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 really got far on the subject and had finally fallen silent.

Daniel couldn’t help thinking that Christiana might have been able to help more with the matter. Now that she knew everything, she seemed the best prospect for being able to tell them who he had chummed around with this last year and so on. However, she hadn’t been there to question.