Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London (10 page)

“You will depart at once,” Jack told him through clenched teeth, his hand tightening until the other man couldn’t breathe. “Because if you don’t, I will beat you to a bloody pulp. And I can assure you, I will take great pleasure in doing so.”

He left off choking Van Hausen and reached for the doorknob with his right hand as he grabbed a handful of the other man’s evening jacket with his left. He opened the door and shoved Van Hausen over the threshold, sending him stumbling down the corridor. He waited until the other man had vanished around the corner before he closed the door.

“Well, this is a fine kettle of fish,” Mr. Holland muttered behind him.

Jack couldn’t help agreeing with that. He took a deep breath and turned to face the man who it seemed was about to become his father-in-law. “Mr. Holland,” he began, but he got no further before the older man interrupted.

“I ought to kill you.”

“An understandable reaction,” he agreed at once. “But it might be better for all concerned if you don’t. We know what’s already being said about your daughter, and I am the man responsible. Honor demands I marry her.”

“I won’t marry you,” the girl cut in before her father could speak. “And the idea that you think I would proves you are out of your mind.”

“There are many people who know me well enough to share your opinion of my sanity,” he answered as he turned to face her. “Nonetheless, we must marry. No other choice is possible.”

“I can think of plenty of choices.” She folded her arms, glaring at him. “Homicide comes to mind.”

“Linnet,” her mother remonstrated, “that is no way for a lady to talk.”

“I’m not a lady, Mother, and as we have discussed many times before, I have no intention of becoming one. Let’s not forget that Lord Featherstone’s oh-so-noble effort to marry me in order to restore my reputation wouldn’t have been necessary had he not so conveniently ruined me in the first place.”

“Conveniently?” Jack echoed. “I find nothing convenient in this situation, believe me.”

“No?” Her dark blond brows lifted in disbelief. “You’d be the first British lord, then, who didn’t find a fat American dowry convenient.”

He stared at her as the implications of her words sank in. “You think I ruined you to gain your dowry?”

“Well, you didn’t do it to regain your investment,” she countered. “If that was all you wanted, you’d have let Frederick become engaged to me and borrow what he needed. Then you’d have gotten paid. But instead, you took me for yourself, a much more lucrative investment, I’d bet.”

“I didn’t do any of this for money.”

“Let’s not pretend your actions were born of any tender regard for me. You don’t even know me.”

“The man is desperate, Miss Holland. I could not be sure what he would do if he got you alone. He—” Jack stopped. He couldn’t reveal Van Hausen’s deeper sins without offering proof, and that would mean naming the women Van Hausen had raped, something he could never do. He couldn’t even hint such a thing, without jeopardizing the duchess’s secret. “The man is a cur and a cad,” he said instead. “I stopped him from taking advantage of you the only way I could think of on the spur of the moment.”

“By taking advantage of me yourself. How heroic of you.”

“You’d have been disgraced either way once Mrs. Dewey arrived. The only question was who would be the one to commit the disgrace, me or Van Hausen. You’ll have to forgive me if I decided I was a better option for you than a despicable swindler.”

“Yes, that’s the point, isn’t it?
You
decided. I had no say in the decision.”

“There wasn’t time for a discussion of your preferences on the subject,” he shot back, fully aware that she’d just put him on the defensive.

“But you needn’t have interfered in the pagoda,” she pointed out, shrewdly honing in on the weak spot of his actions. You could have gone to my father instead and told him of Frederick’s true intentions. Daddy would have postponed any promise of a dowry, and Frederick’s fraud would have been revealed without jeopardizing my reputation. But you didn’t do that. Instead, you followed me, got him out of the way, and stepped into his shoes. Why?”

He stared at her, helpless to explain the risks to her safety. With the arrival of Mrs. Dewey and her mother, proposing marriage had been the only honorable thing to do. As for kissing her, well, that had been an irresistible impulse of the moment. Fighting it would have been like fighting forces of gravity or tidal waves. And even now, despite that he’d tainted her good name, he couldn’t find cause to regret that kiss, for it had been like nothing he’d ever felt in his life before. “I couldn’t be sure what Van Hausen intended. I certainly didn’t plan to step into his shoes, as you put it.”

