The Heiress (Madison Sisters 2)

"Aren't you going to tell him?" Suzette asked, trying to raise her head.

"Tell him what?" Daniel asked, tightening his hold to keep her from being able to look around.

"To head for Gretna Green." Suzette's answer came muffled by his chest.

Daniel glanced down at her sharply, but the hold he had on her allowed him to see only the top of her head.

"Is that not what you planned when you hustled me into the carriage?" she asked when he didn't immediately answer.

Daniel closed his eyes on a sigh as he recalled her happy, "There is nothing to be sorry for, my lord. I too am eager and can't wait," as she'd peppered his face with kisses. She'd thought he was rushing them off to Gretna, he realized and muttered another, "Brilliant."

"Daniel?" Suzette asked, trying to raise her head again and this time nearly managing it.

"My lord?" his driver asked at almost the same moment.

Growling under his breath, Daniel turned to the door. He risked removing the hand from her back and quickly worked the handle to open the door, he then pressed her head close to his chest again and leapt out of the carriage with her clinging to him like a monkey on a tree. By some grace of God he managed to get them out without banging either her head or legs on the way. Daniel then moved his hand from her head to her back to press her chest tightly against his to hide her bare breasts and started for the house at a quick clip.

Much to Daniel's relief the earlier carriage had passed and there didn't appear to be any others on the road. There was nothing he could do about the driver, however . . . except perhaps increase his wages to encourage him to keep his trap shut, he thought on a sigh.

"What are we doing?" Suzette asked uncertainly, lifting her head to peer around as he strode up the walk to the house.

Daniel didn't answer at once. He simply continued to walk, his jaw tight.

The door still stood open from when Suzette had come out after him earlier, and he strode inside with her and then continued on into the nearest room, a parlor. Pausing just outside the patch of light cast through the door from the candles in the hall, he set Suzette on her feet, and then quickly began to straighten her gown.

"Daniel?" she asked uncertainly, not helping him, merely standing still and peering at him with wide uncertain eyes as he slid her arms into her gown and pulled it up into place to cover her breasts.

"We aren't going to Gretna Green tonight," he said quietly.

"Why not? I thought--"

He interrupted her by asking abruptly, "What if we found another way to pay off your father's debts?"

Suzette blinked in surprise at the question and then shrugged. "Then I wouldn't marry and Lisa and I would return to the country."

Daniel frowned. "Surely you wouldn't return to the country? You shall have to marry someday and should have your season. I thought all young women dream of their season."

Suzette sighed, but admitted, "I suppose I used to, but after seeing and hearing how Dicky treats Christiana, I'm not as eager to marry. If I didn't have to claim my dower to avoid this scandal, I think I'd just never marry."

"Not every man is like Dicky," Daniel argued at once.

"Even Dicky was not like Dicky before they married," she said dryly. "He seemed sweet and charming when he was wooing Chrissy. What is to say every man is not like that?"

"I would never treat a woman like Dicky has apparently treated Christiana," he assured her solemnly. "And many men wouldn't. I'm sure your father didn't treat you or your sisters and mother poorly."

"No, he was always a kind and loving man . . . except for his penchant for gambling us all into ruin every year or so this last while, he was wonderful," Suzette added dryly. "And while I am glad to hear you say you would never treat a woman as Dicky does, I'm quite sure Dicky would have said the same thing before he married Chrissy. How is a woman to know what a man is truly like before they wed?"

When Daniel merely frowned, at a loss as to how to answer that, she shook her head. "I do not understand why we are even discussing this. There is no other way to gain the money needed to pay off Father's debts. I need to marry. And you need to marry a woman with money. It doesn't seem to me we have much choice. You know that. It's why you came here tonight to tell me you had decided to accept my proposal. And I thought we were about to head for Gretna Green. Why are we now back in the house discussing these things?"

Daniel stared at her for a moment, the words on the tip of his tongue that he hadn't come tonight to say he'd decided to marry her. However, she was now eyeing him with narrow-eyed suspicion, and he had no explanation for why he had come here tonight other than the truth. He simply couldn't tell her that. Finally, he said, "We can't simply ride out in the middle of the night without telling anyone. We agreed that I would give you my answer tomorrow and I think we should stick to the original plan."

Daniel didn't wait to hear her arguments to that, and he was quite sure she would argue, so turned abruptly on his heel and hurried out of the room and straight out the front door at a quick clip. He pulled the door closed as he went, but wasn't terribly surprised to hear it open behind him before he'd got halfway down the sidewalk. However, he didn't even glance back at her call and picked up his pace, practically running the rest of the way to the carriage.

"Home," Daniel barked out to his driver as he jumped into the back of the contraption, then he pulled the door closed behind him and fell back on the empty bench seat as the carriage jerked forward. His gaze slid to the curtained windows at another shout from Suzette, but he resisted the urge to look and see if she'd stop and return to the house. He then glanced to the opposite bench seat and the blanketed bundle there. George. He still had to deal with the corpse and hadn't a clue what to do with him.

Scowling, Daniel shook his head. Even in death George was trouble. If not for him, Daniel would never have been in

Suzette's room in the first place. He wouldn't have been caught there by her, dallied with the girl and then thoughtlessly left his cravat behind. She then wouldn't have chased him down to return it and certainly wouldn't have wound up nearly giving him her virginity in the back of a damned carriage.

It was all George's damned fault. It was also the dead man's fault that he was now sitting there frustrated and still hard as a dead hen. If not for his presence in the carriage, Daniel would right that moment be planted deep inside Suzette and taking them both to the heights of pleasure. But he wasn't, and was hard pressed not to give the dead man a good kick for it . . . Despite the fact that he should probably instead be thankful he had been stopped before he'd gone that irretrievable step.

Sighing at his own rather confused thoughts, Daniel leaned his head back and closed his eyes as he tried to bring some order to his mind.

He wanted Suzette. As a gentleman, he couldn't have her without marriage. And he didn't want her marrying someone else, like Garrison. But he wasn't sure he wanted to marry her himself. They'd only met that night for God's sake.

What he needed was more time to get to know her better, to see if there was more than lust between them, because while Daniel found he liked her and was charmed by her, they hadn't known each other long and the rest of his life was a long time to regret a decision. However, Daniel knew he wasn't likely to get that time. Suzette was only interested in marriage because she needed her dower to save herself and her sisters from scandal. If he or Richard paid off the father's debts and she no longer needed to marry, she would head back to the country and eschew marriage altogether thanks, again, to the dead man across the seat from him and his horrid treatment of Christiana.

Daniel opened his eyes to glower at George, and then sighed and shook his head. He still had to hide the body somewhere, and they had to sort out who could have killed George and why. All this on top of sorting out his rather sudden and extremely passionate feelings for Suzette Madison. Frankly, it seemed to him that in a matter of hours his life had become one big bloody, confusing mess.