Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was decided that Gray, Leo, Alex, Ellen, Calder, Eliza, and Mungo would go to the tea shop. He wasn’t sure why so many were needed, but each had a reason for wanting to be there.
Some of those reasons were sound. Some of them, he suspected, however, were because Nightingales did not stay behind when something was happening, even if what was happening was trudging through a bitterly cold London day to hopefully question staff from an employment agency.
“Miss Alvin knitted me this.”
Mungo looked at the blue woolen scarf Benjamin had wrapped twice around his scrawny neck.
“It’s right warm.”
He grunted, hunching deeper into his coat, and took a moment, now that he was away from her, to think about what he’d done in that rotunda with Eliza Downing.
You’re an eejit is what you are.
What had he been thinking, kissing the woman?
The taste of her would haunt him, as would the feel of her lovely body pressed to his, even considering the layers of clothing between them.
He could still feel her fingers, small and tense, where they’d curled in his coat as if she’d needed him in that single, stolen moment as much as he’d needed her.
I’m a fool.
Bram had sent him up to check on her after she’d left them. Mungo had knocked on the door, and she’d sent him away with a polite, brittle voice. He’d then returned to the parlor where Gray had told them the details he knew about Eliza’s family and the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
Bram had asked him then to have more tea brewed. In the kitchen, Bud told him Eliza had left the house.
Rather than yelling at Bud for letting her, Mungo had pulled on his coat and followed.
Eliza had looked so small and alone standing in that rotunda, and though she was surrounded by houses full of people, she’d seemed completely isolated.
Before stepping forward, he’d watched her a moment, observing that stiff set of her shoulders and the way her hands had been clenched in front of her as if she were bracing for another blow.
He understood that feeling. For all he was constantly surrounded by people, sometimes he felt alone in the world.
Was that what had drawn him to her?
What about her uncle? Had he been good to the broken girl who had come to live with him?
“I couldn’t get to them.”
He could still hear the ragged way she’d said it, could see in his mind the way her eyes had gone somewhere far away.
He knew a thing or two about lasting memories, and that one, in which she couldn’t get to her parents and brother, would be Eliza Downing’s.
They’d likely died in their beds, or close to them, and she hadn’t been there to save them.
Mungo didn’t know how she’d survived what happened to her. He’d walked away from his family, but he’d left them alive. He had left by choice, in a fury. Those she loved had been taken from her.
“Christ, what a mess.”
His breath hung in front of him on a sigh. Mungo was rarely tired, a man who needed little sleep and could go long hours without complaint, but right then, his body felt weak with exhaustion. His mind wouldn’t still, whirling between Fenella, Eliza, and Calder.
His focus had to be Fenella and her maid and nothing else now. Not the sweet-faced governess with the soft, lush lips. Once his niece was back, he’d think about Eliza and how to exist with her living in the same house as him. How to keep from dragging her close every time they were alone in a room.
The door opened, and he watched everyone appear, wrapped for the conditions in layers of clothing, all talking over top of one another, as was their wont.
The warm glow from inside spilled briefly over the step, painting them in soft gold before the door thudded shut behind them and they were returned to the harsh, gray light.
Gray was first, head down, face calm. He had Ellen’s hand tucked into his arm, and she was saying something to him. Bram followed, also looking calm, his gaze cutting over the street, checking shadows, doorways, and potential threats where they rarely were in Crabbett Close.
Alex came next, scarf trailing, nearly being yanked back inside when Leo stepped on it. Alex never went anywhere without some form of chaos clinging to him.
Mungo’s brother came next.
Shoulders hunched, face lined, Calder was an anguished man, and no matter what Mungo felt about him, he must remember that. Mungo’s insides burned with rage over who had taken Fenella, but he was not her father.
Eliza was last, shoulders back, primly buttoned into her jacket. No one looking at that woman would see the hell she’d endured. She’d learned to hide behind a facade, like he had.
Her gaze slid past him, clearly avoiding his eyes.
“We cannot all fit inside,” Bram said, reaching the carriage. “Not comfortably, at least. And I have no wish to have any of you on my lap.”
“We’re no longer children, Uncle Bram,” Ellen said, although she was pushing Alex back by his shoulder as he tried to pass her and get into the carriage.
“I will, of course, sit beside Mr. Mungo and Benjamin, as I am an employee, and there is plenty of room,” Eliza said, still not meeting his eyes, her voice prim.
“Absolutely not,” Calder snapped before Mungo could speak. “I will sit beside my brother.”
“I can sit up there,” Alex said quickly. “I love annoying Mungo. It will be a treat that he has nowhere to run to.”
“Idiot,” Mungo muttered.
Benjamin laughed under his breath.
“There, you see, he loves me,” Alex said cheerfully.
“No,” Calder countered again flatly. “I will sit up there, as I have things I wish to discuss with Mungo.”
Which was the last thing Mungo wanted to hear, but he didn’t allow that thought to show on his face.
“One of you bleeding get up here before we all freeze to death,” he growled, the reins cutting into his fingers as he tightened his grip. The horses tossed their heads as if echoing his impatience.
“It seems you’ve been out of Scotland too long, brother,” Calder said, looking up at him with a tight smile, “if a balmy night such as this is too cold for you.”
“It is not balmy,” Alex protested. “My extremities are suffering.”
“Well, get inside with you, then,” Mungo said, ignoring his brother’s needling.
Benjamin climbed down, and Calder up. The lad then resettled on the seat, wedging Mungo’s brother between them.
He felt like he was seated next to a stranger, when he’d known the man since birth.
But they knew nothing about each other now—neither the man Calder had become, nor the one Mungo was these days.
Bram herded the others inside the carriage with the efficiency of a general. There was grumbling and squeaking springs and Alex complaining about someone’s elbow in his ribs. Ellen insisted on having the window cracked an inch “for air,” which had Leo groaning theatrically as the cold seeped in.
Mungo heard Gray telling them all to shut up.
When the door shut, he set the horses moving with a gentle flick of the reins. The wheels crunched as they rolled forward.
“Wait!”
He stopped again, teeth grinding, and the carriage door flew open. Out vaulted Alex, nearly landing on his backside on the slick step.
“For the love of—” Mungo began.
Alex sprinted back to the house, scarf trailing. This could happen two or three times on an outing and was something that, along with all the other things the Nightingales did, Mungo had learned to live with.
“Hat!” Ellen called from the doorway
“They seem good people, even if I don’t understand what they are,” Calder said quietly beside him, watching the commotion with an odd little smile.
“They are good people who can do amazing things,” Mungo said, because whatever else this place was, it was home, and he loved its inhabitants and would protect them with his life.
“You’ve been with them long?” Calder asked.
His sigh was silent. He’d wanted a peaceful drive through London to get his head on straight and find a way to handle his attraction to Eliza, but no, his brother was now seated beside him and asking questions.
Mungo couldn’t deny him, seeing as he was suffering, and they were, whether he liked it or not, bound together by blood and by Fenella.
Benjamin was looking to his left, giving the appearance of not listening, which they both knew was untrue. Not that it mattered, as there were no secrets in Crabbett Close.
“When I left Scotland, I traveled to London and worked for a while,” he said, eyes on the road ahead as Alex darted back out, hat jammed crookedly on his head. “I then booked a passage to India, and it was on the ship that I met Bram. We’ve been together ever since.”
The horses tossed their heads, breath steaming in the air as Mungo eased them forward a fraction, impatient to be gone.
“I tried to find you,” Calder said.
The words surprised Mungo. He’d not thought anyone had come looking for him. His mother would have, but she’d never disobey her husband, and it had been he who told Mungo to leave.