She was coming downstairs again, having realized a little belatedly that she was more than just tipsy, but downright drunk—how was she ever going to remember how to dance when the time came? Georgiana had spent hours teaching her the latest steps, and now it was all going to be wasted—when a gravelly voice arrested her on the landing. She looked down to find Drake’s grandmother waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
“Well,” Lady Bisson said, as if there’d been no interruption of the conversation they’d been having in the drawing room. “What are you going to do about it?”
Payton stared at the old woman. Earlier in the evening, she had taken Georgiana aside and shared with her the mortification of her interview with the woman who’d turned out to be Drake’s grandmother.
“I shouldn’t worry about it,” had been Georgiana’s surprising response.
“What? Georgiana, I told her I hate her grandson’s future bride! And you say I shouldn’t worry about it? Don’t you see what I’ve done?”
“Yes,” Georgiana had replied mildly. “You were honest with a woman who was very dishonest with you. If she chooses to share what you told her with Drake, or with Miss Whitby, then that’s her business. You can always deny you said it.”
“You mean lie?”
“Yes, lie. You’re quite a convincing liar, Payton.” Georgiana’s smile had been knowing. Too knowing for Payton’s comfort.
That conversation had been very nearly as bad as the one Payton had had with Lady Bisson. But now, if she wasn’t mistaken, the old lady was looking for another one. Whatever for?
To torture Payton, no doubt, for having maligned her future granddaughter-in-law.
“Do?” Payton echoed unintelligently. She thought Lady Bisson must be referring to the wrongfully incarcerated women of the Sandwich Islands, and said, “Well, I don’t think there’s much anyone can do, of course, except lobby for reforms—”
“Not about that, you little fool!” Lady Bisson rapped her cane upon the floor. “About the fact that my grandson is marrying a woman whom you, as you put it, hate.”
“Oh,” Payton said, taken aback. “Well, nothing.”
“Nothing?” Lady Bisson looked significantly surprised. Leaning on her cane, she watched as Payton came all the way down the stairs, then stood looking down at her—Drake had obviously inherited his height from his grandmother, who, despite her age and infirmity, was quite an imposing figure. “That’s hardly the answer I expected to hear from a woman who has been around the world not once, not even twice, but, I understand, seven times.”
“There’s nothing I can do.” Payton remembered not to shrug. “He chose her.” Quite suddenly, it was all she could do to keep her voice from throbbing. “He loves her.”
“Does he?” Lady Bisson’s voice did not throb, or even tremble. It was as even and cool as ice. “Do you believe that, Miss Dixon? Do you really believe that?”
Payton, confused, looked about the hall for help. None was forthcoming. A few of the servants were pushing the suits of armor closer to the walls, to make way for the dancing to come later, and in the corner, the orchestra was tuning up, but no one offered Payton any answers.
What was wrong with this woman? Why did she keep pestering Payton about her grandson? It was Miss Whitby she ought to be bothering about it, not Payton. Miss Whitby was the one Drake was marrying. Payton tried to remember if Drake had ever mentioned a grandmother before, and dimly recalled a conversation in which he’d admitted he had one, but that she lived in Sussex and seemed to favor his brother over him. This had to be the Sussex grandmother, then, his mother’s mother. Now that Drake’s brother was dead, she seemed to be concentrating the full of her attentions on her only remaining grandchild.
“If he doesn’t love her,” Payton said finally, “then why is he marrying her?”
“The very question I ask myself,” Lady Bisson said, giving the marble floor a rap with her cane. “Connor Drake is a man of independent means. A virile man, in his prime. Why should he marry a woman he doesn’t love, or even seem to like? She hasn’t anything at all to recommend her—”
“Oh,” Payton interrupted. “But she’s very beautiful.”
