An Improper Proposal (14 page)

Oh, it had been thrilling—the most glorious moment in her life. She would never forget it, not until she was cold and dead in her grave. And that was the problem. At least before, she hadn’t known what she was missing. Now she knew, and it was going to be that much harder to sit in that church pew and keep her mouth shut while she watched him marry somebody else.

AH through the long hours of the night a single question had reverberated through her head: Why?

It was the same question she’d asked Drake, and she hadn’t gotten an answer. Why was he marrying Becky Whitby? Because he had to, he’d said. Which wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t an answer at all. Of course he had to. Only a cad would abandon his bride this close to the altar. But that didn’t explain why he’d asked her to marry him in the first place.

It certainly wasn’t because he was in love with Miss Whitby. Payton had known that for certain, the moment he’d kissed her. Not that she fancied he was in love with her. She was fairly certain that before last night, he’d never even thought of her in that way. She’d only been the amusing little sister of his three best friends.

But now, finally, maybe he’d noticed she was no longer a child. Too bloody late.

She refused to believe he was marrying Becky Whitby because he’d gotten her with child. Payton had lain awake the other half of the night—the half when she hadn’t been kicking herself for being such a fool—trying to remember those weeks when they’d all lived together at the town house, and she couldn’t pick out a single moment when Drake had shown any preference, marked or otherwise, for Becky Whitby. There hadn’t been any looks exchanged over the breakfast table. She had never caught them whispering together. If the two of them had ever been intimate, then they were the most superb actors in the world. And while she wasn’t sure about Miss Whitby, she was quite certain Drake was no dramatist. If he were, what had happened in the garden would certainly have had quite a different outcome.

What had happened in the garden, she’d decided, around four o’clock in the morning, had been the result of emotions rubbed raw, of instincts taking over where reason normally ruled. Drake might have been drunk—most certainly he’d been a little drunk, at least—or he might simply have been carried away by the moonlight and the nightingale. In any case, he hadn’t been acting rationally, and neither, needless to say, had she.

But that didn’t mean that there hadn’t been emotion there. Maybe not love, on his part. But something. There was no denying they were friends, good friends of long standing, who’d not only saved one another’s lives but, more importantly, had been there for one another when the situation hadn’t exactly been life-threatening: those becalmed seas, when not a hint of wind blew for days at a time, could drive anyone to madness, but they had weathered plenty of those, with humor and imagination.

Wasn’t that what love was all about? Not only weathering the storms, but also making it through those long periods of stagnation without going mad, or growing to despise one another?

And it wasn’t as if they didn’t share a mutual attraction to one another—she knew for absolute certain he’d been attracted to her. She’d felt the evidence of that attraction, long and firm, against her hand.

So if there was friendship—true friendship—and attraction, how far, really, were they from love?

Not that it mattered. Because today he was marrying Miss Whitby, and leaving for New Providence. She might see him again, someday. Maybe he would come back to England for her wedding. Under the covers, Payton let out a bitter little laugh. Her wedding. What a joke. She was never going to be a bride. If she couldn’t have Drake, she didn’t want anyone. Period.

Rolling over, Payton lowered the sheets enough so that she could squint at the clock on the mantel. Eight o’clock. She pulled the covers back over her head with a groan. Lord. Less than two hours until they’d have to leave for the village church.

Payton was up, bathed, and dressed before the clock on her mantel chimed nine. The maid who’d brought her bathwater had chipperly informed her that coffee was being served downstairs, and if it would please the young lady, she could bring her a cup. As it happened, it pleased the young lady very much. Payton was not the least bit anxious to run into the master of the house, much less his bride-to-be. She’d happened to notice, as she was bathing, the band of pink silk ribbon she’d tied round her wrist the night before. It still hung there, a reminder of her foolishness. She removed it—but only to retie it around her ankle, where no one but her maid would see it. She had a feeling she was going to need reminding, throughout the day, just who, precisely, Connor Drake belonged to.

Because it sure as hell wasn’t her.

But Payton, she soon learned, wasn’t the only Dixon who didn’t make it down for morning coffee. A loud thump on her door, followed by the portal opening before she’d had a chance to answer, revealed a half-dressed Hudson, blinking painfully in the morning light

“Pay,” he complained, in a voice that was gravely with sleep. “Do up my cravat for me, please. I don’t know what’s wrong, but my fingers are swelled up like sausages. I can barely move ’em.”

