Mungo inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly twice before the door swung open. Constable Clutterbuck looked at him, face pale and sweaty. His clear anxiety made Mungo feel a great deal better.
“I believe my friends have arrived,” he said and managed to keep his voice steady.
“Seems there was a witness to that night.”
“Who?” Mungo snapped.
“A woman.”
How was it possible? The only woman who had witnessed what took place that night was the one that man was hurting. How had she known to come here?
“Out now.”
“Please.”
The constable’s teeth snapped together before he said, “Please.”
Mungo walked by him.
“For a servant, you have friends in high places, Mr. Fraser.”
“I choose to be a servant. I don’t have to be, and that is the difference between you and me,” Mungo taunted the man.
With every step he took away from that small dark hell, he felt his strength returning.
“And who has come to collect me, Constable Rumble?”
“A viscount and several noblemen. Plus the woman.”
Leo was a viscount, so he knew he was here. Mungo didn’tsay anything more, just walked and breathed freely again. Most of the fear that had almost crippled him was slowly ebbing away. The residual lingered, but when he stepped out into the smoggy, cold London air, that would leave him too.
I’m safe.
“Through there,” the constable said, and as there was only a single door ahead, Mungo walked through it.
The room wasn’t large, and the quantity of people in it made it less so. Bram was the first to see him, stepping free from the group and coming toward him.
“Are you all right?”
“Aye.”
“Mungo—”
“I’m well now, Bram, dinnae fash.”
“You’re speaking Scottish, so that means I should fash,” his friend said, worry marring his brow. “I also know you just endured something close to hell.” His friend gripped his shoulders, and they looked at each other.
Bram was here, and Mungo was safe. His friend had come, as he’d known he would. Mungo then looked at the others in the room.
“You found a Sinclair to help you,” he said, instead of acknowledging that he had been to hell.
“He was outside, so I enlisted his services.” Bram managed a tight smile.
“Constable Rumble said a woman helped.” Mungo searched the people in the room. Alex stepped to the left as Ram stepped to the right, and it was then that he saw her. Miss Downing. “Why is Miss Downing here?” But even as he asked, he already knew.
She’d been the one the man had attacked that night. It made sense to him now, considering his immediate reaction to her.
“She was the woman you rescued from Parson’sclutches. Just something else you haven’t told me in a long list of things, when you take into the fact your niece was here?—”