“Nonsense!” Now Lady Bisson revealed she didn’t need the cane at all, by raising it and waving it in Payton’s direction, so violently that Payton ducked, and just in time, too. The stick came perilously close to her head. “You’re just as pretty, and you’ve got money! Twenty thousand pounds your father’s settled on you for the day you marry, that’s what I heard. And five thousand a year, after he passes. And you inherit an equal share in the business with your brothers.” Payton raised her eyebrows. Lady Bisson had heard a lot for someone she hadn’t met until a few hours earlier. “So why isn’t he marrying you? That’s what I want to know. Why isn’t he marrying you?”
Since that was so very close to what Payton had been asking herself all evening, she could only murmur, “I really think we ought to be getting back to the table, my lady—”
“What kind of answer is that? That’s no answer! It’s up to you, you know. You’re the only one who can put a stop to it.”
That did it. Payton had had enough. She stamped her foot hard on the marble step and said, not caring a bit if Lady Bisson thought her impertinent, “I shall do nothing of the sort! He wouldn’t be marrying her if he didn’t want her. And since he wants her, I, for one, will do nothing to stop him from having her. In fact, I’ll do everything I can to see that he gets her.”
“Oh, my.” Lady Bisson’s voice dripped unpleasantly with sarcasm. “You mean you love him too much to deny him something he wants?”
Payton glared at her. “Something like that,” she said. It was strange, but she didn’t feel the slightest hint of embarrassment at admitting to this woman that she loved her grandson. It didn’t seem a bit unnatural. It was a fact, plain and simple. Payton could just as easily be admitting she had a touch of quinsy. And like quinsy, she’d be getting over it one day. It might not be until she was a hundred years old, but she’d get over Connor Drake someday. See if she wouldn’t.
“How self-sacrificing of you, my dear.” Lady Bisson was sneering now. “You’re a fool, you know. Self-sacrifice never got anyone anywhere. It certainly won’t get you the man you love.”
Payton stood her ground. “Since the man I love doesn’t want me, that’s a moot point, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I see. You don’t want him unless he wants you, is that it? Don’t you know by now that half the time, men don’t know what they want until it’s too late?”
“What do you know about Drake?” Payton knew she was being unforgivably rude, but she didn’t care. “You hardly know him at all. You always liked his brother better—”
“Well, of course I did. His brother stayed home. I never had a chance to get to know Connor. He left home when he was still just a boy, and then he was always away at sea. But he’s a man now, and I know a thing or two about men—a lot more than you do, for all the time you’ve spent adrift at sea with them. And I’m telling you, Miss Dixon, he doesn’t want that woman. Marrying her will only make him unhappy. And if you love him as much as you say you do, then you’ll stop this travesty of a wedding from taking place.”
Payton hadn’t the slightest idea how to reply to this extraordinary statement. It seemed to her that Lady Bisson must have gone mad. Because Payton had no clearer idea of how to stop Drake from marrying Miss Whitby than she had of how to stop the moon from pulling out the tide.
Thankfully, Payton was saved from having to make any sort of reply since the doors to the dining room suddenly opened, revealing the subject of their conversation himself.
“Ah, Grandmama,” he called out “There you are. Come back to the table, would you? Ross Dixon is preparing to make some kind of speech. He says it’s dreadfully important, and that you’ve got to hear it.”
Lady Bisson, after fixing Payton with one last, disapproving stare, stalked back into the dining room. Payton followed mo
re slowly. At the door, Drake, who’d waited to escort her—and not his grandmother, she noted, with a certain muzzy confusion—bent down to whisper, “I’m so sorry. Was she harassing you?”
Payton, too shocked at being noticed in such a manner to dissemble—and much too aware of the proximity of his starched shirtfront, all she could see from the abashed angle at which she hung her head—nodded.
“I was afraid of that.” Drake’s fingers were very warm as he grasped her arm, just above the elbow, and guided her back to her chair. “You’ll have to forgive her. She was deeply upset by Richard’s death—it was so sudden. I don’t think she’s recovered sufficiently. I really ought to have waited before …” His voice trailed off, but Payton knew he meant that he ought to have waited for a sufficient period of mourning for his brother before marrying.
