An Improper Proposal (41 page)

“No,” Sir Marcus said. “You’re the one who’s caught. After all, I’ve got a knife.”

And he raised that knife. Payton saw it glitter, the whole of Sir Marcus’s arm silhouetted against the blue light seeping through the French doors. Then another arm shot out, and a hand seized Sir Marcus by the wrist. The knife trembled for a moment or two in Sir Marcus’s fingers … and then it dropped, with a clatter, to the floor. A second later, Drake had tackled the older man. There was a struggle, during which Payton could see nothing but two dark shadows that suddenly became one …

And then the shadow crashed into the French doors, splintering them apart, sending glass flying. Moonlight flooded the room.

And Payton, who up until then hadn’t been able to find her voice, let out an ear-splitting scream.

A second later, she had flung herself at Drake’s back. Gripping his shoulders, she cried, “Drake, don’t! Don’t, you’re killing him!”

Because that’s what Drake seemed to be doing—fulfilling the promise he’d made back in the hold of the
Rebecca
, that he’d kill Sir Marcus, when he got the chance. Straddling the older man, Drake had wrapped his fingers around Tyler’s throat, fingers that had gone bloodless with the amount of pressure they were exerting. In a few seconds, he might snap the older man’s neck with the grip of his hands alone. Even in the uncertain light of the moon, Payton could see that Sir Marcus’s face was turning blue.

Drake was like a man possessed, however. He didn’t seem to hear her, didn’t seem even to be aware of her presence. He would not release his hold …

Until Payton’s family, roused by her scream and the sound of breaking glass, came racing into the room. It took all three of her brothers to pull Drake off Marcus Tyler, and when they finally did, everyone—with the possible exception of Drake—waited with bated breath as Ross bent down to check the unconscious man’s throat. A collective sigh of relief sounded at Ross’s terse assertion, “He’ll live.”

To Payton, the rest of the night passed in a sort of blur. Someone sent for the magistrates, who eventually came and placed Sir Marcus, who’d regained consciousness a few minutes before their arrival, in chains. He did not struggle at all. He seemed almost grateful to be taken away again. Payton supposed that was because he had finally figured out that while Connor Drake walked the earth, jail was the safest place he could be.

Someone else sent for the surgeon. Payton was surprised when she learned he hadn’t been summoned in order to tend to the injured Sir Marcus at all, but for her. She was even more astonished when she looked down and saw that she had bled all over the carpet from the cuts she’d sustained when she’d run across the broken glass to stop Drake from killing Sir Marcus. She hadn’t felt these injuries at all, but she certainly felt them very well indeed while the surgeon dressed them.

No one, she discovered later, sent for Lady Bisson, but she came anyway, and in her nightcap, looking extremely put out at having been roused so early in the morning, and for what she called a ridiculous reason. She berated her grandson for taking part in fisticuffs like a common footpad—Payton heard her doing so, out in the hallway—and then announced that she was going back to bed. But before she left, she insisted upon seeing Payton, who’d been put in Hudson’s room, with orders not to try walking for several days, to give her feet a chance to heal.

But all Lady Bisson did when she got into the room was glare at Payton, and not a bit kindly. “I thought as much,” the old woman said obscurely, but with feeling.

And Payton, who hadn’t any idea what Lady Bisson could be talking about, but who was certain that all of it, every little bit of it, had been her own fault, quite suddenly—and extremely loudly—burst into tears.

This seemed to satisfy the old lady no end, and she left the house with a contented smile on her face.

But Lady Bisson was the only one who greeted Payton’s tears with a smile. Everyone else stared at her in complete incredulity—particularly her brothers, who had rarely, if ever, seen their sister cry. It was Georgiana who finally managed to rouse them all, but not into giving Payton their sympathy. No, Georgiana made them all exit the room, leaving Payton alone …

Or so she thought. It wasn’t until the door had clicked firmly shut behind her sister-in-law that Payton saw that one person, and one person alone, had remained behind.

Drake.

