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“Where is he going?” she whispered.
Joe snorted. “He is going for his associates.”
“His associates?” Marguerite gasped.
Joe sighed. “He will have more men around here somewhere.” He pointed one sharp finger toward the two men still lying prone on the floor. “More of them.”
“How many?” she demanded, her eyes wide with fear.
“God save me. I don’t know,” Joe murmured with a heavy sigh. “I don’t want to find out, and neither do you. Come on, before they get here.”
When she still didn’t move, he grabbed her elbow and hauled her bodily after him. He positively marched her across the grass in the opposite direction to the Count, and kept looking back over his shoulder to make sure the two thugs weren’t about to get up and chase after them. He was fairly sure that he had laid them both out completely, but couldn’t be sure.
“Where are we going?” she gasped as she stumbled after him. She kept checking over her shoulder but couldn’t see any sign of the Count, or even the vagabonds now. It was difficult to know if that was a good thing or not.
“Away from here,” Joe grunted.
“Where?” She persisted.
“I am going to get you to a place of safety,” Joe replied bluntly but made no attempt to help her back into the house.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, eyeing the path up ahead with renewed trepidation. She was really starting to hate being kept in the dark.
“Just stop asking questions and come with me,” Joe snapped.
“I am not going anywhere with you,” she protested, yet didn’t want to stay in the garden either.
He didn’t bother to answer her and merely hauled her around the side of the house to a small, narrow lane that ran around the outer perimeter of the property.
“Where are we?” she asked. Having never been here before, especially in the daylight when she could see everything, she had no idea where he was trying to take her. What she did know, however, was that the house was now getting further and further away.
“I need to get back to the house,” she protested. “Let me go at once.”
“I can’t. You cannot go back in there,” Joe replied, studying the landscape garden. This time, when he tried to drag her down the lane, she baulked and suddenly dug her heels in.
Shivering now with a mixture of cold and fight, Marguerite tried to speak. She was horribly aware that her voice shook. Unfortunately, jumbled confusion of words that came out of her mouth barely made sense.
“I am not going anywhere with you,” she eventually managed to inform him. “Unhand me this instant.”
“I can’t, I am afraid. You have to come with me.”
“I don’t have to do anything you want me to do. God, you don’t stop, do you? You and the Count are welcome to each other. If it is not him trying to force his attentions on me, you are hoisting me off into the night like some caveman,” she snapped. “Let go of me.”
She tried to stop but her slight frame was no match for his brawn. She had little success getting him to even slow down.
“My father is in the house,” she gasped.
“We will talk to him later,” Joe replied. He huffed a bit because he had to drag her with him, and stopped briefly while he contemplated the wisdom of carrying her. Judging her size, he knew he could manage to carry her to the carriage. The only draw-back to that happening was that he wouldn’t then have a hand free to use his gun if he needed to.
“No. I am going to talk to him now,” she snapped.
“Shut up,” Joe ordered coldly. He suspected that if he tried to carry her she would scream until someone turned up. On this occasion, that was likely to be the Count and his men. “Do you want them to come and get you?”
“Who?” she demanded. “What are you talking about? Who are they? Who are you? Look, what is this all about?”
She sensed that her questions weren’t going to be answered when she met with a solid wall of silence. Glancing back in the direction of the garden, she frowned.
“Did those men really belong with the Count?” she asked.