“Well,” he said. They had reached her chair. On either side of it, her brothers were tossing candied cherries at one another. Drake did not appear to notice; he was too deeply engrossed in their discussion. “But that can’t be helped, now, can it?”
Payton didn’t want to cause a scene, not right there in front of everyone—and not so soon after that last scene she’d just caused. But still, she was sufficiently irked—and, if truth be told, had consumed enough champagne—to demand, in a voice that wasn’t quite steady, “Why? I don’t understand, Drake. Why are you in such an all-fired rush to get married?”
But Drake only reached out and touched the tip of her nose. “Don’t,” he said, and this time, his smile was neither brittle nor forced, “worry your little head about it, Payton. Ah, look. Your brother’s making his toast now.”
Payton wanted to scream that she didn’t care what her brother had to say, that Ross could take his bleeding toast and shove it up his arse, for all she cared. But she happened to look up and notice, just at that moment, Miss Whitby’s gaze on her. Miss Whitby’s eyes were as blue as her future husband’s, but lacked the warmth that his so often held—when they were not skewering one with their intensity. At that particular moment, Miss Whitby’s gaze was icy cold, no doubt because Drake had had his finger on someone else … but on someone else’s nose, for pity’s sake. The man was forever pressing down the tip of her nose, as if she were four bloody years old!
But that didn’t seem to make any difference to Miss Whitby, who was leveling an extremely waspish look in Payton’s direction.
“Attention.” Ross had stood up, and was banging on his wine goblet with a spoon. He was so drunk that he’d begun to sway gently on his feet. Georgiana was gazing up at him a little trepidatiously, as if at any moment she expected him to come toppling down on her.
“Your attention, please. Attention.” The diners quieted somewhat, and turned their faces toward the eldest Dixon son. All except for Miss Whitby, of course. She continued to stare at Payton. “Thank you. Thank you. I’d like to take this opportunity to say, if I may, that on behalf of my brothers and I—I mean, me—oh, and my father—”
“And Payton,” interrupted Raleigh.
“Oh, and my sister, Payton. On behalf of all us Dixons, we—”
“No, no, no.” Sir Henry, not quite as drunk as any of his children, pulled on his eldest son’s coattails with enough force to bring him plunking back down into his chair, where he sat, blinking confusedly. “That’s not the way to do it. Here, let me.” Sir Henry took the glass from his bemused son’s hand and stood up to make the toast himself.
“A little less than fifteen years ago,” he began, with a solemn bow toward Drake, who’d taken his seat at the head of the table and was gazing fondly at his employer, “a stunted little whelp of a lad came to me, lookin’ for a job. I felt right sorry for the li’l weevil—” This was met with general laughter, at which Sir Henry blinked a little confusedly. Still, he carried on. “So I made ‘im a cabin boy. Since then, he’s grown into one of the finest sailors I’ve ever known—no, I should say one of the finest men I have ever known. Why, he can ride out a sou’wester with the best of ’em, and tack up a topsail in no time flat. Not only that, but he’s an unerring navigator, the only man I know who’s actually managed to render a reliable map of those treacherous islets and reefs that make up what we call the Bahamas—”
“That’s the only reason we like ‘im,” shouted Hudson drunkenly. “For ’is damned map!”
“Finally,” Raleigh announced, with a hiccup, “we’ll have an edge up over that blighter Marcus Tyler!”
“Marcus Bloody Tyler,” Hudson corrected him.
Sir Henry sent his two younger sons an irritated glance. “Connor Drake is a man I’m proud to have in my employ,” he continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “A man I would be proud to call son. And it’s for that reason that I would like to offer Captain Drake a full partnership, equal to that of my own boys, in Dixon and Sons—”
A general gasp went up from the guests gathered round the dining table. And not only the guests seemed astonished. A quick glance at Drake revealed that he too seemed stunned.
But he could never have been as stunned as Payton was when she heard her father’s next words.
