Drake shook his head. Well, what had he expected her to say? Whatever else she might be, Becky Whitby wasn’t blind. She had to have noticed … Last night in the garden, she had to have guessed …
Unless—and this thought cast a cold chill over him—he was wrong about what had passed between him and Payton in the garden. That what to him had been an extraordinarily emotional, passionate exchange had been, to her, no more than an interesting test of her newly discovered ability to attract men. Was he special, or was she planning on laying her hand over the erection of every man who kissed her?
And those blasted brothers of hers were dead set on marrying her off. They were bound to be pushing her into all sorts of situations in which she might meet eligible bachelors. Who knew how many men she might be kissing in his absence? He had better, he decided, hurry up, if he intended to get back to England before that blasted girl found herself in the same sort of hot water Becky Whitby was in.
“Wait …”
For a moment, he thought Becky was going to open the door. But no, she went on, in the tones of someone to whom something brilliant had just occurred. “Wait! It’s not you she wants at all, but this boat! This stupid boat! Good God, of course! It’s all she ever talked about—”
Drake set his jaw. “I suggest,” he said coldly, through the door, “that you strap yourself down, Miss Whitby. We’re heading for choppy waters.”
Without another word, Drake turned, and headed for the wheel.
“Well,” he said, taking the spyglass from Hodges, and laying it to his own eye. “What have we got?”
“Strangest damned thing I ever did see.” Hodges spoke with his usual lack of hurriedness. “That’s a pirate vessel bearin’ down on us, no doubt about that, guns drawn and at the ready. But look over there to the south.”
Drake looked, and let out a low whistle at what he saw. “Well, I’ll be. A Tyler ship.”
“That’s what I thought. Now, I ask you, sir, why would a Tyler ship be comin’ to our rescue?”
“It’s not.” Drake calmly set aside the glass. “They’re both of ’em after us, Hodges.”
Hodges’s eyes grew round as compasses. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but while I’d pit the Constant against any ship in anybody’s fleet, I don’t think she could stand an attack from two boats, sir, comin’ at ’er from two different directions!”
“You’re quite right, of course, Hodges.” Drake nodded to the wheelman. “Turn ’er around. We’re going to have to try to outrun them.”
But even as he issued the orders for retreat, he knew it was hopeless. The Constant was the fastest clipper in the Dixon fleet, but no ship, no matter how fast she was, could outrun two full-riggers moving with the wind at their backs. He ought to have known, of course, that it was a trap, that Tyler, knowing him as he did, would have assumed he wouldn’t run frpm a fight—not a fair fight, anyway. Now he was trapped, trapped like a rat.
His only consolation was that, while the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon might be hundreds of miles away back in England, laying her hands over the erections of any man who kissed her, at least she was not here, and in any sort of danger.
For that, at least, he had to be thankful.
Chapter Fourteen
Payton lowered the glass and cried angrily, “Oh, the cowards! The cowards! Two ships! How is he supposed to beat two ships?”
“He’s not,” Raleigh informed her, taking the glass and applying it to his own face. “That’s the point.” He worked on focusing the lens. “They can’t risk letting him get away, which is why they’ve pitted two boats against his one. Ah! There he is.”
Payton, clutching the side rail, jumped up and down. “Oh, Raleigh, let me see!”
“No. And stop grabbing my arm.”
“Raleigh!”
“Aw, calm down, Pay.” Raleigh peered through the glass. “The Constant’s all right. They’d be fools to damage ’er. She’s worth more’n both those ships put together. It’s Drake I’m worried about.”
Payton didn’t dare snap at her brother what she wanted to, which was that she was worried about Drake, too. Damn the Constant! It was the man she wanted back in one piece, not the ship.
“Why, he’s got his sword out,” Raleigh reported. “I thought he lost that particular piece of steel back in that bar fight in Havana. I say, Hud!” Raleigh called back over his shoulder to his elder brother, who was stomping about the deck, preparing the Virago’s cannons for firing. “Didn’t Drake lose that blade of his in Havana last year?”
