The Heiress - Lynsay Sands [113]
“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.
Daniel frowned at the suggestion. He doubted Suzette and her father would have willingly done that, but Danvers might have forced them to. It was a long walk to the next inn though. Cursing, he turned and