An Improper Proposal (3 page)

“Come along, Payton,” Georgiana continued nervously. “We had better get downstairs, before your brothers get themselves into even more trouble …”

“I’ll be along,” Payton said, “in a minute.”

Payton realized that she’d suddenly been presented with a golden opportunity. She hoped she’d injected her voice with enough syrupy sweetness that her sister-in-law wouldn’t guess she hadn’t the slightest intention of following anytime soon.

She succeeded. Georgiana disappeared into the hallway, too upset by her new family’s bad manners to pay much attention to what that family’s youngest member was up to. Which was just as well, since she would hardly have approved of what Payton did next, which was to seize the baronet by the arm as he attempted to stand aside, allowing her to pass through the doorway first, and hiss, “Thanks for bloody nothing!”

Drake looked considerably surprised at being thus addressed. He raised his tawny eyebrows again and said, with a little indignation, “I beg your pardon?”

“How am I ever going to convince Ross to give me my own command if you’re forever interfering?” Payton demanded hotly.

“Interfering?” Comprehension finally dawned over the captain’s face. “Oh, I see. You mean by my keeping your brother from hurling you over his shoulder, I was interfering?” The corners of his lips curled into a very definite grin. “I’ll have to beg your forgiveness, then, Payton. I rather thought I was saving you from a crushing blow to the head. Terribly ignoble of me, I realize now.”

Payton refused to be swayed by either the captain’s charming manner or devastating good looks. This was excessively difficult just at that moment, since the sun slanting into the room had brought out the highlights in his golden hair. It almost made it look as if there were a halo behind Captain Drake’s head, as if he were a saint—or the archangel Gabriel, perhaps—in a stained-glass window. Thankfully, Captain Drake had not been on the lice-infested clipper, and so his fine hair had been spared from Ross’s sheers. It hung as long as his shirt collar. Sometimes he wore it tied back in a black ribbon, a style which Payton approved of highly.

Good Lord! What was she doing, standing there, admiring his hair?

Placing her hands on either side of her narrow waist, Payton glared up at him. “It isn’t funny,” she informed him. “This is my future we’re talking about. You know Ross has this ridiculous idea of marrying me off, instead of doing the sensible thing, and letting me have the
Constant
.”

“Right,” Drake said. He appeared to be attempting to school his features into a suitably serious expression, but was having some trouble. “The
Constant
. The newest and fastest ship in the Dixon fleet. And you think your brother should give you command of it.”

“And why not?” Payton tapped a daintily slippered foot. ‘I’ll be nineteen next month. Both Hudson and Raleigh got their own ships on their nineteenth birthdays. Why should I be treated any differently?”

Once again, Drake’s cool blue gaze dipped below her neck.

“Well,” he said. “Perhaps because you’re a—”

“Don’t say it.” Payton held up a single hand, palm out. “Don’t you dare say it.”

“Why?” Drake looked genuinely puzzled. “There’s nothing wrong with it, you know, Payton. It has its advantages, you know.”

“Oh? Name one. And if you mention the word ‘motherhood’, I swear I’ll start screaming.”

Drake hesitated. He either could not think of anything advantageous to being born female, or did not feel that what he had thought up was appropriate to mention in Payton’s presence, since he abruptly changed the subject. “Perhaps your brother feels he’s already given you your birthday gift. Isn’t that one of the new gowns Ross has been complaining about? It’s quite lovely.”

Payton’s jaw dropped incredulously. “What? A gown? A bloody gown? You must be joking. I’m supposed to be satisfied with a new gown when I could have command of a clipper?”

“Well,” Drake said. “I don’t suppose that seems fair to you. But to be honest, Payton, I’m not sure I disagree with Ross about your commanding your own ship. It’s one thing when you go to sea with your brothers. After all, then they’re there to protect you. But for a young lady to go to sea all by herself, with a crew of men she doesn’t know—”

“Protect me?” Payton’s voice dripped with disgust. “Since when has any of my brothers ever protected me? You saw them back there. Protecting me was hardly foremost in Raleigh’s mind. Killing me was more like it. No—” Here she laid her hand upon his arm once more, hoping he wouldn’t notice that this very mild gesture was enough to cause the pulse in her throat to leap spasmodically. Still, she didn’t feel she had any choice. This might well be her last chance. “Promise you’ll help me to convince Ross to give me the
Constant
. Please, Drake. Ross listens to you, you know. Please will you promise to try?”

