Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London (14 page)

But Lady Trubridge was right. Her options were limited, and she forced herself to go on. “I know I’m considered damaged goods now, but I’d prefer not to marry a stranger. And if their feelings for me were genuine before, perhaps they would still consider me, even with the scandal attached to my name.”

“You wish me to facilitate a rapprochement with these men?” When Linnet nodded, she went on, “I can try, but I must point out that Jack is your safest option. Honor dictates he do right by you, and it’s clear he’s willing. If he obtained a special license, you could be married at once, possibly before the scandal arrived here.”

“Lady Trubridge, forgive me, but I cannot imagine marrying Lord Featherstone. I find him to be one of the rudest, most highhanded, arrogant—”

“Lord Featherstone,” Jervis interrupted from the doorway, his deep voice announcing the earl’s name like a gong of doom.

Linnet’s gaze flew to the door, and at the sight of the scoundrel who strode into the room, she gave a groan of exasperation. For heaven’s sake, she’d left her own country to escape that wretched man. Didn’t he ever give up?

Chapter 8

With her brutally honest opinion of him hanging in the air, Jack knew that almost a fortnight of time and distance hadn’t done much to help him. Linnet’s ire seemed just as high and his chances of winning her just as dismal as they had been in Prescott Dewey’s library.

Still, as he watched her rise from the settee with her mother, he noted her flushed cheeks, and given her stinging condemnation, he couldn’t help taking a little satisfaction that he’d caught her out in the midst of it.

“And they say eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves,” he murmured, smiling. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Holland, Miss Holland. What a pleasure to see you again.” He bowed and turned to his sister-in-law. “Belinda.”

“Jack.” She took his hands in hers as he approached and accepted his kiss on the cheek. “Had I known in advance you were coming
this afternoon,
” she added with a meaningful glance that underscored the last two words, “I’d have ordered more sandwiches.”

Before her second marriage, Belinda had been inclined to put Jack into the same pigeonhole as his late brother, but though Nick had helped elevate him in her estimation during the past two years, Jack couldn’t be sure which side she’d be on in this. When it came to protecting the young ladies who were her clients, Belinda was like a mother tiger guarding her cubs.

In addition, his sister-in-law was a stickler for the proprieties, and he’d feared that would work against him, so overhearing her remind Miss Holland of the sensibility of accepting him was quite a relief. In Belinda’s eyes at least, he wasn’t damned beyond all redemption.

“Sorry I didn’t leave a card this morning in the approved fashion,” he told her, “but I’ve just arrived. I’m staying at my club, and you’re a mere two blocks away. It seemed an opportune time to call.” He gave her a wink. “Although given what I’ve just been hearing about myself, perhaps not.”

She gave him a wry look as she reached for the teapot. “Miss Holland,” she said as she poured tea for him, “has been telling me the latest gossip from America. You’ve been shocking the Knickerbocker set all out of countenance, from what I hear.”

“Ah, so she’s put you
au courant
of our situation, then?”

The girl spoke before his sister-in-law could answer. “I’ve told her everything. Every appalling detail.”

“Splendid,” he said, adopting a manner of deliberate good humor. “I’m prepared to do the honorable thing, of course,” he assured his sister-in-law as he accepted his tea, “but she has refused me. Given the circumstances, I’m not sure why—”

“Because I’m
sane
,” Miss Holland muttered.

“—but there it is,” he resumed, ignoring the interruption. “I, however, am not giving up based upon one rejection.”

“And what a rejection it was,” Belinda replied. “Miss Holland, it seems, would prefer to marry a toad.”

Linnet made a choked sound of smothered laughter, but Jack ignored it and moved to stand by the fireplace with his tea. “Yes, well,” he replied to Belinda as he cast a meaningful glance at Linnet, “she doesn’t yet know what a prince I am.”

Miss Holland’s amusement vanished. “This is my life we’re discussing,” she reminded him, “not some fairy tale. And besides . . .” She paused, gave him a disdainful up-and-down glance, and looked away. “I see no princes here.”

It was a dismissal, meant to flick him on the raw. It worked, too, by God, but he didn’t show it. “Quite right of you to correct me, Miss Holland. I’m not a prince, merely an earl. And no, ours is not a children’s fairy story, by any means.”

