as she had not been since he carried her inside, refusing that day to relinquish her to James or MacAvoy until he was able to lay her down on her own bed. And then Murdoch shouting orders to Kirsty and Muireall as she stripped Elspeth’s clothes and shooed the men from the room.
He’d been waiting in the hallway since then. What day was it? He’d taken advantage of the bathing room and had Mrs. Emory send him clean clothes. He’d slept little and eaten whatever Kirsty Thompson brought him. He didn’t really care what he ate. His parents came to the Thompson house, but he refused to go downstairs. He told Muireall to tell them that he would be home soon. That Elspeth would awaken, and then he would be able to breathe again.
He opened the door slowly as her sisters and aunt had said she was jumping and crying at any loud noise. He forced a smile on his face, wanting to rail instead at her bruised and swollen face.
“Elspeth?” he said softly. “Elspeth. It’s Alexander. I heard you call my name.”
Her chest was rising and falling as she took harsh breaths through her cut lips. Her hands fluttered in her lap, and she picked at the bandages around her wrists. She was staring at him, but he wasn’t sure she was seeing him. Aunt Murdoch had made herself scarce on the other side of the room.
She looked up at him and saw him, he believed. “Alexander?”
He nodded and smiled. “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered and reached out her hand. He took it in both of his, and she stared as he stroked her fingers lightly. “Am I hurting you?”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. “Aunt Murdoch says everyone is fine. They told me they set the house on fire and that James was dead and that . . .”
“Your family is fine.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I didn’t know if you would come for me.”
Alexander sat down on her bed, eliciting a harrumph from Aunt Murdoch that he ignored. “I’ll always come for you. Always.”
“I thought of you,” she whispered and then shuddered. “I thought of you when he put his mouth on me. I thought of you.”
He nodded and forced himself to relax and speak slowly and softly when he wanted to kill someone, even though the man he wanted to kill was already dead—and by her hand, he suspected. He wanted to shout and rant and pound his fists, but it would frighten her, and that would never do. “I’m glad you thought of me. I was so worried about you.”
“I thought . . . I thought they would kill you. There were so many of them.”
“We are all fine. Your brothers, Payden and James. Your sisters. Your aunt. Mrs. McClintok and Robert. Everyone is well.”
She let out a ragged breath. “Yes. Yes. Aunt told me, but it doesn’t always feel true.”
“It’s true,” he said. “Will you trust me?”
She nodded slowly and turned her head to look out the window. She leaned back against her pillows and closed her eyes. “I was so afraid.”
“So was I.”
Elspeth was seated at a small table that James had carried into her bedroom. She was eating soup, and Muireall was sitting across from her, glancing in a ledger over the tops of her spectacles. “We’ve got a new customer. One of the vendors you and Kirsty talked to at the Bainbridge Street Market. They’re going to take green beans to start.”
Elspeth dabbed her lips. The cuts on her mouth and inside her cheeks were mostly healed, although dark bruises were still visible on her face from her ear to her nose. Aunt Murdoch would be taking the stitches out of the back of her head in a few days, and her hands were mostly scabbed now and the skin so itchy she’d been wearing gloves to bed so she wouldn’t scratch open the gashes during the night.
“The men at the warehouse where I was held,” she looked at Muireall, “were any of them Cameron Plowman?”
“No. None of the dead or imprisoned have been identified as Plowman.”
“So we are still in danger.”
Muireall nodded and closed her ledger. “We are, but from what James and the Pendergasts’ security man, Graham, have been able to find out, Plowman’s forces here have been decimated. If Plowman intends to continue this, which he will, he must rebuild.”
“Who is tending Dunacres? Has Plowman taken it over?”
“No. It is being overseen by