“Yes.” Hudson lifted a torch, and touched the flame to the fuse of the cannon nearest by. “But he won it back in a card game. Ready?”
“Be careful where you aim that thing,” Payton urged worriedly, inserting her fingers into her ears.
“Aw, damn, Payton. I’m not goin’ to hit your damned ship, all right?”
Damn the ship, she almost shouted. Don’t hit Drake! But before she could get the words out, Hudson yelled, “Fire!”
The cannons let out a deafening roar as they catapulted thirty-two-pound iron balls at the ship to the Constant’s port side. Only one of the balls hit home, smashing through the unidentified ship’s prow.
“I say,” Raleigh said, removing the glass from his eye. “Jolly good shot.”
Hudson bowed humbly. “Thank you.”
“Oh!” Payton removed her fingers from her ears and ran back to the rail, where she leaned out as far as she dared. “Oh, Raleigh, they’re boarding her! I can see they’ve boarded her from here.”
“Don’t worry, Pay.” Raleigh was refocusing the glass. “Connor Drake’ll never let ’em take the Constant. Leastways, not alive.”
“You ignorant boob, what do you think I’m afraid of? Give me that glass. Give it to me!”
Raleigh, keeping the glass easily out of her reach just by stretching to his full height, murmured, “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Payton, feeling as if she might burst if they didn’t make headway soon, leapt about her brother, bombarding him with questions. “What? Has he gone down? Has he gone down, Raleigh?”
“Not yet,” Raleigh said. “But you’d better duck.”
“Duck?” Payton stood there, staring at him stupidly. “Why?”
A cannonball whizzed past her and crashed, with a thunderous explosion, through the deck just a few feet behind her, splintering wood and creating a gaping, smoking hole. Payton, indignant, cried, “Why, those devils! They nearly blew me up!”
Ross’s reaction was not nearly so mild. He leapt down from the mizzenmast, where he’d been issuing orders with lightning speed, and hurled out a few more, along with some choice swear words.
“Light those cannons! Yes, all of them! We’ll blow those galley rats out of the water, see if we don’t!”
Too late. Because at that moment, something flared on the deck of the Constant. The next thing Payton knew, her world was blackened by something thick and heavy, thrown across her eyes.
“Raleigh!” she shrieked furiously. “Let me see!”
“No.” In spite of her fingernails, clawing at him frantically, Raleigh refused to remove his hands from her eyes. “It’s too awful. It will break your heart, Pay.”
Her heart in her throat, Payton finally managed to fling his hand away—just in time to see the Constant’s hull disappear in an explosion of black smoke and flame.
She wasn’t even aware that she’d begun whimpering until Raleigh’s hand settled on her shoulder.
“She was a beautiful ship,” he said mournfully. “You were right to want to command her.”
Payton’s lips were moving. Eventually, she was able to form words. “Ship?” she echoed. “Ship? Who cares about the bloody ship? Where the hell is Drake?”
They were close enough that Payton could see, without the help of a spyglass, the smoking hulk of what had once been the Constant. Its deck—what was left of it—was teeming with men, darting in and out of the thick black smoke from her hull. It was impossible to tell which m
en belonged to the crew of the Constant, which men were from the pirate ship upon which they’d just fired, and which of them were from the third ship—identified by Raleigh as a Tyler ship called, ironically enough, the Rebecca. Completely uninjured, protected from the Virago’s cannons by the hulls of both the pirate vessel and the Constant, the Rebecca was evidently standing by, prepared to take on passengers—or captives—if necessary.
“Oh!” Payton cried. “There he is! There he is!”
She could see Drake clearly now, moving about the wreck that had once been his ship, shouting orders to those of his men who’d not yet been captured or killed. The Virago was close enough now that if they didn’t drop anchor, they’d crash straight into the pirate vessel—close enough that all four of their cannons, when they went off, which they did just then, sent crippling volleys through the hull of the full-rigger between them and Drake’s boat.
But they were also close enough that the Rebecca, on the Constant’s starboard side, was able to fire off a cannonball that knocked off the top quarter of the Virago’s mizzenpost. The crew scattered to all sides as sails and rigging rained down upon their heads. Payton narrowly escaped a concussion as a large chunk of mast crashed down directly where she’d been standing, and only because, at the last minute, she leapt over the railing …
And onto the deck of the pirate ship.