Payton lifted one of her brother’s massive paws and examined it critically. “Who’d you hit?” she asked.

“I didn’t hit anyone.” Hudson screwed up his ill-shaven face. “Leastways, I don’t remember hitting anyone.”

“Well, this bruise didn’t get there by itself.” Payton flung away the damaged limb. “What time did you and Raleigh bed down last night, anyway?”

Hudson blinked. “Bed?” he asked. “What’s that?” And Payton got a whiff of what it was he’d been up all night doing.

“Lord, Hud,” she said, fanning his breath away. “What did you do? Swallow a distillery?”

From the doorway came another thump, and then Raleigh came in. Unlike his elder brother, he was fully dressed. He looked, however, like hell. Payton exercised no restraint in telling him so, but Raleigh took the abuse with uncharacteristic docility. In fact, he walked straight past her, pulled back the bedclothes the maid had neatly tucked in place, and climbed into Payton’s bed, boots and all. When she asked him what in the hell he thought he was doing, Raleigh only groaned from beneath a pile of pillows he’d pulled over his head. “Must you talk so loud?”

“Get out from under there,” Payton snapped. “We’ve got to be at the church in an hour.”

“It’s not fair. Your bed’s much nicer than my bed.” Raleigh sniffed indignantly. “My bed was hard as rock.”

“It was a rock, you great arse.” Hudson was still having trouble holding his eyelids all the way apart. “You fell asleep on the carriage drive.”

“And woke up bloody soaked.” Raleigh was invisible beneath the pillows and sheet … all except for the tips of his boots, which stuck out over the end of the bed. “Damned dew. I hate it. And those bleeding awful birds, with their infernal singing. My head’s pounding because of that blasted tweet-tweet-tweeting. Started up at two, and only got louder. Lord, I can’t wait until we’re at sea again. Life in port is nothing but torture.”

A third fist pounded on the door. This time, it was not a Dixon who peered round the jamb at her, but the barely recognizable face of the groom. He stood bare-chested in the hallway, supporting himself with one hand braced against the wall. Clenched in his other hand was his shirt, waistcoat, and jacket, the sleeves of which dragged along the floor behind him. The lower half of his face was dark with unshaved whiskers. His eyes appeared a brighter shade of blue than usual, since they peered out from purple rings of sleeplessness.

Those eyes drew Payton’s gaze and held it. If she’d expected a last-minute appeal to run away with him, she was to be sadly disappointed. Instead, he parted painfully dry lips and croaked, “Help.”

Payton inhaled, prepared to start screaming. No. This was just too much. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she’d had to sit there and watch her brother hand this man her ship; as if it wasn’t enough she was going to have to sit there and watch him marry someone else in an hour: she had to help him dress, as well?

She wouldn’t.

She couldn’t.

Behind her, Hudson started to chuckle.

“Hoo,” he laughed. “Hoo-ha! Come have a look at Drake, Ral. He looks like something that’s been dredged up from the bottom of the Thames.”

“Is that Drake?” Raleigh flung back the covers and sat up. “Can he talk that bloody cook of his into giving us some food? She says we’ve got to wait to have breakfast till after the wedding. But if I don’t get something into my gut now, I’ll be a dead man by the time this bleeding wedding’s over.”

Payton, who’d been barring Drake’s way into her room by keeping a hand planted on either side of the door, searched his face. If she’d thought it etched with pain yesterday, when she’d seen it at the dinner table, that was nothing compared to today. The grooves running from the down-turned corners of his mouth to his nostrils looked deep enough to dive into. And those purple smudges under his eyes were the results of sleeplessness, not Hudson’s swollen fingers.

Still, Hudson’s assertion that his old friend looked like something that had been dredged up from the bottom of the Thames was an opinion with which Payton couldn’t agree. Even suffering from a hangover, Drake was still far too good-looking for Payton’s ease of mind. A hundred nights without sleep would not have been enough to wither those melon-sized biceps, or soften that rock-hard belly, down which thick blond hair snaked, disappearing into the waistband of his trousers. He could have drunk an entire case of whisky, and his skin would still glow healthily bronze, his teeth still flash white as ivory.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he should look this good. Because how was she supposed to despise him when just looking at him, standing there in the dim morning light, with his soft blond hair hanging wetly down the back of his neck, made her knees go weak?

“Well,” she said, as ungraciously as possible. “I suppose you might as well come in, too. Everybody else seems to feel I’m his own personal valet. Why should you be any different?”

