An Improper Proposal

by Patricia Cabot

  And it was too bad, he supposed bitterly, that she wasn’t. Otherwise, what had happened just now might never have occurred. Lord, how he wished what had happened just now had never occurred … He wished the whole day had never occurred.

  Who, he wondered furiously, had put a corset on Payton Dixon? That sister-in-law of hers, no doubt. If it hadn’t been for her, he—and every other man at Daring Park that weekend—might never have noticed that the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon had grown into a woman … and not just any woman, either, but the most damnably beautiful woman he’d seen in a good long while … and that included those beauties they’d encountered in Tahiti.

  And yet not beautiful, because there was something about Payton Dixon’s looks that defied conventional beauty. Certainly by Western standards, Becky Whitby was the more strictly beautiful of the two, with her graceful height, alabaster skin, and long auburn hair. Payton’s attractiveness lay in the way she held herself, the confidence with which she stepped, the graceful strength in her every movement. It was in her inability to conceal what she was feeling, the way her emotions were right there, in those enormous hazel eyes, for anyone to see. It was in the blunt frankness, the intolerance for artifice, with which she responded to everyone, from the lowliest housemaid to his own admittedly intimidating grandmother. Payton Dixon might be intimidated, but she would never be bullied.

  He wished he could say the same of his future wife.

  Still, there were men who admired women like Becky Whitby. Lord, what was he thinking? He himself had admired Becky Whitby immensely, and not just because of her beauty. There was something undeniably appealing about a beautiful woman who was so helpless, so wholly incapable of taking care of herself, so in need of the supportive arm of a man upon which to lean. Drake, like Hudson and Raleigh Dixon, had been powerfully drawn to Becky Whitby. She had aroused in him a desire to protect, to shield her from the dangers and hardships in the world, the way one might wish to shield a child.

  But that had been before the start of this infernal fever. The fever had changed everything. Now he couldn’t help wondering if childlike helplessness was really what he wanted from a wife. Did he actually want to spend the rest of his life with someone he was going to have to coddle and protect? Wouldn’t it be infinitely preferable to share his life with someone who could go through it with him as an equal partner? A lover, yes, but also a friend, to whom he, in turn, could go to in times of need for support and advice.

  This was not, he knew, the sort of relationship most married men had with their wives. It was not the sort of relationship he had ever suspected might exist … until recently. Most men married anticipating that they would have to support their wives, both financially as well as emotionally, for the rest of their married lives. Marriage was recognized by neither the common populace nor the law as a partnership between two equals. Nor, Drake supposed, ought it to be, under most circumstances.

  But those circumstances had never before included a woman like Payton Dixon.

  It was a fever. He didn’t know what else it could be. He’d contracted any number of diseases in his journeyings around the globe, fevers and agues that had very nearly killed him more than once. But this … this wasn’t like any of those. It was a slow-burning fever that seemed to get hotter every time Payton Dixon drifted into his line of vision. It defied explanation. No physician in the world could diagnose its exact nature, let alone prescribe a cure. He could only suffer …

  And suffer some more. In silence. Impotent silence.

  Because he’d made his bed. Or rather, his bed had been made for him. And all he could do now was lie in it.

  But it wasn’t that simple. When was it ever? Because instead of simply lying down, like the dead man he was—the dead man he had to be, to her—he’d gone and kissed her.

  He couldn’t just have walked away. He couldn’t just have left her there. Oh, no. Not Captain Connor Drake, baronet and newly appointed full partner of Dixon and Sons Shipping. No, he’d had to go and kiss her. It was no use making excuses, either, like that the moonlight had gone to his head, or that she’d been crying—Payton Dixon, whom he’d never seen cry. Well, except for once, when she’d been stung by that Portuguese man-of-war. No, he’d known full well what he’d been doing. Just as he’d known full well that his was the first mouth to ever touch hers.

  Who did he think he was fooling? He’d relished the knowledge, just as he’d relished her reaction, which he’d known, as he’d never known with any other woman, was purely instinctual … How could it have been anything but? Payton Dixon was too ingenuous to dissemble.

  It wasn’t until she’d laid her hand so boldly over his erection that he’d come to his senses. Her interest in that had been as genuine as the ardor with which she’d responded to his kiss. Which was probably why he’d kissed her in the first place. Somewhere, deep down inside, he’d had to prove to himself that he was wrong, that he wasn’t making a mistake marrying Becky Whitby. He’d had to prove that as appealing as Payton Dixon might be in her scanty ballgown and upswept hair, she was still just a child, still not fully a woman.

  Well, he’d proved it, all right. Proved he was completely wrong, that she was every inch of her a woman, a woman like no other he’d ever encountered in his life. A woman who had a very good idea of what she wanted, and had made it perfectly clear that what she wanted was him.

  Well. It served him right. It served him right that all these years, the woman of his dreams had been right there, right there at his side, and he hadn’t noticed, not until it was too late.

  Far too late.

  He buried his head in his hands.

  “Connor?”

  The soft, lilting voice sent him straightening up again, as quickly as if someone had prodded him in the back with a knife point. He saw her coming toward him along the garden path. He stood up, slipping his hands in his pockets to hide the evidence of his arousal that still hadn’t completely waned.

  “Becky,” he said pleasantly. “Is everything all right?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.” Becky Whitby pushed a straying curl of auburn hair from her forehead. Her skin glowed in the moonlight. Her step was as light as the spray of water from the fountain behind him. “Everyone is wondering where you’d run off to. You keep disappearing.”

