The Bachelor's Bride (The Thompsons of Locust Street #1) - Holly Bush Page 0,3

all, as one, staring at her brother, clearly waiting for his response.

“You don’t want to know,” James said to Schmitt and turned his head to her. “Aunt Murdoch is worried about you.”

“I highly doubt that,” she said but held tight to her spot on the stoop. “This man has not paid this woman, and he hit her, James. It’s not right.”

“Unfortunately, she’s in a business that is often dangerous. But we can do nothing for her. We’re going, Elspeth.”

The young man held out several paper bills. “Here. Give this to her, and then go before someone else is hurt.”

Elspeth took the money and handed it to woman, still sitting on the doorway threshold, her hankie in the other woman’s hand. The woman tried to return the hankie, now bloodstained, but Elspeth shook her head and smiled. “Do you have something for that?”

“Come on, Mary,” a woman in a gauzy robe standing just inside the door said. “Come to the kitchen. We’ll get some ice on it.”

Mary stood on shaky legs and let the woman inside help her until the door was closed. Elspeth turned to James. “We should be going,” she said.

“Should we? You will be the death of me, Lizzie,” James said with a quirk of his lips, using the childhood name that he knew she disliked.

They began down the steps together, and the boisterous men gathered around her and James as they finally skirted Schmitt, asking her brother all manner of questions, patting him on the back, and tugging on the brims of their caps to her or nodding in her direction. Elspeth glanced back at the young man, now watching her every movement. It was as if he was memorizing her features for some future inspection, and it made a chill run down her spine.

Chapter 2

Alexander Pendergast watched the man and woman walk down the street, away from him and Schmitt, away from the crowd and the prostitute, the brother taking long, sure strides and the sister hurrying to keep up. A coil of auburn hair showed at her nape below the flower-trimmed straw hat on top of her head. She wore a dark blue dress with a small bustle and few trimmings with a fitted blue plaid jacket that ended just below her waist. She was remarkably pretty. And those eyes! He’d stared at her, a fraction or more too long for polite behavior, but he couldn’t stop himself. They were both brown and green with thick lashes surrounding them, framed by dark brows.

Schmitt lumbered past him, down the steps, swinging his massive arms and interrupting Alex’s musings of the woman. He was certain Schmitt was furious as his bald head was bright red and he was patting away the glow of sweat with a white handkerchief. There was nothing Henry Schmitt disliked more than not being the center of everyone’s attention, and he had surely noticed the crowd’s reverence for the woman’s brother. Elspeth. Elspeth was her name.

“Who are they?” he said to no one in particular.

“What are you, some kind of nodcock?” a young man in a dark vest and a flat-top cap asked. “You don’t know James Thompson?”

Alexander shook his head. “No. No, I don’t. Who is he?”

“Just the best bare-knuckle boxer in all of Philadelphia, that’s all!” another man said.

“Maybe even the whole coast!” said another.

“You should be glad he didn’t challenge you or the big man,” the vested man said. “He could have taken you both on and not been bothered.”

“Who is the woman?”

“Ah, now there’s the thing. None of us realized she’s Thompson’s sister,” the other man said in a soft voice to a chorus of oohs and aahs. “She looks like an angel, but she’s not shy. She’d be handful, I think.”

“And one I’d like to have in my hand,” another said just above a whisper.

The vested man cuffed him on the back of the head. “Fool! You want James Thompson bearing down on you for talking about his sister in such a way?”

The crowd of young men dispersed, and Alexander glanced back at the stoop of the bawdy house. A glimmer of beadwork caught his eye and he retraced his steps, bending down and picking up a cloth drawstring bag decorated with shiny thread. He looked up to see if he could catch Thompson and his sister, but they were long gone. Schmitt called his name and the time of their appointment at the councilman’s office. The big man flung his body into the open carriage and glanced