The Bachelor's Bride (The Thompsons of Locust Street #1) - Holly Bush Page 0,26
of Padino’s handlers.
“Miss Thompson!” he shouted. “Miss Thompson!”
She looked up with startled recognition. “Mr. Pendergast! Whatever are you doing here? You’ll be hurt!”
“How is your brother?” Alexander asked as a punch landed on his shoulder and he threw a solid one back.
The tall, thin man shouted over his shoulder as he held another man flush against him, his arm around the man’s neck. “What are your sisters doing here, James? And who are you?” he shouted at Alexander.
“A friend of the Misses Thompson. How are we going to get them all out of here?” he shouted back.
“James! James! Can you walk?”
“He’s nodding yes,” Kirsty shouted.
“You take James. I’ll take his sisters. I should be able to nearly carry them both. Elspeth! Get James on his feet! I’m MacAvoy.”
“Pendergast,” Alexander said.
MacAvoy grabbed a coat lying on the floor, threw it over Thompson’s shoulders, and wrapped a long arm around each of the Thompson sisters. “Make way! Make way!” he shouted. “James Thompson’s coming through!”
Alexander got Thompson’s arm around his shoulders and put his arm around the man’s waist. There was still blood dripping on his chest, and his nose didn’t seem to be the right place. He was holding his neck and gasping for breath.
“Come on! We’ve got to stay close to your sisters,” Alexander shouted. “Can you walk?”
Thompson nodded and leaned heavily on Alex’s shoulder. He pushed and shoved and pulled the weakened man toward the door, close behind MacAvoy and the Thompson sisters. They burst through the door into the cool night air.
“Where are we going?” Alexander asked.
“Why are those two men following us?” Kirsty said, glancing over her shoulder.
“We’re going home. James needs to be in his own bed,” Elspeth said.
MacAvoy took Thompson from Alexander’s arms and dragged him to a wagon. They pushed and pulled and shoved until he was lying on his back in the bed of the conveyance.
“Get in, girls,” MacAvoy said.
“No. We’re going to split up. Take James on a roundabout route until you know that no one is following you. Mr. Pendergast and Kirsty and I are going to take to the alley in case they follow us. Hurry! I can see one pointing at us!” Elspeth grabbed her sister’s hand. She looked at Alexander. “Hurry. You’re with us!”
“Why are they following us, Elspeth?” Kirsty said as they rounded a carriage house and plunged into the darkness of an alley where the streetlamps didn’t reach.
“I don’t know,” Elspeth answered in a breathy voice. “Wait. Stop here. I think I can hear them. Yes. They’re coming.”
“Follow me,” Kirsty said.
“I can’t see a foot in front of my face,” Pendergast said.
“Take my hand. I’ve got Kirsty’s,” she whispered.
The three of them crept through an open gate and crouched behind a low wall. Alexander was near the end of the wall and watched as the lantern one of the men held swung by. They could hear their low conversation. “They must have ducked in somewheres. In this gloom, we’ll never find them.”
“Shut up and follow me,” the other voice said.
“Come,” Pendergast whispered. “We’re going back the way we came.”
“Good idea,” Kirsty said. “We can go one more street over and up that alley. Then we can cut through Mrs. Mingo’s yard to our own kitchen entrance.”
The three of them crept back into the alleyway to the entrance where it met the street, and they were once again visible in the streetlamps.
“There they are!” they heard from behind.
“Go!” Pendergast shouted to them as he turned back to their pursuers. “Go! Run!”
Elspeth grabbed Kirsty’s hand and ran down the street toward the alley behind Mrs. Mingo’s, but she stopped when she heard gravel crunching under feet, shouted curses, and a dog barking in the distance.
“We can’t leave him,” she said, looking up at Kirsty’s filthy face and disheveled hair. “Go. I can’t leave him. He may need my help.”
Kirsty shook her head and hurried to a pile of trash near the entrance of the alley. She picked up a board and handed it to Elspeth, then picked up one of her own. “Come on!”
Elspeth turned on her heel and ran, skidding to a stop when she saw that Alexander was being held by both arms by one man while the other man punched him relentlessly in the stomach and face. The air in her nostrils was suddenly cold, and the sounds of the night were muted. She would kill him, this behemoth swinging massive arms and fists, connecting with bone and muscle.