Which was not, she quickly realized, where she really ought to have been, just then. It was, in fact, the direct opposite of where she ought to have been.
But, with a quick glance over her shoulder, she realized that this wasn’t the worst of her problems. The collapse of the Virago’s mizzenpost was enough of a calamity that for a moment, no one paid attention to her direction … .
And that moment was all it took to send her prow directly into the side of the pirate ship. There was an explosion of splintering wood, and some very loud, and quite distinguishable, cursing from Ross and some of his deckhands.
Now there was a three-way tie-up of boats: the Virago, the pirate vessel—which, now that she was on it, Payton could see was called the Mary B—and what was left of the Constant, while nearby floated the unscathed Rebecca.
Thrown to her knees by the impact of the two ships ramming into one another, Payton stayed where she was for a second or two. After all, she was on a strange ship. She didn’t want to appear too conspicuous.
But the crew of the Mary B seemed wholly occupied with ransacking the Constant for anything on board they could lay their hands on—and that seemed to include Miss Whitby’s trousseau, which Payton could see them removing, lace pantaloon by lace pantaloon, from the captain’s cabin in the after house. As for Miss Whitby herself, Payton wasn’t certain what had happened to her, but could only assume she had been taken, with the other prisoners, across the plank that had been thrown across the railing round the Constant’s deck to the deck of the Rebecca …
And yes, there she was, her hair a bright spot of red in all the smoke. She was being jounced along upon the shoulder of a tall man in a feathered hat, who had his arms wrapped around her hips and was conveying her on board the Rebecca —though not, apparently, against her will, since she was not struggling at all. Which hardly seemed, Payton thought, like Miss Whitby, who had always been something of a screamer …
Then Payton realized that the reason Miss Whitby wasn’t struggling was—could only be—because she was unconscious. Well, of course. Miss Whitby was, after all, a delicate flower of a woman. Wasn’t that why Payton and her brothers had felt compelled to rescue her that day outside the London inn? She was a victim. A perpetual victim, from the looks of things, because here she was, in trouble again.
Well, Payton wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. The first time she’d rescued Becky Whitby from harm, what had she gotten for her efforts? A big fat nothing. Well, actually not nothing. Becky had thanked her very nicely by stealing the love of her life. How was that for gratitude?
Besides, what did she care, whether or not Becky Whitby ended up some pirate captain’s personal prisoner, shark bait, or just plain dead? She’d been praying for something like that to happen for days—for weeks, even. And now her prayers were finally being answered. Only …
Only what if she really were carrying Drake’s baby? Payton couldn’t very well let her die, could she?
Well, could she?
Then she saw what was happening a few dozen yards away from her, and her decision was pretty much made for her. Several men—several really big men—were dragging what appeared to be an unconscious Connor Drake over the railings of the Constant and onto the deck of the Rebecca.
At least, she assumed he was unconscious. Surely he couldn’t be dead. A dead man they’d throw overboard, not drag below, which was where they took Drake.
Oh, my God, she prayed, frantically looking around to see if anyone else had noticed that Drake had been taken captive. Please don’t let him be dead. Take me instead.
Or, better yet, take Miss Whitby!
But her brothers and the rest of the crew of the Virago were still trying to get out from beneath the topsail that had collapsed over them. It was going to take them forever to get untangled from it. And by the time they did, the Rebecca and her prisoners would be long gone …
Payton didn’t actually think about what she was doing. If she’d stopped to think about it, of course, she’d never have done it.
She had just swung a leg over the splintered railing of the Constant when a very unfriendly voice growled, “Where in the ‘ell do you fink you’re goin’, eh?”
Payton turned, and saw a boy coming out of the Constant’s forward house—the forecastle of which was now in flames—holding an enormous net bag full of bread and citrus fruits. He had evidently been raiding the galley, and looked extremely annoyed at finding someone standing in his way.
