Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London (18 page)

“Tell him . . .” She paused at the bottom of the terrace steps, considering. “Tell him I’m no man’s foregone conclusion,” she said at last. “If he wants to take tea with me, he can damn well ask me.” With that, she took a deep breath and started across the lawn, her shoulders back and her head high.

I
T WAS ALMOST
time.

Tucking his watch back into the pocket of his waistcoat, Jack glanced skyward, considered the sun’s descent, and pulled the blanket a bit closer to the crumbling stone wall nearby, just to be sure the ladies would have plenty of shade. He verified there was plenty of chipped ice nestled around the champagne and tucked beneath the plates of meat and salad, he rearranged the picnic hampers for the third time and plucked away a few stray leaves of ivy.

“Well, Noah?” he asked as he surveyed his handiwork. “What do you think? Is there anything we’ve forgotten?”

The footman bent to set a crystal dish of pickles and another of olives beside the blanket and straightened before he replied. “I don’t believe so, sir. Not for the menu you’ve selected, at least. But . . .” He paused and frowned, eying the various dishes and condiments with doubt. “It’s not like any proper tea I’ve ever served before. Why, you’ve not even got the tea, nor a teapot to put it in.”

Jack laughed. Noah was right, of course. This wasn’t anything like an English tea, but after considering Linnet’s nationality and consulting her mother about her preferences in food and drink, he’d decided to forgo the typical English menu of cucumber sandwiches, scones, and Earl Grey. “But tea’s an English habit, remember,” he told Noah, “and our guests are American. Speaking of our guests . . .”

He paused, once again pulling out his pocket watch. “You’d best go and fetch them. It won’t do for us to seem unpunctual.”

“Very good, my lord.” The footman bowed and departed through the arched opening of the ancient gatehouse while Jack settled himself on a corner of the blanket to wait.

He didn’t expect to wait long, for the castle ruins he’d chosen for tea were at most a ten-minute walk from the house. But as the ten minutes came and went, and his guests did not appear, Jack remembered that little smile on her face in Belinda’s drawing room and felt a glimmer of worry. When ten minutes became fifteen, he accepted that his worry was justified. When fifteen minutes became twenty, Noah at last reappeared, and worry became fact.

The footman held up a folded sheet of paper as he came through the gatehouse arch and approached the blanket. “Mrs. Holland asked me to give you this,” he said, and held out the note.

Jack read it, folded it, and put it into the breast pocket of his tweed jacket. “Noah, go back to Mrs. Holland. Tell her I appreciate her efforts on my behalf and the information she has given me. Then you are free to return to your duties. In about two hours, you may come back to fetch the dishes and the picnic hampers.”

“Yes, sir.” Once again, the footman departed.

Jack sat there several minutes, staring at the repast he’d arranged as he considered what his next move should be. But he knew there was only one thing he could do in a situation like this, and it sure as hell wasn’t meek acquiescence.

He took a deep breath and stood up. He left the gatehouse, descended the path that wound around the hill, and crossed the stretch of woods. Bypassing the south lawn, where guests were having tea, he headed to the Cottage Gardens. There, according to Mrs. Holland’s note, he would find Linnet walking with Sir Roger Oliphant and his sister, Meagan.

He’d been to Honeywood often enough to know which parts of the Cottage Gardens were the prettiest at this time of year, and that knowledge enabled him to find his quarry and her companions without much trouble. She was strolling with them along a wide stretch of turf beside the herbaceous border, picking late roses and Michaelmas daisies, with a basket on her arm, Sir Roger beside her, and the sister following a discreet distance behind.

He cut across the turf, bisecting their path halfway along the border. He could tell that Linnet had discerned his approach, for she turned her back to him, pretending vast interest in the flowers.

“Miss Holland,” he greeted, but when she continued to ignore him, he pasted on a polite smile and turned to the man by her side, whom he knew slightly from school days. “Sir Roger. This must be your sister?”

Roger made the appropriate introduction while Linnet continued to pick flowers from the border nearby with no regard for his presence whatsoever. “Beautiful afternoon, isn’t it, Miss Holland,” he said at last, using the voice he usually reserved for his deaf great-aunt. “Perfect for afternoon tea outdoors, don’t you agree?”

