“You are engaged?” he asked sharply. For some reason the idea bothered him.

“No,” Suzette said looking as if she thought the very idea ridiculous. “But I have to be and we had gone to Christiana so that she could see that Lisa and I could attend the balls and such and find a prospective husband.”

“I see,” Daniel said with disappointment. The woman was obviously in trouble and needed a quick marriage to hide that trouble, one that would probably come to fruition in less than nine months was his guess. The thought tarnished some of her beauty in his eyes.

“Anyway, Christiana agreed of course. After all, she had to marry Dicky because of Father’s last faux pas, so she understood completely.”

That was good, Daniel supposed, but he was now thoroughly confused again, not seeing how a father’s faux pas could leave the girl in the kind of trouble where she needed a fast marriage. At least not the nine months kind. Perhaps he’d misjudged her there, he thought.

“So Christiana went to speak to Dicky about taking us out and about, but when she found him in the office, the idiot was dead.”

Daniel bit his lip at her vexed tone. There was absolutely no grief in her voice at all, just irritation with the inconvenience of it all. But then George had never been one to inspire the finer feelings in those he encountered. Clearing his throat, he asked, “Did he fall and strike his head, or—”

“No. He was simply sitting in his chair dead,” she said with exasperation, and then added with disgust, “He was obviously a victim of his own excess. We suspected his heart gave out. Certainly the glass and decanter of whiskey next to him suggested he didn’t take the best care of himself. I ask you, who drinks hard liquor first thing in the morning?”

Daniel shook his head, finding it difficult to speak. She was just so annoyed as she spoke of the man’s death, as if he’d deliberately done it to mess up her plans. After a moment, he asked, “Are you sure he is dead?”

Suzette gave him another one of those adorable “Don’t be ridiculous” looks. “Well, obviously he isn’t. He is here now,” she pointed out, and then shook her head and added almost under her breath, “Though I could have sworn . . . The man didn’t even stir when he fell off the chair and slammed his head on the floor. Nor when I dropped him and his head crashed to the hardwood floor again, or when we rolled him in the carpet and dragged him upstairs, or when we dropped him in the hall and he rolled out of the carpet, or—”

“Er,” Daniel interrupted, and then coughed into his hand to hide a laugh, before asking, “Why exactly were you carting him about in a carpet?”

“Well, don’t be dense,” she said with exasperation. “We couldn’t let anyone know he was dead, could we?”