Suzette closed her eyes, mentally kicking herself several times for not thinking of that.
"I'm sorry, Suzie," Lord Madison said glumly. "I should have thought to ask to see it."
She blinked her eyes open and shook her head, her gaze searching out her father's face. Seeing the misery on his expression, she shook her head again. "No. I didn't think of it either. This is not your fault."
"Do you want to know what the best part of it all is?" Jeremy asked, practically crowing with glee. "After I've married you, claimed your dower, and you're both dead, I will ride back to London, search Dicky's office until I find the marker and then make the estate pay up as well. I'll get both the dower and the money from the marker."
Suzette watched silently as he laughed at his own cleverness, and waited until he stopped before asking, "So how are we to die?"
"Hmmm." He frowned. "I suppose another carriage accident would be a bit suspect when we just had one, and then I shot Thompson and will have to claim highwaymen did it, so that's out too." He considered for a moment and then shrugged. "I guess a fire would do. Dicky wanted to avoid that because his parents and brother died in fires. He thought it might look suspect. However, I don't have that problem. Besides, it will be slow and painful for the two of you and I like that idea."
"I really don't like you," Suzette said grimly.
Jeremy smiled. "Such a shame; fortunately, that isn't a prerequisite to marriage."
"Speaking of which, how do you intend to force me to marry you now that I know you plan to kill me anyway?" she asked dryly.
"Because you want to live and will do what I say, hoping to be able to save yourself later," he said with a shrug.
Suzette suspected that was true, but pointed out, "I'm only doing what you say now because you have threatened my father. But you cannot hold a pistol on him when we get to Gretna Green. No one will marry us if they see you wielding the pistol."
"I have considered that," Jeremy admitted, not looking terribly concerned and she understood why when he said, "I am going to hide your father somewhere bound and tied while we get married. You'll marry me if you want to see him again," he said with certainty.
Suzette stared at him with impotent fury. His plan would work. She would marry him to keep her father safe and in the hopes that they would find a way to save themselves afterward. And that was their only hope, she realized. That Jeremy would make a mistake and they would somehow escape . . . or that Daniel and the others would be waiting at Gretna Green and save them.
"We've waited long enough," Jeremy said suddenly. "Start walking."
Suzette straightened at once, but Jeremy had to help her father rise as he had each of the other two times they'd stopped. The moment he was on his feet, though, her father was fine and started walking back toward the road.
"No. We will stick to the woods from here on out," Jeremy said.
Her father hesitated, but then turned back into the trees and continued forward. Suzette followed, aware that Jeremy was at her back.
"We must have missed them between here and the overturned carriage," Daniel said grimly as he led Robert and Richard back out of the stables.
While it appeared that Danvers's driver had been shot, probably by a highwayman, they had decided that the other three must have escaped uninjured, or at least well enough to be able to walk. It just wasn't likely that their robber would have dragged the three off. Highwaymen took money and jewels, not passengers. That meant Suzette, her father and Danvers should have been on foot and headed this way. However, when they hadn't passed them on the road, they'd assumed the trio had already reached this, the first inn since they'd found the overturned carriage. However, on questioning, the innkeeper had assured them that no one fitting their descriptions had arrived yet. Still, they'd checked with the inn's stable boy to be sure and had got the same answer.
"We could turn back and scour the road between the carriage and here again," Robert suggested.
Daniel shook his head. "We could miss them that way. They are obviously on foot. They must be traveling under the cover of the trees to avoid further trouble with bandits. They could arrive here while we are back at the carriage and be gone before we return."
"I wish we knew how long ago the accident happened," Richard murmured, glancing toward the lane. "It would tell us how near they might be."
Daniel grunted, his glance moving to the lane and then the trees surrounding the inn as he realized that Danvers, Suzette and Lord Madison could arrive at any time, and he wasn't sure what would happen if Danvers saw their party there. As far as he knew, Suzette and her father had no idea that Danvers might be the one who had sent the letter, or that the man may have shot him. He wasn't even sure of it, though he suspected that was the case. Suzette and her father's ignorance on the matter would keep them safe, but if Danvers saw Daniel and the others waiting here, he wouldn't want to approach. That would raise questions and probably protests, at least from Lord Madison, which might force the man's hand and make things much more dangerous for Suzette and her father.
"We will wait here," Daniel decided grimly. "But we have to get the carriages and ourselves out of sight. Then we will lie in wait."
"Move faster," Jeremy snapped, poking Suzette in the back with his pistol.
