‘What do we do now?’ Carlotta asked him when they reached Bladley Weeks several hours later. They both eyed the small village before them but made no attempt to enter it.
‘My colleagues may still be in the area,’ Phillip said, quickly blanking out the memories of what he had witnessed last night. ‘There is a safe house that we were using but it is several miles away. Last night, we left our horses in the village before we were accosted by Smidgley. I need to find out if they are still there.’ Phillip didn’t explain that if the horses hadn’t moved the chances were that his colleagues had all been killed.
‘What will you do if they have gone?’ Carlotta asked quietly.
/> ‘Then we will have to walk to the safe house,’ he replied bluntly. ‘For now, let’s keep moving. You can tell me what connection you have to those thugs who called at the house earlier.’
Carlotta threw him a sharp look. ‘Why?’
‘Because whatever trouble you are in involves me now.’
‘How can you say that? My problems with my father have nothing to do with you.’
‘Those thugs have been sent by your father?’ Phillip stared at her while he waited for her to confirm what the thugs had told him.
Carlotta nodded.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I am sure,’ Carlotta snapped. ‘What I want to know is what connection you have to them.’
‘I was the one who got rid of those thugs for you, if you remember?’ Phillip argued.
‘I saw you talking to them.’ Carlotta squinted suspiciously at him. ‘What did you talk about?’
‘Ah, so you think I am working with them.’ Phillip nodded thoughtfully. He supposed that anybody who looked at them from within the house would have seen them deep in conversation. ‘I was telling them to get out of the house.’ He stopped and lifted his brows at her. ‘Why are you with me if you don’t trust me?’
Carlotta glared at him. ‘I didn’t have any choice, did I?’
Now that she came to think about it none of the men in her past or present felt she could make her own decisions. Phillip had swept her choices aside without even asking her.
And I had been so busy thinking about him I didn’t realise what he was doing.
It was too late to go back now, though.
Phillip watched her eye the hills they had just left. The hills amidst which was Cliff House. ‘Maybe I am leading you away from the house you were safe in, straight into their waiting arms, eh? Maybe the thugs are already in Bladley Weeks.’
Carlotta stopped walking and stared at him. ‘I would hate you forever if you did something like that. I wouldn’t go with them, not even if you handed me over.’
Phillip shrugged. ‘Why should I care?’
Carlotta tugged her bag out of his hand. He released it and folded his arms. ‘It is damned foolish of you to trust a stranger you have only just met the way you trust me, especially given you know your father has sent thugs to fetch you. Is it true that you stole twenty pounds off him?’ Phillip said.
‘The money I have in my pouch is mine. It was my allowance, or some of it. I used the rest for food. He gave it to me. It wasn’t stolen. Besides, given what he owes me it is a bit hypocritical of him to accuse me of stealing anything.’
‘Has he stolen money from you?’ Phillip demanded.
‘He has stopped me from getting access to what is rightfully mine,’ Carlotta replied, seeing no reason to lie to him.
‘What is rightfully yours?’
‘An inheritance,’ Carlotta said.
Phillip turned to look at the woodland behind them.
‘No. Not the house. That has nothing to do with my family.’
‘Whose is it?’