“Come along. You can talk in the parlor,” Bram said, walking in that direction. “My family will arrive shortly, and then we can plan how to find your daughter, Calder.”
The brothers followed, so much tension and pain palpable between them. They were strangers now.
“I will leave and return when the family arrives, as I’m sure you need to talk to each other,” Bram said when he’d herded them inside.
“No. You will stay,” Mungo said.
Calder shot him a look but didn’t add anything and walked deeper into the room.
“It has been many years. Talk with your brother, Mungo.”
“You are better at that than I am, Bram. You’ve been a mediator in this family for years,” he whispered.
“He is your brother.”
“He is a stranger. You are more a brother to me than he is now,” Mungo pointed out.
“Very well. But you’ll not roar at him until you hear what he has to say,” Bram said in a louder voice.
Mungo saw the surprise on his brother’s face at Bram’s words. He rarely took direction, which was probably one of the main reasons he and Calder had fought so much. Hisbrother had felt the need to direct him constantly, and he’d felt the need not to let him.
“You have changed in the years we’ve been apart, brother,” Calder said after he’d taken a seat.
“As have you,” Mungo said, also sitting, but not too close. “Tell me everything you have done to find her.”
“I arrived two hours ago and went directly to the lodgings the Duncans leased.” His brother looked at his hands, and then back at him. “There was no sign of her. I then came here, as I do not know London as you likely do.”
“She has been missing for how long?” Bram asked.
“It took the rider Duncan paid to deliver the note eight days to reach me, and the return to London?—”
“She’s been missing for near to three weeks?” Mungo said, devastated.
“Aye,” his brother said, running a hand over his face. “Duncan’s wife was in tears the entire time I was there, and his daughter, who is Fenella’s friend, was inconsolable. I cannot fault the ways they’ve searched long and hard for her.”
“And the daughter can find no reason for her disappearance?” Leo, who had been silent until then, asked.
“None,” Calder said.
“She said that Fenella was looking forward to coming home.”
“Shouldn’t you have checked on her in the months she was here?” Mungo snapped.
“I did. I wrote to her and the Duncans weekly. It was her wish to come to London, and nothing I nor Heather said could deter her. We trusted the Duncans to care for our daughter.”
“You’re her father?—”
“And this is getting us nowhere,” Bram intervened. “Now,continue with the details you know, please, Calder, and you”— he jabbed a finger at Mungo— “stay silent.”
“If she was taken for blackmail purposes, the Duncans would have received a note with ransom details by now,” Leo said.
“I also thought of that,” Calder said. “We are not a noble family, for all that our aunt married into one, so they must know the Fraser family comes from money.”
“Do you?” Bram glared at Mungo.
The guilt hit him hard. “Aye, some.”
“I know about the title in your family, but not that your own had money,” Bram said.
