To Have A Heart (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 7)

“Ideal place about a quarter back. We will use it. You get out of here.”

“Ten,” Callum shouted to his colleague.

“Good enough.”

The reply came from a different location to the rest of the odd conversation. It didn’t even sound like the original man answered Callum’s strange numbered code. Even so, Callum understood what his colleagues were saying to him. Given the smile on his face he was more than happy to do whatever they suggested as well.

“Slowly and quietly, follow me,” Callum whispered to Mallory.

Mallory didn’t get the chance to ask him what they were going to do before he propelled her through the undergrowth. Together, they stomped through the woods in a silence that did little to quell Mallory’s growing sense of disquiet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Where are we going?” Mallory demanded several minutes later when they reached the end of the path, took a sharp turn to the right, and found themselves facing nothing more than miles of empty fields.

“Now, we double back and make sure we aren’t followed. Then we make our way to Ribberton.”

Later that morning, Mallory read a crude sign scratched into a large rock which had been positioned discretely at the side of the road.

“Now why does Mallow Farthing sound familiar?”

Mallory tried to remember where she had heard that name before but couldn’t quite place if she had heard Callum mention it, or one of the staff at Melrose House.

“How far are we from Melrose House?”

“About thirty miles or more,” Callum replied. “Melrose’s contacts stretch toward London and Scotland. As far as we can tell, they don’t stretch out west.”

“That’s where we are?”

Callum nodded. He was doing his best to scour the area for Melrose’s men not least because it helped him to keep his eyes off Mallory. It was damned distracting to have her keep staring at him as if he was an oracle she could interrogate at will. While he could understand her curiosity there were some answers that he couldn’t give her because he didn’t know what was likely to happen, and there was only so much he could tell her.

“What are you doing?” she asked when Callum nudged Horace into the main street of the village when they reached it. “Someone will see us.”

Panic began to blossom within her. She clutched Callum’s shirt tighter and huddled closer as her concerned gaze flew up and down the street.

“We need to stop for a while because we need something to eat and Horace needs to rest for a while,” Callum replied. “We will be out of here just as soon as everyone has been fed and watered.”

As if to confirm his idea was a good one, Mallory’s stomach rumbled hungrily. She winced because she suspected Callum had heard it, but he was too much of a gentleman to tease her about it.

“I hope your friends are around here somewhere,” she breathed.

Callum looked down at her as she lay half-nestled in his arms. When he had first met her in the stable yard, his first impressions of her were that she was infinitely fragile and scared witless. Little had he known that she was a curious chatterbox. Not that he minded. Her questions gave him something to think about beyond where in the Hell Melrose might be hiding, and whether he should try to kiss her again.

As they rode into the main street, Callum scoured every nook and cranny for his colleagues. He looked into every market trader’s face, at every street sweeper and cart driver’s eyes, and farmer’s face in the hope that one of them might be Oliver, Phillip, Jasper, or Will. It was disconcerting that none of his colleagues had circled around and stopped in the village to intercept them.

“We are on our own,” Callum whispered, wondering what in the Hell had gone wrong.

Mallory looked around them and realised then that something was horribly wrong.

“It’s market day,” she hissed. “They know we are strangers.”

Indeed, the locals did realise that they had strangers in their midst and were none too pleased about it either. As Callum and Mallory entered the main market square all conversation stopped, transactions were halted, and people turned to stare at the intruders. Strangely, nobody would meet their nods of acknowledgement. Instead, gazes were lowered, and furtive enough to be worrying.

“What’s wrong with them?”

Callum shook his head. All sorts of thoughts were tumbling through his head, but he couldn’t take Mallory into his confidence. It was galling to have to admit it but coming into the village was the very worst thing they could have done, not least because now he suspected they were walking straight into the dragon’s den.

“It is as if they think we are escaped criminals or something.”