The Heiress - Lynsay Sands [55]
“You’ve decided for certain, have you?” Richard sounded amused.
“I am not sure that is the correct phrasing for it,” Daniel admitted with a wry smile. “It would be more fitting to say I have bowed to the inevitable. The woman is a force of nature.”
“That she is,” Langley agreed, appearing to relax. “So, when is the trip to Gretna Green to occur? I should like to accompany you.”
“The sooner the better,” Daniel decided grimly. “If Suzette jumps out and drags me into one more room, I cannot guarantee she will reach Gretna as pure as she is now, and she is already less pure today than she was yesterday.”
Chapter Seven
They’re going to be very, very angry.”
Daniel noted the way Richard grimaced at Robert’s prediction, but held his own tongue. He was pretty sure Langley was right and the women would be angry at their defection, but then he wasn’t too pleased about it himself at the moment.
It was nearly midnight the day after he’d encountered Langley and Richard in the hall. As he’d suspected, Christiana and Robert Langley now knew about George and all he’d done. Taking everything into account, the men had decided to head to Gretna Green at once and had immediately joined the women in the parlor to make the announcement. The suggestion had been met with horror and the assurance that “they couldn’t possibly!” What the men hadn’t considered was that the women would want to look nice for their weddings. They’d insisted they needed the rest of the day to pack and that they couldn’t possibly go without their maids.
Rather than the swift journey in one carriage that the men had planned on, they had ended leaving the next morning, that morning in fact, with three carriages to carry the six of them, as well as the girls’ maids and several chests. Three of the chests contained dresses, one held clothes for all three men, and one held George’s body.
With such a large party, they had started the journey at a desultory pace, planning on stopping for meals and to take rooms at night to sleep. It would have ensured probably four days of travel to get to Gretna Green. Daniel hadn’t minded that so much. While he’d basically decided to marry Suzette, he’d still welcomed the opportunity to get to know her a little better beforehand. However, he’d quickly learned he wouldn’t get that opportunity. During this first morning of the journey, Christiana and Richard had ridden in the lead Radnor carriage while Daniel and Suzette had ridden in the Woodrow carriage behind it with Lisa and Langley as chaperones. Langley’s carriage had followed at the rear of the small caravan, holding the maids.
However, Daniel’s hopes of getting to know Suzette better hadn’t come to fruition that morning. Langley had been decidedly quiet during that portion of the ride, giving grunts and one-syllable answers to Lisa’s efforts to speak to him, so she’d turned to speak to Suzette instead, and Daniel had been left mostly to listen to their chatter. He supposed he’d learned a little more about her through the conversation he’d witnessed, but it wasn’t the same as actually talking to her himself as they’d done in her room. Daniel would have liked to have asked questions about her childhood and got her talking about it. He had revealed what he felt was a great deal of his own experiences growing up and now wanted to hear hers, but that hadn’t happened. Instead, when they’d returned to the carriages after a stop for lunch at Stevanage, the girls had decided to ride with Christiana in the first carriage, leaving Richard to join the men in the second one.
The difference in the afternoon ride had been very notable. Where the carriage had been filled with a light and chatty atmosphere during the morning’s ride with the girls, it had been much more solemn and grim with just the three men. They had mostly discussed George’s murder and who might be behind it. Since they were coming to the situation mostly blind, having no idea who George had been dealing with or what he’d been doing this last year, they hadn’t