She stepped aside, and Drake came in, lifting the garments he held. “I can’t get any of these on,” he said bewilderedly. “My fingers don’t seem to work.”

Hudson looked positively delighted that someone was suffering from a malady similar to his.

“I’ve got the same problem! Can’t make a fist.” He thrust his hands beneath Drake’s nose. “See? Weak as a kitten. Payton says it’s from hitting someone, but I can’t remember hitting anyone. Do you remember me hitting anyone?”

“Can’t say that I do, old man.” Drake looked everywhere but at Payton. “I drank a little too much myself, last night.”

She glared at him. If he was thinking of using alcohol as the excuse for what had passed between them in the garden, he needed to think again.

“I think we all went a little out of our heads last night,” she said firmly. “Some of us more than others.”

On the bed, Raleigh, who’d fallen back against the pillows, moaned. “All except Ross,” he said bitterly. “I saw Ross this morning, and he was fit as can be. Went to bed early, Ross did. I wonder why.” He chuckled nastily, then groaned again. “You mustn’t ever get married again, Drake. Another night like this past one will kill me.”

Going to the tray the maid had brought up for her, Payton poured a cup of coffee for Drake, mixing in a good deal of sugar and milk. Strong sweet drinks were the shipboard prescriptive for men who’d been narrowly missed by one of Captain La Fond’s cannonballs, and that was exactly the expression Drake wore just then, a sort of stunned disbelief that he had suffered through what he had, and lived.

“Here,” she said, not at all politely, as she thrust the cup at him. “Drink this.”

He brought the cup obediently to his lips, then made a face, and looked around frantically for a place to spit out what was in his mouth.

Payton said, “Swallow,” in a commanding voice. He did so, but then made a gagging noise.

“Christ, Payton,” he exclaimed. “What was that?”

“Exactly what you need,” she replied. “Drink the whole cup.”

“No …” He was almost whimpering. “Please.”

“Drink it,” she said firmly. “Or I’ll have Hudson hold your nose, and we’ll force it down your bleeding throat.”

Hudson feigned alarm. “Don’t do it, Drake,” he cried. “It’s probably poisoned. She hasn’t gotten over losing the
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Payton narrowed her eyes at her brother. “While the idea is certainly tempting,” she said, “I’m only trying to keep him from passing out. Do you want to be the one who has to carry him down the aisle?”

Hudson cleared his throat. “Drink the bloody stuff, Drake.”

Drake peered despairingly into the depths of the coffee cup she’d handed him. He took a deep, patient breath, then downed the whole of its contents, his broad shoulders shuddering in disgust. Payton averted her gaze. The skin stretched over his shoulders was sun-kissed and would doubtless feel, if she happened to run her hands over them—which, of course, she never would—like silk. Silk laid over iron.

Lord, why didn’t someone just shoot her, and put her out of her misery?

When he finally lowered the cup, gagging, Payton said, “Good,” and took it away. He didn’t look much the better for it, but she supposed it must have done him some good, since when she instructed him to hold his arms out, he was able to do so. Before, it had appeared to take him considerable effort even to lift them.

Payton took hold of one of his limp hands and stuffed it through a sleeve of the shirt he held. “I sincerely hope that when I get married,” she muttered, “my husband won’t be so reluctant to enter the union that he feels it necessary to drink himself into a stupor the night before.”

“Well, of course he will, Pay,” Hudson said, mildly astonished. “No man wants to get married.”

“Really?” She spoke between gritted teeth. “And so Ross married Georgiana because … ?”

“Same reason Drake’s marryin’ Miss Whitby,” Raleigh informed her, from the bed.

This caused a good deal of chortling on the parts of both her brothers. Drake, Payton noticed, did not laugh, or even crack a smile. She was in a position to know, since she was standing in front of him, her fingers flying over the buttons of his shirt. It was important to her that she finish dressing him as quickly as possible, since his proximity was having a disturbing effect on her. It had caused all of the hair on her arms—fortunately hidden from his sight by the balloon sleeves of her blue and white morning dress—to stand on end. And that was not all. She was now quite certain the reason her nipples had gone so hard the night before had not been because of the cold at all, but because of something he had done to them. She couldn’t tell how he’d done it, but it was happening again. The man had to be some kind of witch doctor. Either that, or the mere sight of his partly clad body was enough to send her into a shocking state of arousal.