her hand against her side, pushing down on the fragmented boning as she tried to make it stop digging into her ribcage.

Molly chuckled. “You must keep that womanly shape,” the blonde reminded her. Gia rolled her eyes before turning around and doing up Molly’s laces. Molly, too, winced when the laces were
pulled tight, the fragments digging into her skin as well.

Gia glanced down at Molly and her corsets, wishing for the millionth time that one of her lovers would have purchased her her own corset at some point in time. Leander’s had been with the ring for nearly as l
ong as Leander himself, and the stays clearly showed their age. The fabric was a dark yellow, and the boning was shattered, poking through the material along the ridges. Gia’s abdomen was calloused over now, but for her first year with Leander, the soft flesh found there had been constantly in shreds by the jagged edges. The girls were not allowed corset covers, either, so the material had collected many other stains besides age as time had passed.

Gia winked at her sister as Molly winced again. “You must keep that womanly shape,” she mocked, wrinkling up her nose and squinting her eyes playfully when she repeated Molly’s words.