Mungo made himself release his fingers, opening each slowly and feeling the relief in the cramped joints.
“Do you have a fear of small places, sir?”
“Pardon?”
She was smiling gently at him. Mungo didn’t want to respond to the question. Didn’t respond because he would not show her his weakness. She was no one to him.
“I wondered if you disliked enclosed spaces. I had a?—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off, then turned his back on her, heart pounding.
Mungo wasn’t used to anyone other than Bram seeing what he was thinking or feeling. That this woman had unsettled him. It was not a state he liked to be in.
“Am I free to go?” he demanded in a harsh voice.
“Yes, and I’m looking at pressing charges for what has happened to you,” Bram said.
“No. Leave it. Let’s go, or the children will be worried.”
Mungo walked out the door without looking at Miss Downing again. He didn’t stop until he reached the carriage. Benjamin, another Nightingale footman, was holding the horses.
“Mungo. You’re free.”
“Aye. Now I’ll drive. You open the door, as the others are coming.”
“You’ve no overcoat.”
“I’m not soft like you,” Mungo said, climbing into the driver’s seat.
He inhaled a few more times to steady himself. How had she known he didn’t like enclosed spaces?
“Here.” A blanket was thrown at him from below.
Looking down, he saw it came from Leo.
“It’s freezing, and while you appear to be made of granite, I know you’re not.”
Mungo grunted something neither of them understood. Then when Benjamin was settled beside him, he flicked the reins, and the horses started toward home.
“Would you care for some of the blanket, Mungo?”
“No.”
His mother had always said that his stubbornness would likely one day be his downfall, and there was little doubt she was possibly right, he thought as the icy wind sliced through his clothing. No scarf or gloves—only a hat that didn’t cover his ears. He’d be a bleeding block of ice before they arrived at Crabbett Close.
“Miss Downing seems nice,” Benjamin said.
“You’ve not spoken a single word to her, lad, so I’m not sure how you formed that opinion.”
“She’s pretty, then,” he added.
“Is she? I hadn’t noticed.”
His tone was obviously cool enough to dissuade further conversation, so Mungo was able to steer the horses toward home. As they passed the tea shop where he and his niece had met many times over her time in London, he once again felt that deep pang of loss because Fenella was gone.
Seeing her had brought back all the memories he’d blocked out of his homeland and family.
The hatch behind him opened, and Alex’s face appeared.