Suzette ground her teeth at the irritating jab. He had been poking her in the back and harrying them to move faster for several minutes now and she was sick of it. Aside from that, she suspected her father couldn't move any faster. There was a reason he had a cane and it wasn't for affectation. The man had injured his leg in a riding accident years ago and it sometimes troubled him. All this walking was apparently aggravating the old injury, because she'd noticed him beginning to limp some distance back. She didn't say as much to Danvers, however. She already knew the man would have little sympathy, so she stopped walking altogether and simply said, "No."
"Move," Jeremy growled, giving her a shove.
Suzette turned and smiled at him sweetly, her eyelashes fluttering as she'd seen the females doing at the Landons' ball. The only thing missing was the fan as she breathed, "Oh, my lord, I am ever so tired and my feet are beggared, can we not stop to rest?"
"So," he said dryly. "You can pretend to be a lady when it suits you."
"As well as you can pretend to be a man when it suits you," Suzette shot back.
"God, you are such a trial," Jeremy growled.
"Yes, you've whined about that incessantly already," she said indifferently, and then suggested, "So don't marry me. I'd rather marry Daniel anyway."
"Yes, I noticed," he sneered. "You acted no better than a bitch in heat with him when I saw you together in the stables."
"I acted like a woman in love," Suzette snapped, suddenly furious. The letter--his letter, she was sure though he hadn't yet admitted to it--had rained down all sorts of shame on her when she'd read it, but she was not going to feel that shame again. Giving a humorless laugh, she looked down her nose at him and added, "I'm not surprised you didn't recognize it was love you were witnessing. I don't imagine any woman could ever feel that fine an emotion for you. But take my word for it, what you saw was a woman in love giving herself to the man she loved and planned to marry."
"Love, was it?" Jeremy sneered with disbelief, and then added with cold amusement, "And yet look how quickly you agreed to marry me in his stead."
"You made me think he didn't want me," she said defensively.
"Yes, I did. And that was so easy it was almost pitiful. Was your faith in him so weak? Was your love so weak?" he asked with apparent disgust.
Suzette paled. Was her faith weak? Should she have dismissed the letter as a fake when she read it? While she and Daniel had never spoken words of love to each other, and in fact, she doubted he felt that for her, she was relatively certain he liked her at least. And now that her heart was no longer breaking she was quite certain that Daniel wouldn't treat any woman so callously. Had he wished to break off the engagement, his honor would have
forced him to do it in person and as gently as possible. She half suspected he would have also endeavored to ensure she wouldn't have suffered for his decision, either by offering to loan her the money to pay the marker or by finding a replacement husband of good character willing to take his place and marry her. He was just that kind of man.
"How crushed you were to think he cared so little," Jeremy commented, and then tilted his head and said, "Or was it shame you were feeling for rolling about in the hay with him like a whore?"
"I am not a whore," Suzette said with dignity, but Jeremy merely looked her up and down as if she were unclean.
"No doubt you would have wanted to act in just as base a manner with me," he said almost accusingly. Danvers then shuddered, apparently repulsed by the very thought, and assured her, "You would have been disappointed."
"I'm sure I would have been," Suzette said dryly and was satisfied to see him flush with impotent fury.
"That's not what I meant!"
"Oh?" She batted her eyelashes innocently. "You mean you are not like Dicky, unable to function as a man with a woman? And here was I thinking perhaps you two suffered such an affliction because you had a strange man love for each other."
"Bitch!" he snapped, slapping her so hard that her head turned on her neck without her being able to stop it.
"Say!" her father yelled.
Suzette saw him start back toward them, but turned slowly to look at Jeremy dispassionately and said, "I must have struck too close to the mark to cause such rage, Jeremy. Did you fancy Dicky, then?"
A roar of fury ripping from his throat, Jeremy lunged at her then.
Hands tied behind her back, all Suzette could do was try to back away. Before she'd taken two steps, Danvers's fingers were at her neck.
Chapter Sixteen
Something's wrong," Daniel muttered, staring out through the door of the stables and toward the trees.
"They are taking a long time," Richard said sounding grim.
"They are walking, and one of them may have been injured, making them walk slower," Robert suggested.
"If one of them was wounded, they would have hailed one of the carriages that passed rather than walk," Daniel said with certainty. The innkeeper had told them that two other carriages had stopped at the inn before them and reported the overturned carriage and dead driver on arrival. The first had been almost half an hour before they themselves had arrived at the inn. It shouldn't have taken much more than an hour to walk to the inn if they'd taken the road. Walking through the trees and underbrush may have slowed them down a little. It may even have added as much as another half hour if the land was very uneven, but he and the others had been waiting for nearly an hour now. Where were they?
"You don't think they bypassed this inn and continued on to the next?" Robert asked worriedly.