“No? I’m supposed to believe that you, the brother of a notorious fortune hunter, compromised me with no dishonorable intentions?”

God, he was tired of having his brother’s reputation hung around his neck. “I am not a fortune hunter.”

“No?” Her eyes met his, a dare in their cool blue depths. “Then refuse my dowry. Right here, right now.”

By God, he’d have liked to. At this moment, there was nothing he’d have enjoyed more than throwing her oodles of American money in her perfect American teeth. But as tempting as it was, he couldn’t do it. Marriage brought responsibilities he couldn’t fulfill without money, and he had just enough of an income to support himself. Without a marriage settlement, how would he support her? How could he provide her with a decent home, take care of their children?

He stared at her, a girl accustomed to every luxury money could buy, and he hated that he could not take up her challenge. Even more, he hated his father and his brother, not just for deceiving women and taking their money, but also for spending that money into oblivion, bankrupting the estates, and leaving him with no way to prove he was any different from them. And as the silence lengthened, he could see Linnet Holland’s opinion of him hardening, settling into certainty in those lovely eyes.

He opened his mouth, but before he could make the nauseating admission that he couldn’t afford to support her without her dowry, her mother intervened.

“For heaven’s sake, Linnet, there are more important issues at stake here than the marriage settlement. Don’t argue,” she added, as her daughter started to disagree. “You know it’s true.”

With that, Helen turned to her husband. “Ephraim, by now, everyone in that ballroom knows what Abigail Dewey saw. Lord Featherstone is right. They must marry.”

“Of course that’s what you’d say, Mother,” the girl put in. “Marry your daughter off to a lord, any lord.”

“Enough.” Holland stepped between the two women to halt any further squabbling between them, then he returned his attention to Jack. “For the sake of argument, let’s say you didn’t compromise my daughter for money. You’ve still got some explaining to do before I could consider giving my consent.”

“Consent?” the girl echoed, staring at her father. “You intend to reward this man’s conduct by giving him what he wants? You expect me to marry him?”

She looked so appalled that Jack’s temper flared. All in all, he wasn’t such a bad chap. Broke or not, he was a damned sight better than Van Hausen. But before he could reiterate that point, she spoke again.

“Offer your consent if you like, Daddy,” she said. “But you’re as delusional as he is if you think I’d ever agree to marry him.”

“Well, you have to marry someone,” Holland shot back. “And it isn’t going to be Davis Mackay.”

Despite the precarious state of her reputation, Miss Holland didn’t seem upset by the news that another possible suitor was out of the running. Her anger faded, and her lips tilted into a faint smile. “What a shame.”

“Don’t sass me, young lady. The reason the MacKays won’t accept you is the stain on your good name, a stain that’s spreading wider with every moment we stand here. If you don’t marry Featherstone, by the time the week is out, I doubt I’ll be able to find a decent man from here to Pittsburgh to take you.”

The girl’s tiny smile vanished, and color washed into her cheeks. But she lifted her chin a notch, staring her father down. “That is not my fault.”

“Part of it is.” Once again, her father turned to Jack. “Let’s get this cleared up right now. Linnet has made some valid points. If you didn’t do this for money, why did you interfere? Why didn’t you just come to us afterward? Linnet could have broken her engagement with no loss of her reputation.”

“I cannot tell you the reason for my interference in the pagoda, I’m sorry to say. It pertains to a secret I am honor-bound to keep.”

“Oh, a secret,” Miss Holland murmured with such deceptive sweetness Jack felt his temper fraying yet again. “Of course.”

He set his jaw and decided to deal with her father, since there was no reasoning with her on the subject at this point. “My friends, Lord Somerton, Lord Hayward, and Lord Trubridge, can vouch for the truth of what I say. They are aware of what it is that keeps me silent, and they are bound by the same secret that holds my tongue.”

“That’s hardly an answer,” Holland complained.

“It is the only answer I can give you, other than to say it is a matter of honor.”

“Honor?” Mr. Holland gave a harsh laugh—of disbelief, Jack suspected, not amusement. “You Brits have funny notions of honor. My daughter is ruined, damn you. Do you feel no shame?”