“In addition, as my way of thanking him for his years of faithful service, I’m hoping Captain Drake will accept, as a small token of my gratitude, the Dixon ship Constant, of which he may take immediate command, as it is docked in Portsmouth, waiting to take the captain and his bride on their honeymoon to Nassau—”
If anyone thought it at all odd, a shipping merchant offering a baronet partnership in his business, as well as a boat he could have purchased five times over with a fortune the size of which Drake had inherited, one wouldn’t have known it from the way the people gathered round his dinner table behaved. Sir Henry’s announcement was greeted with cheers and applause.
Except, of course, from the youngest Dixon. Payton sat where she was, completely and utterly stunned.
Her ship. Her father had just given Connor Drake—who was not even a blood relation—full partnership in the family company. And her ship.
And not just any ship, either, but the Constant, the newest and fastest ship in their fleet. The ship that by rights ought to have been Payton’s, the one she’d asked for not once, not even twice, but several dozen times over the past few months.
The ship that—except for an act of nature, over which she had no control, that had determined that she would be female instead of male—would have been Payton’s when she turned nineteen.
For a moment, she simply sat there, dazed. When she did finally manage to tear her gaze away from her father, she swung it accusingly toward Ross. That traitor. He’d done it. He’d always said he would, but Payton had never believed it. Even when the gowns and other assorted fripperies for her coming out had started arriving, she hadn’t believed it. Her brother would come to his senses soon. She knew he would. He had to. Payton Dixon wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s wife. She was cut out to be one thing, and that was commander of the Constant.
But he’d done it. He’d actually gone ahead and done it. Skipped over her as if she didn’t even exist and given what was rightfully hers to his friend.
Shifting her gaze toward that friend, Payton found Drake’s attention already focused on her. While everyone about him was shouting congratulations and raising their glass, Drake alone sat without a smile. For the first time, Payton thought she could read what was behind those inscrutable blue eyes of his. And when his lips parted, and he mouthed two words at her, she knew she had not read his expression wrong. I’m sorry, he said.
The worst of it was, regret was not what she’d read in his eyes. Instead, she saw an emotion Payton could not abide—not when it was directed at her.
Pity.
Well, that was enough. The man she loved was not only marrying someone else, he had also managed to take away the only other thing in her life that she had ever wanted—besides him, of course. And he had the gall to sit there and pity her!
She couldn’t stand it. She would not sit there and endure it, not for
a minute more. Rising, Payton threw her balled-up napkin onto the table and stalked away.
But not before she’d caught a glimpse of the triumphant look on Miss Whitby’s face.
Chapter Five
“No,” Payton said, for what she was sure was the hundredth time.”I will not come downstairs, Georgiana. I haven’t any desire to be in the same room with my brothers right now, thank you. In fact, if I had my way, I wouldn’t even be in the same county—the same country—as any of them. But since you won’t let me go back to London tonight, I guess I’ll just have to stay up here in dry dock until I rot.”
Georgiana stared down at her intractable sister-in-law, who two hours earlier had flung herself across the canopy bed in the guest room to which she’d been assigned, and had refused ever since to get up.
“Really, Payton,” Georgiana said. “While I can understand your disappointment, I think you’re being too hard on Ross. You can’t have honestly expected him to give you a boat for your birthday. I mean, not really.”
Payton, sprawled on her stomach, oblivious to the fact that her skirt was hiked up to her knees, pinned her brother’s wife with a disgusted look. “Not a boat. A ship. And yes, I really did,” she said. “Hudson got a ship for his nineteenth birthday. Raleigh got a ship for his nineteenth birthday.” She struck a pillow with her fist. “Can you really blame me for thinking maybe, just maybe, there was some justice in the world, and that I might expect a ship for my nineteenth birthday?”
“But Payton, really.” Georgiana shook her head. “It’s just a boat, after all.”
“It’s not just a boat. It’s the Constant.” Payton could not think of a way to impress upon her sister-in-law the importance of this fact. “Don’t you see? I deserve her, Georgiana, after everything I’ve done for this company. And Ross went and gave her to Drake. It’s not fair.”
An Improper Proposal Page 7
