But then with the large Scotsman in the household, perhaps it was going to be a great deal more challenging than she’d originally thought it would be.
CHAPTER TEN
Mungo went to his room after leaving Eliza Downing in hers, which was directly above him. He stripped off the clothes he’d dampened with sweat, washed, and pulled on clean ones. His body finally felt warm.
He then sat on the side of the bed with his head in his hands.
Mungo was good at hiding what he was thinking or feeling, but Miss Downing had seen through him when he’d walked into that room at the watchhouse. And he’d just threatened her after she’d saved him from that cell today. She’d not deserved that from him, but he was right in what he’d said. He didn’t know her and had no plans to change that, but perhaps he could have delivered that speech better.
Would a person of bad character put themselves out for you like she did?
“I’m an untrusting bastard,” Mungo muttered as he stomped his feet back into his favorite boots now that he had the left one.
Looking around the room, he saw a place of order, just as he liked it. Nothing sentimental, just a few books on anightstand and clothes neatly folded. His bed was made with no wrinkles.
Control was important to Mungo and had been since his childhood when he’d had little of it being the youngest son.
The creak of a floorboard had him looking up. She was above him, and he would know when she was in her room. Wonder what she did. Shutting off the thought, he left the room and closed the door quietly behind him.
He stepped out into the hallway and made his way downstairs.
Eliza Downing was beautiful, but that was only part of the problem. There was now a connection between him and the governess, no matter how much he told himself otherwise. He’d saved her and she him, and that should counteract any feelings of obligation on either of their parts. But it didn’t.
The minute he’d seen her, he’d known she would be a problem. Trouble in those dark eyes and rosebud lips. Her skin was pale and would be smooth to the touch, and the body under that severe deep gray dress buttoned to her neck would be lush. This he knew, as he’d seen what lay under that coat when she’d removed it. The sweet curves that he’d had no right to want.
He was a man, and he responded to a beautiful woman like anyone would. He had sought out many for selective and secret rendezvous, but there was no time in his life for a permanent woman, and he doubted there ever would be.
Distance, Mungo thought. He would keep his distance from her, which wouldn’t be easy, seeing as they both lived here, but if anyone could manage it, it was him. He was a master at shutting people out.
The truth was, Fenella leaving had unsettled him. He missed her and the connection to a past he wasn’t sure he’dever return to. She’d given him a small window into the life he’d left and what those he’d left behind had become.
“Any woman would unsettle me at this time,” he muttered, rationalizing this interest he felt for Eliza Downing.
“What’s this about a woman?”
Mungo bit back a curse as he looked at the man at the bottom of the stairs.
“What?”
“You said, ‘It would be any woman,’” Ramsey Hellion paraphrased.
“Why are you still here? Go home to your wife.”
Some said he was handsome, but Mungo was definitely not one of those people. Though the man was charming and debonair, he in fact annoyed Mungo just by breathing most of the time, even if he respected him because he had married into the Nightingale family. Flora, Ram’s wife, was cousin to the Nightingales.
Eloquent, well-dressed, and loved by everyone he met, especially women, Ram was everything Mungo was not, but he was also someone who had come to get him out of that watchhouse without hesitation, which was humbling. Not that he’d ever tell the man that.
He was also an excellent conversationalist, another black mark, as far as Mungo was concerned, because Ram continually debated until he got his point across.
“What woman were you talking about, Mungo?”
“I wasn’t talking about anyone.”
“You were.” Ram watched Mungo descend, hands in pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels as if he had all the time in the world to stand there bandying words and hadn’t stormed the watchhouse just an hour ago. “I heard it clearly, and while I’m sure being locked in that cell has you on edge and likely addled the few wits you have?—”
“I’m not on edge!”
“On edge,” Ram continued. “So if you are talking about a woman, and Miss Downing is up those stairs, it must be she who has you in this condition as well as those other things I just spoke of. After all, it was she who rescued you, really. Bandying about titles helped, but it was what she said that secured your release from that cell.”
