‘Having found yourself a delightful young woman on the way,’ Callum mused.
Phillip shook his head. ‘I am not going to marry her.’
‘I never said you were going to,’ Callum grinned.
Phillip swore at him. ‘I am not going to marry her,’ he protested again, a little louder.
‘Nobody mentioned marriage,’ Jasper smirked.
Cursing them all, Phillip helped himself to some pie and bit into it. He knew when to just let his friends tease and get on with it. What he didn’t let them see was just how much he was contemplating it. Marriage to someone he had only known a day was a foolish thing to even consider. However, Phillip knew that he didn’t have forever to make his mind up if he was interested in her enough to even try to forge a relationship with her. The clock was ticking.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carlotta listened to the conversation in the kitchen. While she wasn’t paying much attention to what was said, she was listening to make sure the voices didn’t get any louder as she tiptoed through the house. Her heart was pounding by the time she reached the hallway. She eyed the front door but knew that if she opened it the draft would alert the men to what she was doing. Quietly entering the parlour at the base of the stairs, she closed the door behind her before hurrying toward the windows. Sliding one window up, she dropped a leg out of the window and eased into the cold night air. She shivered when a gentle breeze snatched the warmth off her skin and replaced it with a bone deep weariness, but she knew she couldn’t stay.
Turning to look at the inky blackness of the night was daunting. Everything that had kept her safe thus far remained in the house behind her. Unfortunately, so did her personal possessions, or some of them. The rest were in Cliff House. They were the things she hadn’t deemed necessary when she had left, but they were now important to her because they were all she had. Phillip had the rest, tucked safety beside his chair next to the fire.
‘I need food, something to keep me warm, and anything I can carry with me and use while I sort out what I am going to do next.’ Squaring her shoulders, Carlotta forced herself to ignore the niggling doubts and worry that began to plague her and stepped into the night.
Once free of the garden, she started to run. Carlotta waited for that fateful shout that would stop her flight. She tried not to allow panic to nip at her heels and make her do something rash
, but it was difficult when all she wanted to do was get away only to find that she couldn’t run fast enough. Her mind raced in several different directions as she tried to see through the encroaching darkness to the ground beneath her feet, so she didn’t fall over. Everything was starting to become blurred in a dark haze of nightfall that was eerily quiet. It was so still that all she could hear was the hammering of her own heart and the thump, thump, thump, of her feet hitting the hard soil. She was exhausted but refused to slow down. Eventually, she reached the thicket at the far corner of the field beyond the house only to stare in dismay at the mile upon mile of open countryside lying beyond it.
‘Now what?’ Carlotta gasped as she tried to remember the route they had taken to reach the safe house. ‘We went around the house so many times I cannot remember. Maybe that was Phillip’s plan. It wasn’t to make sure the house was safe. It was to confuse me so I don’t know where I am and will struggle to escape.’
Because of that, she threw one last dark glare at the safe house before turning her back on it, and Phillip, for good. Carlotta began to march in the direction of the sea. At least, she hoped it was because if the sea wasn’t where she expected it to be it was going to be a very long night indeed.
Phillip took the heavily laden plate off Justin and turned to the door. ‘I won’t be long.’
Nobody spoke as he quietly left the room. He suspected he already knew what they were going to discuss once he had left; his connection to Carlotta and whether it might lead to something more. Phillip wanted to deny it might, but he was also aware that all his colleagues had recently found wives and were happily married. It was only natural that they would all now turn to Phillip with the expectation that it wouldn’t be long before he also fell into the parson’s trap. He knew he should deny it was possible, and object to being linked to Carlotta, but what struck him as most disturbing was his stringent rejection of any possibility of Carlotta being forced to return to her father. He found the prospect so offensive that he knew he was going to do whatever it took to make sure it didn’t happen.
‘There are far too many questions that remain unanswered for me to just turn around and walk away. I know that if I should try, I would just regret it and probably end up trying to find her just to get the matter resolved in my mind,’ Phillip grumbled as he stomped up the stairs.
Tapping quietly on the bed chamber door, he waited. Tipping his head, Phillip listened for movement inside. Pursing his lips, he tapped a little louder. When he still didn’t get any response, Phillip nudged the door open, poked his head into the room, and squinted through the gloom at the mound in the middle of the bed.
‘Carlotta?’ he murmured.
Stepping into the room, Phillip knew immediately that something was wrong.
‘Carlotta?’ he called a little louder.
Stepping closer, he eased the blanket away from the lump and cursed fluidly when he found himself staring at a pillow, which had been tucked beneath a blanket in a poor attempt at creating a makeshift body. Spinning around, Phillip bent down to check under the bed and every corner of the room but deep in his gut he knew that Carlotta had already gone.
Racing down the hallway, he slammed into every room and bellowed her name. His heart pounded as he thundered down the stairs only to be met at the bottom by his colleagues.
‘She must have left while we were talking,’ Phillip growled.
‘How? How did she get out?’ Justin demanded.
‘It is where she has gone that is the worry,’ Phillip spat. He raced into the kitchen, yanked his jacket and cloak on, and bolted out of the house.
His colleagues began to search the house and outbuildings. Phillip knew they weren’t going to find anything. He eyed her bed chamber window and tried to think of the various routes she could have taken to get out because it would point him toward the direction she had taken.
‘There are footprints beneath the parlour window,’ Jasper announced when the empty-handed men had converged in the yard.
‘Did you tell her how much danger she might be in if she tried to leave?’ Justin demanded.
Phillip tried to think but his worry for her refused to allow him to think properly. ‘We did discuss how much of a danger the killer posed to us. He shot at us while we were escaping the woods. She knows it isn’t safe to be wandering around out here by herself.’