“Make yourself comfortable in your new accommodations,” he added from a safe distance as Mungo stepped inside.
“Be ready for hell to rain down on you, Constable. My only advice would be, try not to antagonize them too much, or you’ll be looking for another job by day’s end.”
The man cursed and then slammed the door shut. Mungo heard keys in the lock, and then he was alone in the small, cramped cell in the dark, with icy tendrils of fear slowly filling his body.
CHAPTER SIX
Eliza pressed a fist to her belly where knots of nerves had formed.
It couldn’t be.
The man who was being arrested was called Mungo, just like the one who saved her that Thursday in Dobbins Lane. He’d also been huge and spoken with that same deep husky Scottish accent.
Was he being arrested for saving her? Was this all her fault?
Had she stumbled into the one household in London where the man who had saved her lived? Would she have to tell them the truth? Would she be dismissed? Mrs. Holton already seemed displeased with her for some reason, this would surely add to that.
Thoughts whirled round and round inside her head.
The wealthy could be fickle with their staff and dismissed them with ease.
“Get a carriage now!”
The bellow came from Bramstone Nightingale, who had run out the front door after the woman named Mavis hadrun through it when they’d reached 11 Crabbett Close. With him was a younger dark-haired man.
Looking up at the red brick facade, she wondered what her next move should be, as around her, the house seemed to have tumbled into chaos over the arrest of the man named Mungo.
Should I leave and return later? she wondered.
“Hello, I presume you are Miss Downing?”
Eliza stood to the right of the doorstep, and the man before her in the middle. He wasn’t as big as the two who were standing at the gate, watching the carriage roll away with the large Scotsman inside, but there was no doubting that he was related. She’d only caught glimpses, but there was the dark hair and similar facial features.
“I am, yes.”
“Forgive us for this greeting, but it seems a member of our household has been arrested. I am Mr. Alexander Nightingale and the best of all the Nightingales, which you will come to realize in a short time, but right now we have a situation that needs handling, so I’m afraid welcoming you properly will have to wait.”
“Of course. Should I return later?”
“Uncle Bram, Leo, this is Miss Downing,” Alexander Nightingale said instead of answering her.
“Miss Downing, you’ll forgive us for this welcome. My wife will look after you until we return, but I must go to my friend,” Bramstone Nightingale said, coming to stand before her with the other man. His face was an angry mask and nothing like the polite man she’d met previously.
Dare she speak out? Say that maybe the man had been arrested because of her? It was too much of a coincidence, surely? She owed him for his intervention that night, did she not?
“Everyone inside at once,” Bramstone said.
She followed the men into a large entryway and let her eyes take in the place that Eliza hoped would be her new home for a while.
Coats and hats hung on a rack, and boots were stacked beneath it in a haphazard manner. Stairs with a wooden banister rose on the right, and a patterned rug muffled footsteps. The warm, yeasty scent of fresh bread hung in the air, making her stomach tighten with hunger.
Homely, she thought. A place people could laugh and love.A home,unlike many of the pristine, perfect places she’d worked.
“Tell me exactly what happened, Mavis,” Bramstone Nightingale said, moving to stand beside his wife, who was looking worried, as everyone was. “It will be all right, my love,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“We were having a dram in Mr. Greedy’s garden,” Mavis began, “when the carriage with the constables arrived. One of them then said he was here to arrest Mungo for assaulting a nobleman. Constable Clutterbuck said that it was two weeks ago on a Thursday in Dobbins Lane. He was simply walking home when Mungo grabbed him and then attempted to rob him.”
“He would never do such a thing,” Bramstone snapped.
