Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London by Laura Lee Guhrke

you?”
    “Oh, God,” she gasped, appalled, and halted again, glancing back toward the man across the room. “That’s my mother.”
    Before Featherstone could respond, another feminine voice also called her name, and Linnet knew her already-ruined evening had just become a disaster. “Mrs. Dewey, too? Oh, my Lord, that woman is the most notorious gossip in our set.”
    “I thought you didn’t care about gossip.” As he spoke, Featherstone reached for the painted Oriental screen against the wall. “That it didn’t matter.”
    “It doesn’t, not about me and Frederick. You, however, are a different story.” She watched in puzzlement as the earl arranged the screen in front of Frederick’s prone body. “What are you doing with that screen?”
    “Hiding the evidence,” he said enigmatically, but instead of ducking behind the screen with Frederick as she would have expected, he stepped back to study his handiwork. Seeming satisfied, he gave a nod and started toward her. “But if possible, I think it’s best they don’t see any of us down here.”
    Linnet couldn’t argue with that point, and she turned to resume her departure, but she’d barely made it to the doorway before her mother’s voice came again.
    “Linnet? What are you doing down in the pagoda, young lady?”
    Linnet jumped back out of sight at once and cannoned into Lord Featherstone. His hands came up to clasp her arms and steady her, and she felt a jolt of panic. Shrugging free, she whirled around. “You can’t leave,” she told him, keeping her voice low. “They’ve seen me, and if we both go out, they’ll see you as well. You have to stay here. I’ll go out alone and distract them, and you can slip away.”
    “Linnet?” her mother called. “Who are you talking to? Who’s with you?”
    “They’re too close for slipping away,” Featherstone muttered with a glance at the door. “No escape now, I fear.”
    “Linnet Katherine Holland, I am coming down there at once.” Helen’s voice, growing louder, made it clear she was already acting on that threat. “At once, do you hear me?”
    “Go out one of the windows,” she ordered Featherstone in a desperate whisper.
    “There’s no time.”
    “Hide, then.” She pointed to the screen. “Quick.”
    The impossible man still didn’t move. “It’s too late. They know you’re not alone.”
    “Well, you can’t just stand there. Do something.”
    “If you insist.” He took a deep breath, grasped her hands in his, and fell to one knee. “Linnet Holland,” he said, his voice alarmingly loud, overriding her sound of shock, “will you marry me?”
    “Stand up,” she hissed. “For God’s sake, stand up.”
    She tried to pull free of his grip, but it was futile, and she cast a frantic glance over her shoulder just in time to see her mother sail into the pagoda, with Mrs. Dewey on her heels. At the scene that met their eyes, the two women came to an abrupt halt just inside the door, and their shocked faces told Linnet she was in serious trouble.
    Featherstone rose, and she turned on him, prepared to unleash a fresh flood of wrathful protest at his unconscionable conduct.
    He gave her no opportunity. Letting go of her hands, he wrapped an arm around her waist, curled his free hand at the back of her neck, and pulled her hard against him.
    “What are you doing?” she demanded in a shocked whisper.
    “Saving your reputation,” he murmured, bent his head, and kissed her.

 
    Chapter 4
     
    Jack was always agreeable to kissing beautiful women. Marrying any of them, however, was a notion he’d never wasted time contemplating. Matrimony was an expensive business, and everyone knew he hadn’t a bean. Not that his dismal finances had ever mattered anyway since he’d never met a woman he could envision spending a lifetime with.
    But now, with his lips on those of a woman he’d known less than fifteen minutes and his marriage proposal to her still hanging in the air, all Jack’s