She’d known he was there. She’d known all along that he was sitting in one of the wicker chairs beside the bed in which she’d been placed. He’d been sitting there for a while, she realized, the whole of the time the surgeon had been mending her feet, not moving even during his grandmother’s upbraiding. She could see, through tears she was helpless to control, that he looked a good deal different than the last time she had seen him, which was back on San Rafael Island, when her brothers had knocked him senseless. The bruises were still there, but they were fading. He had incurred no fresh ones during his fight with Sir Marcus.

He had obviously been to a barber since their return to civilization. His beard was gone, his golden hair neatly trimmed so that instead of hanging down to his shoulders, it was now even with the high collar of his shirt. And he had most certainly been to a tailor, as well. She did not recognize the blue morning coat he wore—rather rumpled now, due to his encounter with Tyler—but the fawn-colored breeches were of the same cut as all his others—far too snug for her peace of mind.

To make matters worse, she could see that he was looking at her, his expression very serious, indeed. His silver-blue eyes looked brighter than ever in his deeply tanned face, and since the sun was just coming up in the glass doors that led to Hudson’s terrace, he had to squint a little in order to see her, revealing the tiny creases at the sides of his lids that showed whenever he laughed.

It was exceedingly difficult for Payton to keep herself from leaping up and throwing herself into his arms right then and there. She longed to seek comfort in his embrace, to feel his heart be
at
beneath her cheek, to smell him, to feel his warmth. Only two things kept her where she was: her pride, and her extremely sore feet.

After a while, she stopped crying and, feeling ashamed of herself, was able to say,  in an unsteady voice, “I—I’m sorry.”

Drake’s expression did not change. “Sorry for what?” he asked.

“For everything.” Payton reached up to wipe the tears from her face with the lace cuff of her nightdress. “I’m sorry I let Miss Whitby go. Only I didn’t think … I didn’t think she’d do anything like … like …”

“Like help her father to escape?”

“Yes. I just … I just felt so sorry for her.”

Now his face showed some emotion: it showed disbelief.

“Sorry for her? After what she did?”

“I know,” Payton said. “I know. Only I kept remembering that morning on the
Rebecca
, in the hold, when Sir Marcus hit her. You didn’t see it, Drake, but he hit her very hard across the face. She fell down, but then she jumped right back up again, as if it had been nothing. Drake, if anybody had ever hit me like that, I probably would have—well, I don’t know what I’d have done. But I wouldn’t have been able to get up so soon, that’s certain. And that’s when I realized that the reason Miss Whitby was able to get up like that was because she was used to being hit that way. She’d probably been hit like that every single day while she was growing up. And that’s why she’s the way she is, why she did the things she did. She isn’t evil, Drake. She’s just never known kindness. She’s never known decency. She doesn’t know what those things are, because no one’s ever shown them to her. It’s no wonder she’s the way she is, really, if you think about it.”

“And so you thought it might be wise,” Drake said dryly, “to release someone like that back into the general population.”

“Well, no, that’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking that maybe if someone, just once, showed her some kindness, she might …”

He quirked up an eyebrow. “Change?”

“Well.” Payton could feel that her cheeks were starting to burn. She was so ashamed! She knew she was a fool. She hadn’t needed Lady Bisson to tell her so. “Well, that’s what I thought, anyway. I realize now it was stupid. Of course she wasn’t going to change. The very first thing she did when she got out was send her father to kill me.”

“No,” Drake said. There was something thoughtful in his tone, and she looked at him curiously. “No, I don’t think Miss Whitby sent her father to kill you. I’m sure she urged him not to, as a matter of fact.”

Payton smiled a little. “Really? Do you think so, Drake?”

“Oh, not because she’d learned anything from your example, Payton. But because killing us was risky. It might get him in even more trouble. And Miss Whitby, if she is anything, is practical.”

Payton stopped smiling. “Oh,” she said. She wasn’t certain what she’d been expecting, when she’d realized Drake had stayed behind after the others had left, but she certainly hadn’t thought he’d treat her like this. So … coldly. So indifferently.

But why shouldn’t he? She certainly deserved it. She took a deep, trembling breath. “I suppose you hate me now, don’t you, Drake?”

“Would you please,” he said tiredly, “and for the last time, call me Connor? And no, I don’t hate you. I think helping Becky Whitby to escape was one of the stupidest things you’ve ever done, but I certainly don’t hate you for it.”

