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

Author:Laura Lee Guhrke [Guhrke, Laura Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-01-26T23:00:00+00:00

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.

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