Chapter 26 #2
Mungo hauled in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly to ease the red mist covering his eyes. It didn’t work. Turning, he leveled the women a look that should have cowed them, then glared at the onlookers.
“Move it along now,” Mavis called. “Nothing more to see here.”
“What were you all thinking?” Mungo said through his teeth. “Any one of you could have been hurt by a stray fist.”
“So could you,” Mavis added.
“That’s different!” It came out a bellow. Why was it the people around him constantly needed protecting?
“How?” She put her hands on her hips.
The others joined her in a line. Calder stood to his right, watching.
“Because I’m a man,” Mungo said.
Calder groaned loudly.
“Oh, so you’re like them, are you?” Cyn demanded, pointing to where the men had fled. “You think we’re—”
“If I may defend my brother, I would say he is overly protective of you all, and that is the reason for his words,” Calder surprised him by saying.
“But do you think we shouldn’t vote, Mungo?” Harriet asked softly, her eyes sad.
He suddenly felt like he was wading through a bog carrying five sacks of flour, naked. He was out of his depth, which was pretty much how he continually felt at the moment.
Calder nudged him with an elbow.
“No,” Mungo said, “I don’t believe that. I just don’t want to see you hurt, like he said, and if I think you may be, I will act.”
Harriet started to cry as she came toward him. Mungo felt a moment of panic as she wrapped her arms around him and hugged. Flora and Cyn were next. He was soon being smothered by women.
“Has he gone pale?” Mavis asked.
“Looks like he’s about to cast up the entire contents of his stomach,” Mrs. Greedy added.
“Mungo has never been one for hugging,” Calder added.
“And suddenly you’re chatty, are you?” He glared at his brother.
Calder didn’t answer, but there was a small smile on his worn face.
“Now, you lot, head back to Crabbett Close,” he said, jabbing his finger at them rudely. “Go.”
They all smiled weakly, which fooled no one, and wandered off down the street, chanting, “We are daughters of this land. Give us voice, let us stand!”
He moved with Calder then, through the people, weaving and bobbing, until he reached the stables.
“Mungo,” the stable master greeted him as he always did. “Need the carriage?”
“Aye, I do, please, Burt.”
The man wandered off, and Calder spoke. “What if my daughter is never found, brother? How will we cope?”
He turned to face Calder and felt helpless in the face of such obvious grief even as he refused to believe Fenella wasn’t still breathing.
“She still lives,” he said, “and we will get her back. If she did not, Ellen would not have seen her.”
“You believe them, then?”
“Aye, because I hear the voices, but they are much, much more. I’ve seen it, Calder. Witnessed the miracles they can perform. Trust that they will find her.”
His brother ran a hand over his face, and his shoulders began to shake.
“You’ve taught her to be strong, Calder. She will be waiting for us to rescue her.”
Mungo had never seen his brother weep. But he did then, and it made his chest burn.
“Fenella is a credit to you, Calder. She’s sweet-natured, strong-willed, and far more intelligent than either of us. Do I fear for her? Aye, greatly. But I believe with all my heart that she lives, as do the others.”
His brother sniffed and removed his hand. He focused his red eyes on Mungo as if he was a lifeline.
“Ellen saw her in a vision, and that tells me she lives,” he reiterated.
“After we argued that day, Mungo. The day you left… I know I said some things I should not have… but then so did you. I did not expect that you would simply walk out of my life.”
Horses snorted and stomped their hooves around them. Mungo heard the roll of the carriage wheels as Burt and the stable hand connected it to the horses, but his focus was on Calder.
“I told you that the house wasn’t big enough for us both to live in if you continued to throw around orders,” Mungo said, remembering the argument as if it were yesterday.
“I was a fool.”
“As was I, Calder,” he conceded. Because he could do that now that his brother was here before him, hurting. Years of pride and telling himself he was the one in the right now looked foolish.
“Why did you leave? Yes, we roared at each other and came to blows, but the next day, I sat down at the breakfast table to Father telling me you were gone.”
Mungo said what his brother needed to hear—the truth.
“He told me to leave. Told me there was no place in the family for me if I could not accept that you were the one who would lead it when he was gone. That all decisions about the future of the Frasers came down to both of you, and that you understood this was how it was going to be, and it was time for me to do the same. I was to contribute nothing to the running of the business, or the family, but just live off the profits. I couldn’t live with that.
We argued, I said things I could never take back, as did he, and then I went to my room, wrote a letter to Mother, and left. ”
Shock had Calder’s mouth falling open.
“You didn’t know,” Mungo said softly. He’d thought his brother was part of his father’s plans. It seemed he was wrong about that as well.
“I didn’t know, and I’m sorry to say, he never mentioned your name after you left, and we were forbidden from doing so. Weak fool that I am, I agreed.”
His brother looked defeated. Undone, Mungo thought, looking at the swelling on his jaw.
So many wasted years.
“I never forgot you. I was just too stubborn, thinking you’d chosen to leave us, to try to find you again after my first trip to London.”
“We’re both stubborn,” Mungo said, knowing what else he needed to say even as his necktie tightened uncomfortably. “I’m glad you found me, but not glad of the circumstances.” He held out his hand, and his brother took it, and then he was hugging the man he had once been closer to than any.