“I agree.” She didn’t look at him, but instead, plucked at a speck of lint on her skirt. “Not a happy ending in sight.”

So this was how she wanted to play it, trading barbs? Very well, he was game. “No fairy stories for us, Linnet. I fear we’re engaged in a different sort of tale altogether.” He paused as if to consider. “Something out of Shakespeare, perhaps?”

She smiled at him. “The idea of marrying you does seem rather like Shakespearean tragedy.”

“Or comedy.” His smile vanished, and he met the cool resentment behind her smile with a pointed stare. “
Taming of the Shrew
comes to mind.”

Those gorgeous eyes narrowed, and he supposed he was now expected to scurry off like an abashed rabbit, but Jack didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. “Such a look,” he murmured. “Do you practice that in front of a mirror?”

She made an exasperated sound between her teeth, but before she could answer, Belinda intervened.

“Perhaps it would be best,” she said, her voice a trifle louder than its usual well-modulated tone, “if Mrs. Holland and I left the two of you to discuss your situation in private.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Linnet assured her. “Lord Featherstone and I have nothing to discuss. It’s all been said.”

“I fear I must disagree.” Belinda stood up, bringing Mrs. Holland to her feet as well. “It hasn’t all been said,” she added as she moved toward the door with the girl’s mother in tow, “or Lord Featherstone wouldn’t be here.”

“You can’t leave us,” Linnet protested, rising to her feet, and Jack noted the apprehension in her voice with some satisfaction. “We’re not engaged, so we require a chaperone.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Holland.” Belinda paused by the door and gave Jack a meaningful glance that told him he’d best mind his propers. “This door shall remain open, and your mother and I will be right across the corridor.”

Linnet watched them go, and some of her cool poise seemed to disintegrate with their departure. When he began walking toward her, she took a quick look around as if seeking escape.

“What’s wrong, Linnet?” he asked as he approached. “Are you afraid?”

Her chin shot up. “I’m not the least bit afraid of you. Alarmed, perhaps, since having you anywhere near tends to wreak havoc in my life. But I’m certainly not afraid.”

“Good. Any havoc,” he added gently as he halted in front of her, “was unintentional.”

“Was it? I doubt Frederick would agree.” Her lips pressed together, and she looked away. “You got your revenge, it seems.”

“It wasn’t revenge. It was . . . justice.”

“Rather harsh justice.” She looked at him. “Over the loss of an investment.”

“You know I cannot explain.”

“Explanations are pointless now, anyway. He’s dead.”

This close to her, he could see faint smudges under her eyes, blue-black traces beneath the surface of her fine, luminous skin. Her face seemed thinner than it had twelve days ago, her already-slender frame even more so, and he had to know one thing before he could proceed. As hard as it was, he forced himself to ask. “Do you grieve for him so much then?”

“He was a friend. At least,” she added with a humorless laugh, “I thought he was.” Her jaw quivered. “I was wrong.”

He didn’t know what to say. Hell, what could he say? She was collateral damage in a war she hadn’t asked for. “Linnet—”

“I realize you think you did me some sort of favor.” She turned to look at him again, and her face bore an expression of implacability. “But you’ll pardon me if I don’t feel all that grateful.”

With that, she stepped around him, but he had no intention of letting her get away so easily, and he followed her as she made for the tea table by Belinda’s chair. “I don’t want your gratitude,” he said, halting behind her.

“What do you want?” she asked as she set down her tea cup and saucer and reached for the teapot as if to pour herself a second cup.

“You already know the answer to that.”

“I thought my refusal quite unambiguous, but since you seem a glutton for punishment, I’ll say it again.” Setting down the teapot, she turned to face him. “I will not marry you to save my reputation.”

“So you’ll save it by finding some other man to marry? Why not just marry me instead? Much less fuss.”

She looked at him as if he were daft. “For heaven’s sake, isn’t it obvious by now why I don’t want to marry you?”

He thought of Newport. “Not to me, Linnet. Not after that kiss.”

She stiffened. “After you pawed me, you mean.”

“Pawed?” he echoed, the accusation hitting him like a blow to the chest. “Is that how you describe the kiss we shared?” he asked, forcing the words out. “As being ‘pawed’?”