  “I’m sorry.” God, it seemed like all he ever did these days was apologize. “I needed some air.”

  Becky raised a delicate eyebrow. “Did you stain your coat?”

  He stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”

  She pointed behind him. “Your coat. It’s soaking, you know.”

  He looked, and saw that the coat he’d wrapped about Payton’s shoulders had fallen half in, half out of the water. He retrieved it. “Stupid of me,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “No.” Becky smiled at him. Her smile was gentle. “I can see that. Connor …”

  “Yes?”

  “You needn’t go through with it, you know.” Now the smile was not only gentle, but brave. “I want you to know that. If you want out of it, there’s still time. I could go away …”

  He glared at her. “And live on what? You won’t take my money. How would you survive?”

  The smile wavered, just a little. Still, she thrust out her chin and said, “I’d get by. I always have.”

  For one moment—for one wild, miraculous moment—he let his imagination roam unchecked, and actually entertained the notion of calling off the wedding. What did he have to lose? Nothing. Nothing at all. His grandmother had made it clear that she’d be more than willing to weather the social stigma such an action would necessarily incur. And he’d be a free man. Free to do what he chose, go where he chose … court whom he chose.

  But no. If he called off the wedding, he’d be considered worse than a cad, regardless of the truth behind the reasons why. No one, not even a family as eccentric and unconventional as the Dixons, could afford to be seen with him, let alone keep him in their employ, not i
f they wanted to continue beating out their chief rival, Tyler and Tyler Shipping, for those valuable commercial accounts.

  And, more importantly, Ross Dixon would never allow his little sister to be seen in the company of a man who’d left a bride at the altar. They were best friends, it was true, but even friendship had its limits.

  No, as far as Payton Dixon was concerned, Drake was a dead man, whether he married Becky Whitby tomorrow morning or not.

  “No,” he said, as politely as if he were declining a second helping at the table. “That’s all right. I think we’d better go through with it, just the same.”

  There was no way he could miss the relief that crept into her voice, the flush that seeped into her cheeks, as she responded, “Oh, I’m so glad. I’ve had such ideas on how we might decorate this old place. You know, bring it up to date. It’s dreadfully fusty, you know, Connor.”

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her that after tomorrow, she’d never see Daring Park, fusty or not, again. He’d let that wait until after the wedding. After all, it wouldn’t do to have her backing out of it, and going about, telling tales.

  “Of course,” he said. “Now, hadn’t you better get back inside? It’s bad luck, I understand, for the groom to see the bride before the wedding, and it’s past midnight, you know.”

  Becky’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she cried. “You’re right! Good night, then, darling.”

  “Good night.”

  She lifted her skirts and darted back the way she came, a light and graceful figure in the half-darkness. Drake stood where he was, and watched until she’d disappeared into the house. Only then did he exhale, and lift his face to the night sky.

  How he wished, as he’d done a hundred times already that day, that they had, none of them, ever met Becky Whitby. How he wished he were standing at the wheel of the Constant, the rolling deck beneath his feet, the cool winds of the South Seas on his face.

  She’d forget him, he knew. Oh, not for a while. Women did not, he thought, ever forget their first kiss. But there’d be other kisses. No one who looked at Payton Dixon could be insensible to that. By next month, perhaps, she’ll have forgotten, in the rush of new beaus she was bound to attract.

  It would take a century for him to forget her. If he ever could forget a woman who could kiss like that.

  And who could deliver such a purposeful right hook.

  It might not, Drake decided, be such a bad idea to have a drink.

  He went to find his comfort in a bottle, since he knew he’d find it nowhere else.

  Chapter Nine

  Payton cracked open an eye and saw that the grey light of morning was seeping in through the window casement. She’d forgotten to draw the curtains the night before and had neglected to close the window, and now tendrils of thick morning fog crept into her room, making everything—most especially her bedsheets—a little damp.

  Payton yanked on those bedsheets, and, with a groan, brought them up over her head. It was morning. And not just any morning, either. The morning of Drake’s wedding.

  And the morning after she’d made such a perfect ass of herself.

  Huddled in a cocoon of sheets, Payton squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force herself back to sleep. She hadn’t slept at all well. She’d spent half the night, it seemed, trying to find a comfortable place to lay her head. She had pounded the soft pillows into every imaginable position, and it hadn’t done a bit of good. She had even dragged half her bed clothes down to the floor, and tried sleeping there, for a change. After all, she’d slept well enough on board the hard deck of many a ship on nights it had been too hot to sleep in the foc’sle.

  But it didn’t do any good. It wasn’t that the bed was uncomfortable, or the floor any more or less so. It was because her mind was too full to sleep. Her mind too full, and her heart too heavy.

  It hadn’t been exactly edifying, finding out that she was such a fool. Certainly, it was something she’d always suspected, but to have it thrust in her face as dramatically as it had been the night before … well, it was enough to keep her awake for a few solid hours, wishing there was some way she could undo the damage. If only, she kept thinking, she could go back to that moment right before she’d climbed down from the window. Knowing what she did now, she’d never have left her room. Granted, that meant she’d never have been kissed by Connor Drake. But at this particular point, she no longer cared about that.

  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.

  All 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 b
ride. 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 gravelly 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.