Read Online Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London by Laura Lee Guhrke - Free Book Online Page A

someone outside the family. So why don’t you go and tell him what’s happened, hmm, while I have a talk with this young man?”
    The girl hesitated, passing her tongue over her lips. Her apprehension was understandable. After all, no girl would want to face her father with the news that her reputation had just been compromised. Jack decided it was a good time for another display of chivalry. “With all due respect,” he said, “I ought to be the one to explain. It’s my office.”
    “Not a chance,” the girl cut in before the mother could reply. “This is all your fault, yes, but I have no intention of allowing you to sugarcoat the story to press your suit. I’ll be the one to tell my father what a despicable cad you are!”
    She strode past him and started for the door, but she’d done no more than open it and cross the threshold before her mother spoke, causing her to stop and turn in the doorway.
    “Linnet? Be sure to tell your father how determined you are to marry Frederick. When I come, I shall be interested to hear his views on that score. Very, very interested.”
    Van Hausen, it seemed, cut no ice with either of the girl’s parents, a fact that brightened Jack’s spirits a bit. Without the approval of the girl’s father, Van Hausen would never be able to borrow against his expectations as her future husband and escape his fate.
    Miss Holland, he noticed, was frowning, and it was clear her mother’s words puzzled her. “But what objection could Daddy have to Frederick?”
    “We can discuss that later. Go. We shall join you and your father in the library shortly, and this matter will be decided.”
    “Whatever Daddy’s own opinion, he’ll understand I have to marry someone, and he won’t look more favorably on this man than he would Frederick. Daddy,” she added with a baleful glance at Jack, “doesn’t like fortune hunters any more than I do.”
    With that, she marched out of the pagoda and closed the door behind her, leaving him alone with her mother.
    Given a choice of which parent to deal with first, Jack supposed Mrs. Holland was the better bargain. After all, they’d at least been introduced. In addition, their few minutes of conversation in the ballroom had made it clear she had a high regard for men with titles, and though his title might be a bit tarnished, he did have one.
    “How dare you?” she demanded, her voice and manner seething with outrage. “How dare you compromise my daughter? You will explain yourself at once, Lord Featherstone, or I will have my husband shoot you like a rabid dog.”
    He grimaced. Mrs. Holland’s high regard for titled men clearly wasn’t going to be of any help to him right now.
    E PHRAIM C ORNELIUS H OLLAND might have been born into wealth and privilege, but he was no weakling, a fact Linnet was reminded of a few moments after she began her account of the evening’s events.
    “Frederick Van Hausen has asked you to marry him?” he roared, the booming echo of his voice making his daughter wince. “Without my permission?”
    Linnet glanced at the door of Prescott Dewey’s library. Reassured that she had indeed closed it after pulling her father in here for this consultation, she attempted to placate her outraged parent.
    “I know he should have come to you first,” she began, but she got no further.
    “Indeed, he should have,” her father bellowed, his silver-gray brows knitting together to emphasize his disapproval, as if his raised voice wasn’t enough to make the point. “Not that it matters, I suppose.”
    With those words, Linnet let out her breath with a sigh of relief. Not that she’d been worried, precisely, but the way her evening had been going gave her cause for some amount of concern, and the manner in which this engagement was coming about was less than exemplary. “I realize that bringing it to you as a fait accompli isn’t the best way of going about it. No doubt you wish to speak to Frederick as soon as possible, but just