“Actually, no.” She plucked a purple daisy and straightened, turning toward him, but not quite meeting his gaze. “I preferred to take a stroll this afternoon.”

“Indeed?” He moved closer, stepping between her and Sir Roger. “I understood you were to take tea.”

She looked up, and as their gazes met, her nostrils flared slightly, reminding him of a fine but defiant Thoroughbred. “You were mistaken.”

He wasn’t surprised by her reply, but he decided to give her one more chance. “Is there no way to persuade you to tea?”

“No.” She dropped the daisy into her basket. “Not today.”

Jack knew damn well there’d never be such a day in the future either, not unless he took it. And from what he could remember of Roger’s character from school days, the other man wouldn’t stop him from doing so. “Very well,” he said, “since persuasion is useless . . .”

He bent down, wrapped an arm around her legs, and straightened, lifting her off the ground and hefting her body over his shoulder, a move that sent her basket of flowers tumbling to the ground. “Brute force is my only choice.”

Chapter 10

Considering everything Jack Featherstone had already done to wreck her life, Linnet wouldn’t have thought it possible to be even more furious with him. But now, slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, she appreciated how wrong such a conclusion would have been. This man was capable of taking her outrage to new heights every time she saw him.

“Damn you, Featherstone!” she shouted, struggling against this undignified position. “Let go of me.”

A smothered sound in front of her that might have been a giggle reminded Linnet that there were witnesses to this indignity, but then, every indignity Jack committed upon her person seemed to be in front of witnesses. With a lunatic like him out and about, a girl wasn’t safe
anywhere.

She struggled, trying to roll off his shoulder or at least get in a good kick with her toe, but he had both arms wrapped so tight around her legs that either action proved impossible. The only thing her exertions accomplished was to work her hatpin free and send it, along with her bonnet and a slew of hairpins, tumbling to the grass.

She lifted her head, shaking back the locks of her once-elegant chignon, and found Sir Roger and his sister staring at her. Miss Oliphant must have been the one who’d found the situation amusing enough for a giggle, for her hand was pressed over her mouth. Roger, his eyes bulging and his mouth open, looked disturbingly like an oxygen-deprived fish.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Linnet cried as Jack started carting her off across the grass. “For the love of heaven, Sir Roger, do something.”

Sir Roger lifted a fist to his mouth and gave a cough. “I say, Featherstone,” he began, in what Linnet could only think a most feeble tone of voice, “don’t you think you ought—”

“No.” With that uncompromising reply, Jack hefted Linnet a bit farther back on his shoulder, causing her to give a most unladylike grunt, and continued on, while Roger did nothing, absolutely nothing, to rescue her.

“Put me down, you . . . you . . . you . . .” Unable to find a scathing enough description, she balled her hands and pounded his back, but she might as well have been smashing her fists into a mountainside. “You
are
a cretin.”

“Yes,” he agreed without breaking stride. “I believe we established that fact the other day.”

“I knew one day you’d haul me off to your castle against my will.”

“Not my castle,” he corrected. “That’s in Northumberland, which would be rather a long walk from here. But I am taking you to a castle, and though it’s not mine, it’ll have to do.”

Linnet felt a pang of alarm at those words. Do for what? Was he intending to ravish her inside the walls of some nearby ruin? Not that she knew what ravishment was, precisely, but whatever it entailed, she’d probably have to marry him afterward, and that would suit his book.

He wouldn’t dare. Would he?

Linnet realized in dismay that she couldn’t be quite sure about that.

You give me a dare, I’ll take it up.

The memory of those words was sufficient to renew Linnet’s struggles to free herself, but the result was that she ended up out of breath, while he—after carting her through a grove of trees, across a meadow, and halfway up a hill—was barely winded. She decided it was time to try a different tactic.

“All right,” she said in as lofty a tone as she could manage, given that she was wearing a whalebone corset and his shoulder was lodged against her tummy like a rock, “you’ve made your point.”

“Knowing you, I doubt it.”

“You can put me down now.”

He didn’t pause. “I don’t think so.”

