Unending Devotion (Michigan Brides #1)(23)
Lily tugged on Frankie. “Don’t listen to her. You don’t want to end up dancing in your skimpies every night for shanty boys.”
Horror widened the girl’s eyes and filled every corner of her face. “Oh no, ma’am. Not at all.”
“You’d best come with me, and I’ll make sure you’re kept safe.”
The girl wiggled against Maggie’s grip, trying to break free. Her thin coat stretched at the seams.
But Maggie didn’t let go. “You’re not going anywhere until you work off the price of your train ticket.”
The determination in Maggie’s narrowed eyes said she wouldn’t relinquish her hold of the girl without a fight.
For an instant Lily despaired. How could she protect this young girl short of getting into a tugging match and pulling her into two pieces? The truth was, she was every bit as determined as Maggie to have the girl come with her.
“Now, hold on, Maggie,” Stuart said. “If Carr is using false advertising to get young girls up here to Harrison, promising them work in a hotel when all along he’s planning to enslave them in one of his brothels, then she shouldn’t be held responsible for the price of her ticket, because she didn’t know any better.”
Lily shot him a grateful glance.
At her appreciation, he pulled his skinny body higher. “Now, you let the girl go or I might just have a new front-page story for the paper this week.”
Above the scarlet scarf Maggie’s eyes flitted with uncertainty.
The hesitation was the chance Lily needed. She jerked hard and pulled Frankie loose. The young girl fell against her with a pitiful cry.
Lily wrapped an arm around Frankie’s waist and pulled her into the crook of her body. She didn’t wait to see if Stuart could get Frankie’s bag.
Instead, she propelled the girl off the platform and onto the muddy street, hustling her away from Maggie Carr as fast as she could.
It was only when she chanced a glance over her shoulder that she caught a glimpse of the sharp steel in Maggie’s eyes—the glint said she’d find a way to stab Lily and inflict pain in one way or another. That it was only a matter of time.
Lily pulled Frankie closer. She didn’t care.
With every life she saved from the pit of hell, maybe eventually she’d make up for losing the one life that had mattered the most.
Chapter
7
“I told you James Carr was the devil himself in human flesh.” Vera thumped a bowl of beans onto the dining-room table next to a loaf of steaming bread.
Connell didn’t have the appetite to fill his tin plate for the noon meal he took at the hotel whenever he wasn’t at one of his camps. Not even the yeasty aroma was enough to tempt him. Instead, he glanced at the young girl sitting at the opposite table next to Lily, and his stomach gurgled with a sickening hollowness.
The girl crammed a slice of bread into her mouth as though it would disappear if she didn’t get it in fast enough. Judging by the thinness of her cheeks and boniness of her fingers, it had obviously been a while since she’d had a decent meal.
“Do you think I ought to run the story anyway?” Stuart sat across from him and heaped four large spoonfuls of beans onto the mounds of pork and bread he’d already piled onto his plate.
“Of course you should,” Lily responded, scraping a trail with the tip of her spoon through the scant serving of beans on her plate. “This community needs to hear the truth about what’s going on.”
Vera shook her head, the movement jostling her heat-flushed cheeks. “James Carr is completely despicable. Tricking young innocent girls by putting ads in the newspaper for his so-called hotel.”
“What I want to know is how long he’s been advertising.” Stuart shoveled two bites of his meal into his mouth and seemed to swallow them without chewing. “I’m sure Frankie can’t be the first girl Carr has deceived into working at his brothels.”
“It doesn’t really matter how long he’s been doing it.” Lily handed Frankie her piece of bread, and the girl took it eagerly. “All that matters is that we’ve discovered his deception. And now we need to find a way to make sure it stops.”
Lily’s eyes sparked like prisms, a brilliance of hot and cold. Her graceful features were sharp with all the earnestness of her heart spilled out, nothing held back, the emotions raw and clear.
For once he couldn’t disagree with her. Carr had gone too far. It was one thing for a girl to choose the harlot’s life. But it was an entirely different matter to be forced into it.
“It’s a shame,” said Stuart between mouthfuls. “The girls who answer Carr’s ad are the upstanding ones, the ones looking for decent jobs. If they’d wanted to join a bawdy house, they didn’t need to come north to do it.”
Connell knew full well Stuart wouldn’t be able to run a story about Carr in the Harrison Herald. And he had the feeling his friend knew it too. Stuart couldn’t print anything detrimental about Carr, not without putting his life in peril.
The door of the hotel opened and slammed against the wall.
Lily and Frankie jumped.
“Speak of the devil,” Vera muttered.
Carr stepped through the doorway, his shiny black boots clicking an ominous rhythm against the plank floor. He swept off his hat and combed his fingers through his immaculately trimmed hair. Dressed as impeccably as always in a town coat, a matching vest, and a bow tie at his throat, he could have passed for a lumber baron.