The Bachelor's Bride (The Thompsons of Locust Street #1) - Holly Bush Page 0,29

swept into the room. She walked to Alexander and put her arm under his. “Can you get up?”

He looked up at her, at her tense and unsmiling face, and knew even when she was upset or angry, he’d still want to be near her. They stared into each other’s eyes, and then a throat was cleared somewhere in the room. He looked over to see Thompson and MacAvoy glaring at him, glancing at Elspeth, but concentrating on him. He looked back steadily.

“Let me help you up,” she said. “You’re shaking.”

He held on to her arm and went back across the hall, plopping down on the bed, exhausted.

“Out, Elspeth,” Mrs. Murdoch said. “Robert. Get his shirt and boots off.”

“Muireall is staying,” Elspeth replied.

“Go!”

He watched her leave and submitted himself to all the hands pulling and pushing him and prodding his stomach and chest. He let out a hiss.

“Broken rib. Just one, I think,” Mrs. Murdoch concluded. The eldest sister wiped his face with a warm towel, and he could have cried with the feeling of it. She scrubbed gently at certain spots and picked stone and gravel out of his hair. He would have fallen asleep if the sister hadn’t rubbed the cuts on his hand with an ointment that stung so badly his eyes teared.

“Now, Mr. Pendergast, you wouldn’t want Elspeth to know you were crying like a little boy over some medicine, would you?” Mrs. Murdoch said with a smile that could not be called friendly. She pulled him to a sitting position with the help of the young man, Robert, and she wrapped his chest and ribs tightly.

“Drink this,” the elder sister said, propping him up with one arm under his head.

“What is it?”

“I don’t care what happens in your household when someone is ill or hurt, but in this household—and you are here under our care because you are too weak to go another step—the women decide what shall be done for illness or injuries. Drink it. My brother has already drunk his,” Muireall Thompson said.

She’d added that last comment knowing that he would not allow himself to appear defeated in front of James Thompson. She was formidable and unsmiling, even though he smiled up at her as much as he could.

“Was that meant to be a challenge, Miss Thompson?”

“Women don’t indulge in silly competitions, Mr. Pendergast. We have the more serious business of keeping our family together and afloat to occupy us. Drink this,” she said, and he did.

He knew immediately there was some laudanum in the brandy. He could taste it. But soon he didn’t care as the drug, his weariness, and his injuries let him drift away into sleep.

The household was completely quiet. MacAvoy had stretched out on a chair near James’s bed, and Muireall had thrown a blanket over him. Payden finally settled down after all the excitement, especially after Kirsty told him and Robert about their narrow escape. Of course, she embellished the story, and the boys were mesmerized. Muireall came to Elspeth’s room shortly after helping their aunt into bed, not long after midnight.

“So tell me. Tell me everything,” she said.

Elspeth did, leaving nothing out. How lucky they were to get home safely, she thought afterward.

“You have no idea who these men were or what they wanted?”

“None, Muireall. I wish I had noticed something, but I was so concerned for James I most likely missed clues if they were there, and they said nothing as to their purpose.”

“I heard your Mr. Pendergast climbed into the ring to help you and put his back to MacAvoy to fight off the crowd. Why would he do that?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I haven’t been forward with him, and when he and his sister met us at the outdoor market, he spoke to me for a moment but then quickly gathered his sister and left.”

Muireall pulled the tie of her robe tight around her waist, staring off into the corner of Elspeth’s room. She looked back finally, puzzled and maybe a little envious. “He looks at you with such longing.”

It was such an unusual comment from her eldest sister, exposing tender feelings rarely seen from Muireall Thompson. Was it true? Did he look at her in the same way she felt about him? She did not want to be in an unequal relationship, pining after a man who took no notice of her. Was she pining? Yes, she probably was. Even with all the tension and fear surrounding them