You Belong To Me

Chapter Ali

Chapter 8

"if there's one thing i learned in my whole life it's there's no running from the past."

-Ali, after her shot of whiskey one night

Living is overrated.

It sounded ever the selfish sentiment even to Ali. But when someone had mumbled it rudely into a conversation a hush settled over the small group like no one had the ammunition to defeat such a theory. Desolate is a feeling much worse than misery in that desolate is also whimpering and whining without options. It is being miserable without even the slightest opportunity of advancement. Instead she dipped her finger in her own sharing of spirits and touched it to her tongue in a small movement.

"Yeah, well nobody asked you," Al muttered while she made a rude gesture at the patrons retreating form. Her lovely features her contorted to aggravation and she was sneering. "Son of a bitch."

There was more of the silence. Beside her Kat was frolicking with the sleeve

of her dress, picking at a small nothing there. Her posture had given away to a slouch for just a moment. She looked pensive. A second ago she'd just been complaining lightly about something or another to do with their work. Then she'd sighed, lifted her white gloved hand and whiskey with Al and said, "At least I'm alive."

Then someone leaving, no one they knew, a john doe walked by and challenged the comment with three words. Of course one should always be grateful for life. To not be so is a sin. And so she was, all the time if she could be. Right...

Ali picked up the last of her shot, a small corner that she'd sipped on, and drained the glass. Her face was sour, she did not drink well, but she drank occasionally. She stood. "Kat, we gotta start walking if we gonna be back by the devil's hour."

Three o'clock.

They would be up at half after five and working at six.

Three nights a month, when they dared venture away from the estate because after services and her other light duties on the Sabbath the housekeeper was exceptionally tired that night, Kat and Ali dared sneak away for a single drink at a boarding house just outside town.

It had always been Kat's idea. Ali had never drank anything stronger than wine before. It would be wine that had been required by the young Lord for a lover's tryst.

Drinking always reminded her of the first time she'd partaken. Which always, combined with the spirits of alcohol, made her think of someone else. And that in turn made her a moody, quiet drinker. A moody, quiet anything.

But she'd always only had one drink. She had finance for more, nothing grand but some, but she'd never liked whiskey and she only came because Kat was her only friend at the new estate.

There they knew no one save each other. The manor they worked in now was still very much so an estate of the St. Laurent family. It was simply several days train-ride away. And cold. It was always cold on this estate. But because it was so much smaller, only twenty-three bedrooms, there was not so much staff. Ali reflected that unfortunately everyone there was not friendly. The fact was that they knew each other and ten other girls in the neighborhood that could have easily used a position on the St. Laurent estate. Certainly not two strangers dropped outside the housekeeper's door with orders to put them to scullery made work immediately.

They said their goodbye's to Al and left the inn with the small pub and diner welcome to all classes. "Ya'll be safe walking."

"Sure will." Kate nodded to her and shrugged on her shabby olive green jacket with patches sowed in the elbows. Ali nodded a farewell.

The manor was closer to a town than the estate had been. And the inn was further from the town than any place besides the gambling hell and the... dancehall and brothel.

"I should make you do this alone."

Ali meant walk back and forth up the hill three nights a month to have a drink she never really wanted. Air whipped around them. They'd long since left the main road and were now on the long trek back to the manor.

"You would not want me walking alone."

"Still..."

"Don't you ever have fun?" Kat whispered as they watched their step, conscious enough to not walk along the deserted road but just alongside it in the thick.

"At the inn? No."

"Sometimes I imagine I'm waiting for someone there, that we're meeting for a private moment away from life."

Ali did not respond. She was sure she knew what Kat was imagining. Her person of intimacies. The reason she'd been sent from the estate as well. Not the young Lord like Ali. Not a forced action that made her terrified of the love or affection of another person, but a boy she might have actually loved. Someone she had not been schemed into caring about. Someone her soul had found for her.

They walked a little more in silence. Then Ali asked her why she drank whiskey. Her answer had been a simply one word that let Ali know she wasn't up for talking anymore. That she'd talked her own self into a mood with a sentence. How heavily things weighed on their minds. So much so that people won't even recognize you when you're in thought. Or maybe you won't take the time to recognize them. And then you look foreign because your actions are. The rest of the walk was slow and quiet... and cold.

Ali had a hat and a sweater and coat and scarf with mittens but the bite was still stinging. When they arrived back in their small room via a slither of a window in the cellar below the kitchen she sat on the bed and muttered that she could not dress for bed until she was warmer. That she would sleep in her coat if her bones did not heat. Kat had laughed and blew into her hands.

She wondered if she missed him. When she admitted that she did she chastise herself for missing something so torrid and dirty. She understood all too well what a whore was, the women who did more than the showgirl routine's at the dancehall. And if she had been working their under... under the covers then that was what that made her.

Ali found fault in loving him, missing him in that. In the fact that all of it had been desperate measures. She had not sought him out. Nor he her. Their hearts had not found one another in a sea of people. They had been thrust together to perform and unspeakable act... several times. There was nothing at all beautiful about that. Despite how he used to make her feel. How gentle he was.

She had no sense to miss him. Every time she did Ali bit her tongue to bring herself pain. Anything in an effort to wipe the dirty thoughts away. To miss a man she did not want the affections of was sick.

They had been in a horrible situation. She had found safe haven at their vacationing manor Caroline had sent her away abruptly one morning. Packed her into a car with a stranger and given little moneys for her journey and what Caroline considered 'strenuous efforts she'd ought to be privileged to perform.' Her idea of compensated had been to give her a job in a different home of theirs after her son had deflowered her and completely ruined her mind.

The manor was years older than their home and so they never visited. Ever. The Lord Jackson St. Laurent had never set foot in the house. The family he created for himself certainly hadn't. Instead his father, Percival St. Laurent had frequented the mansion all it had to offer when he was young, a hunter of forest game as a hobby before he married.

She had not seen him, heard his name spoken in the constantly empty house they maintained because the family had the means to do so, since she'd been there. She was twenty-one that day...