“For heaven’s sake, you’ve brought me to the middle of nowhere. It’s not as if I’d go running off alone. I do have some sense.”

“That’s a debatable point.”

She punched him, hard, right between the shoulder blades, but he didn’t even flinch. “Damn it, Jack, I can’t breathe.”

Chivalry, of course, was a concept this man did not understand, so even that appeal wasn’t enough to make him put her down. He pitched her forward a few inches to better enable her to breathe and kept on walking.

It wasn’t until he’d reached the top of the grass-covered hill that he stopped. “Before I set you down,” he said, “I am honor-bound to warn you—”

“Honor-bound?” she cut in, panting. “Is that supposed to be amusing?”

“I am honor-bound to warn you that I was among the fastest footballers at Cambridge. If you bolt, you won’t get ten feet before I catch you. And if that happens, well . . .” His voice trailed away, leaving unmistakably sinister implications hanging in the air.

“I won’t run,” she promised at once. “As I told you before, I’ve got some sense. I know it would be useless.”

“Good.” He moved as if to free her at last, but any relief she might have felt was mitigated at once, because as he slid her off his shoulder, his hand cupped her bottom, and though she knew it was to ease her to the ground, she couldn’t help a gasp of shock, not just because no man had ever dared to touch her there in her entire life, but also because even through the layers of her clothing, his palm felt blazing hot.

If he noticed her discomfiture at such intimate contact, he didn’t show it. His hand slid away at once, his arms freed her, and he straightened. “Shall we?” he asked, gesturing to something behind her.

Shoving loose tresses of hair out of her face, she turned and found the crumbling, ivy-covered wall of a medieval gatehouse in front of her. Through the arched doorway at its center, she could see the tumbledown walls of what had once been castle fortifications. In their midst, a blanket had been spread over the grass, and on it, cushions, picnic baskets, and napkin-covered plates of food had been arranged. An ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne reposed on a block of ancient stone nearby, its silver surface gleaming in the late-afternoon sun.

Linnet moved through the archway, and as she approached the blanket he’d laid out, she noted the china and crystal, and the care he’d taken with the arrangements, and she felt the sting of her conscience. When she paused at the edge of the blanket, he paused beside her, and she slid a sideways glance at him. His lean, handsome face was grave as he looked back at her, but she could read nothing in those dark, dark eyes.

“This is highly improper,” she pointed out, desperate for something to say. “We have no chaperone.”

Even as the words came out of her mouth, she appreciated that the lack of a chaperone was partly her own fault, and she hastened on, “You should have asked me to tea. Not commandeered me.”

“Would you have come? Be honest,” he said, as she started to answer. “Had I asked you directly, would you have said yes?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t given the chance to decide.”

He didn’t reply, but he continued to watch her, waiting, and at last she gave a sigh. “Probably not,” she conceded. “But that isn’t the point.”

“It is the point. Because . . .” He turned and bent down to retrieve a cloth-covered basket. “If you hadn’t come, you’d have missed these.”

He pulled back the red-and-white-checked covering, and at the sight of what was inside, Linnet gave a cry of surprise. “Muffins?”

“So I’m told.” He studied them, looking doubtful. “They seem more like tea cakes to me, but Mrs. Fraser assured me she followed the receipt in every detail.”

“Receipt?” She was taken aback, and it took her a moment to understand the English nomenclature. “Oh, you mean
recipe
,” she said, laughing a little. “But how on earth did an English cook have a recipe for blueberry muffins? Even the Savoy doesn’t make them.”

He shrugged, as if presenting her with a food that was as rare in England as hen’s teeth was no great feat. “I cabled your cook in New York a few days ago, asking him to cable back the receipt, which he did. I couldn’t obtain fresh blueberries, since we don’t seem to grow them in England. Still, I managed to find a tin of them at a grocer’s in London before I came down.”

“You went shopping for blueberries so that we could have American muffins for tea?”

“Yes, well, blueberry muffins are a particular favorite food of yours. At least, that’s what I was told.”

Linnet stared at him, confounded. Cabling for her cook’s recipe, shopping for the proper ingredients, arranging for Lady Trubridge’s cook to prepare them—all because she liked them?