Determined that this one time, she was going to look him in the eye and not blink or turn away until he did, Payton raised her gaze to meet his. It never failed to unnerve her, the unnatural blueness of his irises, so like the color of the water off the shoals of the Bahamas. The only difference was that there the water was so clear she was able to see all the way to the ocean floor. She could not—had never been able to—read what lay behind Drake’s clear blue eyes. They might as well have been black as pitch, for all she could see through them.

How he might have answered her, she had no idea, for she could not read his expression, and they were interrupted before he could reply.

“Connor?” The musical voice drifted from the open doorway, quite startling them both. Jerking her hand from Drake’s arm, Payton turned, and saw in the hallway a pretty redheaded woman in a pale blue dress trimmed with pink rosettes. Matching rosettes adorned her slippers and hair.

“I thought I heard your voice, Connor,” the woman said sweetly. “Good evening, Miss Dixon. I just had the loveliest chat with your father. He showed me the latest addition to his musket-ball collection. He’s such a dear man. I quite adore him.”

Payton managed a tepid smile. “Oh,” she said. “I’m so glad.”

To Captain Drake, Miss Whitby said, “Are you coming down, dearest? I understand your grandmother has just arrived, and has been asking for you.”

Captain Drake’s smile, which he’d seemed to have so much trouble controlling a moment before, had entirely disappeared. Now, instead of bringing out the golden highlights in his hair, the fading sunlight brought into extreme relief the lines in his face, of which, Payton noted, there were a great many more since she’d seen him last. Two particularly deep lines stood but from the corners of his mouth to the tips of his flaring nostrils. He looked, suddenly, like a man much older than his thirtieth year.

“Of course,” he said to Miss Whitby. “I’ll be down momentarily.”

Miss Whitby, however, didn’t move. “I do think we ought not to keep your grandmother waiting, my love,” she said brightly.

Captain Drake said nothing for a moment. He seemed extremely interested in the pattern on the carpet. Then, suddenly, he looked up, and pinned Payton where she stood with the full intensity of his unbearably bright gaze. “Will you accompany us downstairs, Miss Dixon?” he asked.

Payton, still a little alarmed by the transformation his face had undergone since Miss Whitby’s appearance—and completely transfixed, as always, by his stare—could only shake her head. “Um, thank you,” she murmured, through lips that had gone quite dry. “But no. I … I need a moment.”

To her relief, the captain lowered his gaze.

“Very well, then,” Drake said, and he offered his arm to the redheaded woman.

” Good evening, Miss Dixon,” Miss Whitby said very sweetly. And then the two of them turned to go, and Payton watched as Miss Whitby slipped her gloved fingers into the crock of the captain’s arm, and smiled sunnily up at him. “I imagine,” she said, “that your grandmother must be very curious to finally meet your fiancée.”

“Yes,” Payton heard Drake reply. “I imagine that she is.”

Crossing the room after the captain and his fiancée had left, Payton went to the mirror hanging above the bureau.

The tortoiseshell comb her brothers’ horseplay had knocked from her hair dangled behind her ear in a woeful manner. It had probably been there the whole time she’d been talking to Captain Drake. It had most certainly been there while she’d been talking to Miss Whitby.

Sighing, Payton reached up and tried to tuck the comb back into place. But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t get it at the same angle as Georgiana had had it. When she was done,  the comb ended up sticking out rather comically from the side of her head. Rolling her eyes, she turned away from the mirror in disgust.

Really, Payton thought to  herself. Her hair was the least of her problems. Even with her freckled and sunburned nose, her small stature and relative lack of bosom, she knew she was not, as Raleigh had so diplomatically put it, ugly. If she’d been truly ugly, her brothers would not have been so cavalier as to speak about it. But she also knew perfectly well that she looked nothing like other girls her age. She certainly didn’t look a thing like Miss Whitby, with her creamy white skin—not a freckle to be seen—and her waist
-
length auburn hair. Payton looked nothing like Miss Whitby, and acted nothing like her, either.