Shame? Jack thought of the other women who had been ruined, ruined in ways more sordid than Miss Holland had been. He thought of the women who would have been ruined in the future had Van Hausen been allowed to continue. He thought of Stuart, and how wrecked he must have been to know the pain inflicted on his wife. He thought of what he would feel if one of those women had been his wife, or his sister, or his daughter.

Shame? No, he felt no shame. Not a jot.

He squared his shoulders. “I regret that your daughter was caught up in this, and as I explained to her mother earlier, I am prepared to do all I can to make it right. That is why I proposed to her, and why I did it in front of Mrs. Dewey in such flamboyant fashion. I knew it was too late for any other course of action, and it needed to be made clear that an illicit tryst was not your daughter’s reason for being there. It was, perhaps, not the most-thought-out action a man could have taken in the circumstances, but the deed is done, and I intend to do all I can to restore your daughter’s reputation and ensure her happiness. That I swear to you on my life.”

Holland’s face was grim. “I had far better plans for my daughter than the likes of you.”

“I realize that, sir.”

“For heaven’s sake, is no one listening to me?” The girl stepped forward. “I won’t marry him. The idea is unthinkable. I don’t even know him, and I already can’t stand him.”

If she thought he’d back down because of that particular problem, she was right to say she didn’t know him. “Then I shall have to use the period of our engagement to change your opinion of me,” he said.

“There is no engagement. I didn’t spend five months in England dodging fortune hunters just to have one thrust on me at my own doorstep. I will not marry you, Lord Featherstone. I absolutely refuse. In fact—” She paused, glancing up and down his person with unmistakable scorn. “I’d rather marry a toad.”

With that, she walked around Jack and opened the door of the library to depart. But her mother’s wail of dismay stopped her at the threshold.

“But Linnet, what about your reputation?”

“Hang my reputation!” she shouted just before the door slammed behind her.

He turned at once to her father. “Best go after her,” he advised. “Van Hausen is in very dire straits now, and it would not be beyond him to attempt a kidnapping. Until he’s in prison, don’t allow your daughter to be alone anywhere. Guard her every single moment.”

“My daughter had better come out of this all right, Featherstone,” the American said, and his face displayed all the ruthless determination that had made him rich. “If she doesn’t, I’ll destroy you.”

Jack didn’t doubt that for a moment, and he was quite relieved when the other man departed, leaving him alone with the only member of the Holland family who was on his side.

But even his one ally seemed ready to desert him. “Now what?” she asked, her voice anguished. “You swore to me in the garden that what you did to stop Van Hausen wouldn’t be allowed to ruin my girl.”

“And it won’t.”

“You swore you’d do the honorable thing and marry her.”

“And I will.”

“But she won’t have you.” Mrs. Holland seemed on the verge of tears. “Not even to restore her reputation. You saved her from Frederick’s schemes, but at what cost?”

The die had been cast the moment he’d kissed the girl. From that point on, there had been no choice but marriage for either of them. “I’ll change her mind.”

Her mother did not seem to share his optimism. “You don’t know Linnet.” She pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “She’s stubborn as a mule.”

Despite the circumstances, he couldn’t help smiling a little at those words. “I’m more stubborn, I assure you.”

“I doubt it.” Even through her tears, the look she gave him was wry. “I love my daughter, Lord Featherstone, but I’m not blind to her faults. When she says she’d rather face scandal and ruin than marry you, she means it. She won’t listen to me, and her father would never force her.” Mrs. Holland’s plump white shoulders sagged with all her maternal disappointment. “Everything I wanted for her is impossible. All my hopes for her are destroyed. It’s over.”

Jack set his jaw. Only a cad ruined a girl and didn’t marry her, and though he might be wild, cavalier, and a bit of a devil in many respects, he was not a cad. “It is not over,” he vowed. “Not by a long chalk.”

H
ER MOTHER CRIED
the whole way home while her father sat in stony silence—a fitting finale, Linnet supposed, to the worst evening of her life. The anger and disappointment of her parents was palpable in the close confines of the carriage, and the only way she could bear it was by keeping her face near the open window and taking deep breaths of sea air.

Thankfully, the ride was a short one. Desperate to be alone so that she could decide how to salvage her future, she started at once up the stairs, but her father’s voice stopped her before she’d reached the landing, making it clear that if he had his way, nothing about her future would be in her own hands.