“I know your custom is to have them for breakfast,” he went on before she could recover enough to reply. “But I thought they’d be all right for tea although it’s not tea, not anymore. Your mother informed me you don’t much care for the custom, so I changed the menu a bit and made this outing more like a picnic. You do like picnics, she told me.”

“You—” She broke off, staring at the muffins, memories coming back to her, memories of Conrath and little gifts very much like this one. She swallowed, forcing herself to say something. “You went to a great deal of trouble.”

“Yes,” he said. “I did.”

A nuance in his voice caused her to look up, and when she met his gaze, she was taken aback by what she saw. His eyes were so dark they appeared black, and yet, despite the seeming impenetrability of their color, they were not opaque.

She’d hurt him.

The discovery astonished her. She’d never have thought she had any power over his feelings. She’d have deemed him impervious to hurt—callous, even. But looking at him now, she knew she’d have been wrong to think that. Quite, quite wrong.

A strange tightness squeezed her chest and made it hard to breathe. “I didn’t realize you would do . . . all this.” She waved a hand to the picnic arrangements. “I assumed you’d just order tea and crumpets, or what have you, from the kitchens. I didn’t think you’d take such pains—finding out my favorite foods, shopping for blueberries, consulting with cooks—” She stopped, took a deep breath, and met his gaze again. “I’m sorry I didn’t come.”

“Apology accepted,” he said at once. “And I’m sorry I commandeered your time rather than asked for it.”

She nodded, but when she reached out her hand to take a muffin, he pulled the basket back, out of her reach.

“These muffins are my way of holding out the olive branch,” he told her. “From now on, I promise to invite you for outings and engagements rather than attempt to commandeer you. But in return, I’d like you to make a promise to me.”

That made her smile a little. “And I suppose my promise should be to always say yes to these outings of yours?”

“No. You don’t always have to say yes. All I want you to promise is to give me a second chance. The same chance you’re giving the other chaps here.”

“Lady Trubridge has already given you that. She invited you here.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I’m talking about a fair chance, Linnet. That means you’ll have to put aside the preconceived ideas you’ve formed about me and about my character. Can you do that?”

She considered. “It won’t be an easy thing for me,” she confessed, and though acknowledging that he’d been right about certain facets of her character was a difficult admission to have to make, she made it. “I am somewhat . . . strong-willed, you see. Imperious, even. And maybe a little bit spoiled. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”

She watched him smile, and she felt compelled to add, “But, just so you know, I am not a snob. It was most unfair of you to say so.”

“Then it seems I, too, will have to put aside some preconceived ideas.” He held out the basket again. “Truce?”

She considered. If they called a truce, she had no doubt he’d find a way to take advantage of it. Still . . . she looked down at the muffins, and her resolve crumbled.

“All right, it’s a truce,” she agreed, but she couldn’t help giving him a wry look as she took a muffin and sat down on the blanket. “Why do I feel I’m making a deal with the devil?”

“Because you are,” he answered as he sat down opposite her. “And I mean that in a literal sense.”

He laughed at her bewildered expression, but he set the basket of muffins beside them and retrieved a pair of plates from the nearest picnic basket before he explained. “Devil,” he said as he put one of the plates in front of her, “was my nickname at school.”

She wrinkled up her nose at him. “How appropriate.”

“You have no idea. I was always getting into scrapes and causing trouble. Breaking curfew. Setting off firecrackers under the dean’s window at midnight. Walking on the grass—which at Eton is one of the gravest sins imaginable. Hiding my tutor’s chalk, kidnapping his dog. Dumping salt in the Eton Mess. That sort of thing.”

She frowned, perplexed. “Eton Mess?”

“It’s a dessert. Strawberries, crushed meringues, and cream. It’s served on Prize-Giving Day in June, when all the parents come to visit.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Salt?”

“Yes, well, my years at Eton are rather legendary. Never were the tutors happier to see a boy go than when I departed their hallowed halls. Cambridge wasn’t any better. I was so wild there, I was very nearly sent down.”

“Sent down? You mean expelled? Why?” she asked, as he nodded. “What did you do?”