Take just now, for instance. Never in her life would Payton have been able to say, “Are you coming down, dearest?” to Connor Drake, and keep a straight face. Connor Drake was infinitely more dear to Payton than he would ever be to Miss Whitby—and anyone who said otherwise would get a taste of Payton’s knuckles—but she’d have sooner cut out her tongue than actually call him dearest. Of course, that might be because, had any of her brothers heard her calling their friend Drake dearest, she’d never have lived to hear the end of it.

But still, Payton didn’t think men really liked being called dear. It certainly hadn’t looked to her as if Drake had much appreciated it. At least, his face, when Miss Whitby had uttered her “dearests” and “my loves,” hadn’t changed a bit, except maybe to get a little harder and more stern-looking.

Then again, Ross never looked any different when Georgiana called him dear. But that was probably because his wife only called him dear when he was doing something of which she disapproved. Payton rather suspected that behind closed doors, Ross and Georgiana were quite different with one another—definitely different with one another, since she’d once walked into the parlor unannounced and overheard Ross calling Georgiana his little monkey , a pet name to which Payton would have had definite objections, had anyone—even Captain Drake—ever used it on her.

But perhaps, she thought, Captain Drake and Miss Whitby, like Ross and Georgiana, were different with one another when they were alone. Maybe when they were alone, Drake enjoyed being called dearest. And Miss Whitby enjoyed being called his little monkey.

The image of Captain Drake and Miss Whitby alone with one another made Payton feel a little ill, so she hastily put such thoughts out of her head.

Turning back to the mirror, Payton spread her skirt wide and fluttered her eyelids, mimicking, in a stilted little voice that was much more highly pitched than her normal tone, ” I imagine your grandmother must he very curious to finally meet your fiancée.”

Rising from the curtsy, she made a violent motion, as if she were kicking something—or someone. But the sudden movement caused her corset stays to pinch, and she immediately regretted the action, and put a hand to her hip to rub the tender spot there. “Bloody hell,” she murmured, to make herself feel better.

Judging that the captain and his bride-to-be were well down the stairs by that time, and that she could, without fear of running into either of them, descend, Payton did so, looking about her with interest. She felt a certain curiosity about the house, which she had never visited before that day. In fact, though she’d never have admitted it aloud, she’d slept little the night before, so excited had she been about their impending visit.

And, except for the fact that the master of the house was marrying a woman whom she couldn’t abide, Payton couldn’t say she’d been disappointed. Daring Park was the estate upon which Drake had been raised, where he’d lived most of his life before a disagreement with his family about his future had sent him to London to seek his fortune. The rambling, three-storied house was over a hundred years old, and filled with lovely old furniture that Georgiana assured her were all priceless antiques. This was very different indeed from the Dixon town house in London, where all the furniture had been bought new soon after Payton’s father had made his first five thousand pounds. It still looked new, since the Dixons were never at home for more than a few weeks a year, spending the rest of their time at sea.

Still, Payton quite liked the look of Daring Park. It was one of the few places on land where, she fancied, one could safely walk around barefoot and never fear stepping on something sharp.

And although she could see no telltale signs of Drake ever having inhabited it—no initials carved into the balustrade, or portraits of him hanging in the Great Hall—she could still picture him tearing about the place as a young boy,  tormenting his tutors and making his elder brother, with whom he’d never got on, cry. She liked the place all the better for that.

These were of course completely fabricated imaginings: Drake never spoke much about his childhood, which had apparently been somewhat unhappy. Still, Payton’s overactive imagination filled in what she did not know, until she had him leaping about the roofbeams overhead with the same energy he leapt about the rigging on board the
Virago
, the ship he’d been commanding for Dixon and Sons for the past half a decade, and would presumably continue to command for a decade more to come.

Not that Drake needed the job, let alone the salary. His brother’s untimely death nearly eight weeks earlier had left him a wealthy man, indeed. In fact, he needed never to go to sea again … at least, not in order to earn his keep. Whether he chose to continue sailing was entirely up to him …