“One of the stupidest things I’ve ever done?” she echoed. Her feelings of hopelessness were forgotten as her temper flared. “And just how many stupid things, in your opinion, have I done?”

“Well, following me onto the
Rebecca
was one.” He held out his hand, and began to tick points off on his fingers. “Not leaving it when I told you it was another. Running across a carpet of glass in bare feet. Now that was impressive. But I would have to say, out of all your idiotic stunts, refusing to marry me was by far the stupidest.”

She blinked at him. “But … but I didn’t want you to have to … I mean, you’d already been forced into one marriage, and I didn’t want—”

He shook his head. Really, she was the stubbornnest, most contrary woman he had ever known.

“First of all, Payton, no one forced me into my decision to marry Miss Whitby—not the first time around, anyway. I was marrying her of my own free will, and you were quite right back on board the
Rebecca
, when you suggested that I was doing so because I needed a wife and she—well, she seemed good enough. I made the decision to marry her, you understand, before I fully understood what you meant to me—”

What he meant, Payton thought to herself, was that he’d made the decision to marry Miss Whitby before he happened to notice how well Payton looked in a corset. But she decided to let the statement pass without comment.

“And secondly,” Drake went on, “how could you ever think, after everything we’d been through together, that I would ever consider spending the rest of my life with anyone but you?”

Payton blinked at him some more. “It—it’s just,” she stammered. “It was just that after I saw you lying there, in the sand, after Ross had hit you, I just—”

“You just wanted to punish him for it,” Drake finished for her. “And by refusing to marry me, you succeeded admirably. But don’t you think, Payton, that your brothers have suffered enough?”

She wasn’t certain she understood. “Do you mean … do you mean that you still want to marry me?”

He pushed himself out of his chair suddenly, crossed the room, and dropped down to sit beside her on the bed. Reaching out, he took one of her hands in both his own, and flipping it over, kissed the place where her pulse beat.

“You know,” he said to her wrist, “you’re a very difficult woman to love, Payton Dixon.”

She swallowed. “I don’t try to be. Only I … well, I like having things my own way.”

“I noticed that.” He looked down at her, and his eyes were brighter than she’d ever seen them. It made her feel breathless just to look at them.

Her gaze was on his mouth, which was just a few inches from hers, and so she didn’t see the mischief in his gaze. “That’s not a very good trait,” she said, “for a wife.”

“No,” he said, reaching out to lift one of her russet curls from the pillow beneath her head. “It isn’t.”

Payton, although she found it was quite difficult to keep her head about her while he was so close, playing with her hair, was nevertheless determined to make him see the error of his ways.

“A wife who could never mend your clothes, or run a household,” she said. “Really, Drake, on land I’m pretty well useless.”

“Useless?” The fingers Drake had been running through her hair dipped suddenly to close over one of her small breasts. Gasping at the sudden contact, Payton raised startled eyes to meet his.

“You’ve never struck me as useless, Payton,” Drake said, his fingers moving lightly over the soft flesh. “Actually, I can think of any number of things at which you’ve proved quite useful—”

So saying, he lowered his head and, through the thin batiste of her gown, delicately tasted the nipple his fingers had aroused. Payton nearly bucked from the bed, she was so startled—not so much by the way his hot mouth felt on that extremely sensitive area, but by the boldness of the gesture, which she found brazen in the extreme: he was licking her, in broad daylight, in her brother’s bedroom …

“Stop it,” she said, glancing furtively at the door, to reassure herself that it was shut.

“Stop what?” Drake asked, all too innocently.

“You know what.” Payton, suddenly overwhelmed with feelings of warmth, pushed back the sheets that covered her, revealing long legs bared from the thighs down, since the hem of her nightdress had become twisted round her hips.

Noticing this, Drake lost no time in sliding his free hand between those slim thighs, before Payton, her cheeks blazing, could adjust the gown. Really, she hadn’t meant to provoke him—not at all! But when she made a movement as if to snatch away from him, Drake rose up suddenly. The next thing she knew, he’d lowered his heavy body between her legs, effectively cutting off all escape routes.