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.