Something flashed in her eyes, a glint of steel amid the cornflowers. “We didn’t share a kiss. You took it. So, yes, I think pawed is an accurate description.”

His mind went back to that moment in the pagoda: the heady, cherry-and-vanilla scent of heliotrope, the feel of her mouth, warm as the night and soft as velvet, the heat of her body burning him like fire, the desire overcoming him in a flood.

Never, not once, had it occurred to him that kiss had been extraordinary only to him. Terribly conceited of him, perhaps, but he’d taken for granted that the desire that kiss had evoked in him had sparked an answering arousal in her. But no, by her reckoning, he’d
pawed
her.

“My God,” he said after a moment, shaking his head, laughing a little in disbelief as he looked away. “You know just where to stick the knife in a chap.”

“Do you think I ought to care how
you
feel?” There was such raw emotion in her voice that it startled him, bringing his gaze back to her face.

Her head was flung back, her stance was proud, but in her eyes, he saw now that the silvery glint was from tears—tears of anger and also of pain.

“You humiliated me,” she choked. “You—a perfect stranger—subjected me to your advances in front of my own mother. I had to face my father and tell him of my shame at your hands. You made me the subject of sordid gossip and ridicule among my friends—friends who, if I don’t marry, will be obliged to shun me or face the censure of their own families. You say you had reasons for what you did, but beyond Frederick’s lack of character and vague talk of justice, you can’t tell me what those reasons are. What regard should I have for your feelings since you had no regard for mine?”

He stared at her with no reply to offer. He’d done all the things of which she accused him, and he could never tell her the true reasons why. And though he was now trying to make things right, he was appreciating in spades that wasn’t as simple as marrying the girl he’d compromised.

He rubbed a hand over his face and forced himself to say something. “You’ve put me in my place, Linnet, I must say.”

She bit her lip. “I’m sorry to be cruel, but perhaps now you see why I cannot marry you, and you’ll go away.”

“I never intended to cause you humiliation or shame. If you believe nothing else, believe that.”

“Even if I did believe it, does it matter? Do you regret what you did? If you could do it all again, would you stay your hand?”

He might soften her toward him if he said yes. “No.”

She lifted her hands in exasperation and let them fall. “And you still think I could ever marry you? Why would I?”

“Because I’m not going anywhere until you do? Because I’ll move heaven and earth to change your mind?”

She didn’t seem impressed. “You’re wasting your time. I’ll just keep rejecting you.”

“I’m a fool, I daresay, but I want you enough to endure the sting of multiple rejections.”

“I can’t think why you want me at all.”

“Can’t you?” His gaze slid down, then back up.

Hot color washed into her face, and she backed up a step. When he came forward, once again closing the distance, she bristled, lifting her chin. “All right then,” she said. “If you want me so much, I’m sure you’d be willing to prove it.”

“In what way?”

“Sign a marriage settlement ceding all control of the dowry to me.”

This was the moment to make the grand gesture, declare he wanted her, not her money, and show he was above mere fortune-hunting, just as he and Holland had discussed. And yet, as he looked into her face, as he noted the challenge in her eyes and the little smile around her mouth—a smile that reminded him forcibly of her parent at this moment—he knew she was attempting to push him into a no-win situation. If he refused, she’d keep hammering him as a fortune hunter and use that as her excuse to keep refusing him. But if he agreed to her terms, the noble gesture wasn’t going to gain him a thing. She’d savor his capitulation and refuse him anyway.

As much as he hated being thought a fortune hunter, he’d take that over behaving like a spineless fool. “That’s not going to be acceptable, I’m afraid.”

“Too bad, then. I guess you’re out of the running.”

“I doubt it, since I’m sure these terms won’t be acceptable to any other peer who might be considering you, and given that you’ve been compromised—”

“By you!”

“Your negotiating position’s not very strong. And every marriage settlement has certain requirements.”

“Which your family no doubt knows by heart.”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed with cheer, “Featherstone men are very proficient at this game, so allow me to sum up what’s involved. Paying off the mortgages of a peer’s estates, if there are any, providing an annual sum for their maintenance, and putting an amount in trust for each of the children. It’s also customary,” he added before she could respond, “to specify an annual income for the husband’s personal use. And as long as the amount is stipulated in the marriage settlement, I’m sure your father and I can agree on an acceptable amount.”