at them to hurry.
“Colder than a witch’s tit out here, boys. Hurry up, so I can find my own hearth and get this poor pony in clean straw,” the driver shouted.
James pushed the heavy wooden door shut on the frigid air behind MacAvoy as he carried in the last box. He rubbed his hands together to warm them and glanced at his friend.
“Have you been sparring at all?” MacAvoy asked.
“Some,” James said. “My corner man is mad at me, so I didn’t always have a good partner.”
MacAvoy rumbled a laugh. “I heard ya nearly killed poor Billy Pettigrew. What were you thinking?”
“I went easy on him. Ended up teaching him how to keep his chin down. I would have broken the kid’s jaw three times if I hadn’t pulled my punches.”
“Are you ready for Friday?”
James nodded. “What did you find out about him?”
MacAvoy slouched on a stool. “He’s a leftie. His last manager told me he likes his whiskey. But he’s won pretty steadily, so he’s got to be decent in the ring. New York ain’t Philadelphia, but still, there’s plenty of fighters there, and he’s beat most of them.”
“We’ll find out Friday whether he’s decent or not, I suppose,” James said and then looked at MacAvoy. “I owe you more of an apology than I gave you before. I didn’t have any reason to speculate on Mrs. Emory’s virtue or intentions. I’ll always treat her with the respect she deserves. It came as a shock to me, though. You’ve stepped out with more women than I can count, but this one you want to marry. Doesn’t make sense.”
MacAvoy grinned boyishly. “That’s ’cause you haven’t met the right girl, brother. When you do, you’ll know. I feel like a babe could knock me off my feet every time I see her or that darling girl of hers. Eleanor is so beautiful, too pretty for me.”
James shrugged. “She’s a good-looking woman. But you’ve spent time with plenty of other beautiful women. Why this one?”
“They’re not Eleanor, that’s why. It’s not just that I want to, you know, bed her, because I do. I lay awake at night and think . . . never mind.”
James laughed. “I know what you’re thinking about, Malcolm.” He watched in astonishment as the man blushed from his hair to his chin. “My God! You’re red in the face like this is the first time we ever talked about fucking.”
“Well, it’s not just that with my Eleanor. She’s so clever! How she gets all the things done that she’s responsible for at Alexander’s, I’ll never understand. And she’s so kind and such a good mother! I just can’t believe she wants to have anything to do with a knockabout like myself. She could have anyone. But she picked me.” He looked up from his musings.
“You asked her, then?”
MacAvoy nodded, and for a brief uncomfortable moment, James thought he might start to cry. “She said yes, James. She’s going to marry me. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
James pulled his friend to his feet and gave him a quick hug. “We’re going to have to celebrate. Did Mrs. Emory set a date?”
“Spring, she said. I’ve got to find a house near Alexander’s, but not too near as I’d never be able to afford one of those mansions. But she is set on staying as the housekeeper, if Elspeth and Alexander would allow her to live somewhere else.” He cleared his throat. “Unless, of course, she was with, you know, had a baby.”
James laughed at his friend’s discomfort. “That could happen after you actually do some of the things you’ve been dreaming about at night.”
“My God,” MacAvoy whispered. “I could have a family. My very own family.”
James squeezed his friend’s shoulder. He’d met him shortly after he’d arrived with his family from Scotland at age eleven, and they’d been inseparable ever since. MacAvoy had never known his father; his mother scraped by doing piecework at one of the mills and spent her money on gin. She died when they were fifteen, and James had thought good riddance at the time, but maturity made him realize he would have taken any version of his mother in his life, whether a drunkard or not. Muireall had doled out the coin for the woman’s funeral, and MacAvoy lived with them for nearly a year until he got a job that paid him enough to get a room of his own over a tavern.
“Sometimes the strangest things happen when we least expect