The Earl's American Heiress. Carol Arens

She smiled and winked. “Let’s ruffle our feathers and take to the sky, just the two of us.”

      “Yes, well.” He shook his head, trying to clear it of the delightful fog swirling in his brain. “It would be a great scandal if I kissed you.”

      Had he murmured that aloud?

      “Immense—but only if someone knew about it.”

      She was bold and sassy.

      She completely captivated him.

      “Or if we were legally bound to others,” he foolishly pointed out. Had he lost his mind?

      “I have yet to give my word on anything.”

      “And I have yet to meet my ball and chain.” He cupped the back of her head, felt the slickness of the rain on the strands of her hair. Lifting her chin with his fingertips he bent toward her rain-dotted lips. “Fly away with me, Jane Fitz.”

      “Clementine Jane Macooish!” At the sound of the deep voice, Heath’s head jerked up. “Have you lost your mind?”

      He stared into the furious expression of an older man.

      “Take your hands off my granddaughter, sir.”

      What? Oh...he was still cupping the back of Jane’s head. As if under water, good sense stroked toward the surface of his brain. And what had the man called her—Macooish?

      “On the contrary, Grandfather.” Jane, or Clementine, slowly stood up, her brows arched in a most becoming, if rebellious, way. “I’m quite certain I’ve just found it.”

      “Have you found her?” asked a voice Heath recognized.

      Now might be the time to leap for the rose bush.

      “I tell you, I only stopped for a conversation with Lady Claremont and she disappeared from my—”

      The duchess’s face popped into view. Her mouth sagged open.

      “Lord Fencroft!” Feeling rather like a worm in the grass with everyone staring down at him, he stood.

      Her Grace’s eyes blinked furiously while she sought words appropriate for this compromising situation—this horrid breach of hospitality.

      “Fencroft?” Miss Macooish spun toward him.

      “Macooish?” He swiveled his gaze toward her.

      Miss Macooish’s mouth worked silently. Not for lack of words, he thought, but because of an abundance of them. He imagined she did not know which ones to fire at him first.

      * * *

      Clementine hardly knew what to say. Words fumbled on her tongue vying for utterance.

      Grandfather, however, suffered no such confusion.

      “Charlatan! Scoundrel! Seducer!” He stood nose to nose with the man, poking his chest with a stab of his finger upon each heated word. A roll of thunder might have been taken as agreement. “Reprobate!”