“And I should be happy with that?” His voice cracked. “Happy she has been out there away from those who love her for weeks?”
“No,” Eliza said evenly. “But some would curl into a ball and wait for rescue. She is not one of them is my belief, if she’s anything like her uncle.”
“I know what you say is true,” he whispered. “And yet thinking of Fenella anywhere near the Baddon Boys curdles my stomach.”
“You don’t know that is where she is.”
He looked at her sharply. “You’ve spoken with them before, haven’t you?”
“Members of the Black Harridan’s Boys who Detective Fletcher believed started the Baddon Boys?”
He nodded, leaning forward to study her.
“Yes, I spoke to them. One threatened me after I discovered where I could find them. I stood outside the building and shouted the wordmurderersuntil my throat was raw. Two came out. They told me if I didn’t leave, they’d kill me and anyone I cared about.” Eliza lowered her gaze. “I planned to return the next day. But my uncle arrived and took me away.” She could still feel the rage and the wild, reckless fury that had consumed her that day.
“Was your uncle a good man?” Mungo asked quietly.
“He had no wife or children. A fourteen-year-old niecedid not fit into his plans. But he provided for me as best he could.”
Coldly and without emotion. But she did not say that part aloud.
“How long were you with him?”
“One year,” she said. “Then he threw me out.”
“What?” His voice boomed before he caught himself.
“Ssh!” she hissed. “You’ll wake someone.”
“He threw you out?” His brows drew together. “Why?”
She waved a hand. She would not tell him that truth. Not tonight. Perhaps not ever.
“Tell me,” he demanded softly.
“I will not. You tell me why you left Scotland and why seeing your brother again has disturbed you so.”
His lips clamped shut instantly. The fragile peace between them snapped. His jaw worked as he swallowed several gulps of tea, and then he placed the mug down with a sharp, finalthunkand stood.
“Go to bed, Miss Downing. The children will need you alert in the morning.”
“Go to bed, Mr. Mungo. The Nightingale family needs you alert to do your chores,” she retorted crisply.
He glared at her.
She glared right back.
Then, with a stomp that shook the floorboards, he left the room.
Eliza stared at the empty doorway long after he’d disappeared, her heart thudding, not with fear but with something far more complicated.
Something she did not have a name for. Eliza shouldn’t care. She hardly knew him. He was gruff, secretive, and entirely too comfortable ordering people about. But the look on his face tonight, the grief, had made her chest ache.
She stood slowly, gathering the empty mugs, and set themin the basin. The kitchen felt warmer now, the stove giving off a steady, comforting glow. The smell of coal mingled with the faint sweetness of old flour, creating a strangely familiar scent.
She moved to the window. Outside beyond Crabbett Close, London lay shrouded in a thick gray mist.
This was a city of secrets, and one of them was where missing girls were, one of whom should be home with her family.
