It was all George’s damned fault. It was also the dead man’s fault that he was now sitting there frustrated and still hard as a dead hen. If not for his presence in the carriage, Daniel would right that moment be planted deep inside Suzette and taking them both to the heights of pleasure. But he wasn’t, and was hard pressed not to give the dead man a good kick for it . . . Despite the fact that he should probably instead be thankful he had been stopped before he’d gone that irretrievable step.

Sighing at his own rather confused thoughts, Daniel leaned his head back and closed his eyes as he tried to bring some order to his mind.

He wanted Suzette. As a gentleman, he couldn’t have her without marriage. And he didn’t want her marrying someone else, like Garrison. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to marry her himself. They’d only met that night for God’s sake.

What he needed was more time to get to know her better, to see if there was more than lust between them, because while Daniel found he liked her and was charmed by her, they hadn’t known each other long and the rest of his life was a long time to regret a decision. However, Daniel knew he wasn’t likely to get that time. Suzette was only interested in marriage because she needed her dower to save herself and her sisters from scandal. If he or Richard paid off the father’s debts and she no longer needed to marry, she would head back to the country and eschew marriage altogether thanks, again, to the dead man across the seat from him and his horrid treatment of Christiana.

Daniel opened his eyes to glower at George, and then sighed and shook his head. He still had to hide the body somewhere, and they had to sort out who could have killed George and why. All this on top of sorting out his rather sudden and extremely passionate feelings for Suzette Madison. Frankly, it seemed to him that in a matter of hours his life had become one big bloody, confusing mess.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five