“What’re you, deaf?” he wanted to know, when she didn’t answer him straightaway. “I arst you a question, boy. ’Oo are you?”
Payton looked down at herself. She had forgotten that shortly after boarding the Virago, she’d borrowed a shirt, and trousers from the cabin boy, since it was a good deal easy to move about on a frigate’s deck in pants than in petticoats. She supposed that, with her short hair—and, it had to be admitted, not very sizable chest—it might be easy to mistake her sex. Still, it wasn’t very flattering to be taken for a boy, even by a grimy lout like the one before her.
“You want I should knock that hat off you, boy?” The young man seemed quite irritated by her silence. “I’ll do it. Don’t fink I won’t.”
Payton didn’t like being threatened—at least not by someone who wasn’t that much bigger than she was. Drawing herself up to her full height, she said, “Get out of my way.”
The boy’s upper lip curled. “Why? Where d‘you fink you’re goin’?”
Payton pointed to the deck of the Rebecca. “There,” she said.
The boy dropped the bag full of food. “No you ain’t,” he said.
“Oh?” Payton eyed him. He was as tall as she was, but looked to be about fifty pounds heavier. “You think so, do you?”
“Fink so? Matey, I know s—”
But he never got to finish that sentence, because Payton’s fist connected solidly with his nose. The nose, her boxing brother Raleigh had once informed her, was the second-best place to punch a man, after the stomach. Many boxers made the mistake of striking their opponent in the mouth, forgetting how deeply teeth can cut a knuckle. Nasal cartilage, being quite thin, had the dual advantage of crumpling easily beneath the fist, and splintering quite painfully into the face when smashed.
Payton was just stepping neatly over her opponent, intent upon rescuing Drake, when she found herself seized around the waist and hauled off her feet. Suddenly, the wooden planks of the ship deck, which had been beneath her toes, were over her head, and her toes were pointing toward the gray, overcast sky.
“Little bastard,” a vicious voice swore at her. “I’ll teach you.”
>
What the gentleman—and she applied that term loosely—meant to teach her, Payton never knew, since into her upside-down world stepped an extremely large black man with several gold hoops through his earlobes, and another through his right nostril. He too was carrying a heavy sackload of pillaged foods. He did not look happy.
“Put ’im down, Tito,” he said, in a voice that sounded like monsoon thunder.
“Aw, Clarence.” Her captor, of whom she’d yet to catch a glimpse—beyond the fact that he wore boots in an extremely large size—sounded unhappy. “Look what ’e did to Jonesy.”
“Never mind that, now. Remember what the cap’n said. No captives, ‘cept his woman and Drake. Let ’im down.”
“Clarence—”
“Down, I said.”
Payton realized what Tito was about to do just seconds before he actually did it, but it was still jolting when her backside met with the hard planks of the Constant’s deck. Wincing, she rubbed her sore behind and looked up at the two men who stood arguing over her.
“I tell you, ‘e shouldn’t be able to get away wi’ doin’ Jonesy that way!”
Tito, Payton was surprised to see, was a completely bald, middle-aged white man … bald, middle-aged, and quite fat about the middle. Which might explain why he’d been dragging the carcass of an enormous pig behind him, with a heavy hook. Since he was also very tall, Payton decided he was about the biggest man she’d ever seen—at least until she got a good look at Clarence. Then she quickly amended that opinion.
“No prisoners.” Clarence shook his enormous head, and his many chins swayed pendulously. “Just Drake and the cap‘n’s woman. You know we ain’t got enough food for more. Wha’ wi’ the Mary B sinkin’ fast, we’re goin’ to have to feed their crew as well as ourn. We’ve barely got enough to last us till Nassau as it is …”
Payton, hearing for a second time that the intention of the attack on the Constant had been to capture Drake and Miss Whitby—whom the pirates referred to, oddly enough, as their captain’s woman, not Drake’s, which she thought odd—knew that she couldn’t possibly let them leave her behind. Who was going to look after Drake? Not a single one of her brothers had yet cleared the deck of the Virago. They were still trying to untangle the cannons from beneath the mainsail.
An Improper Proposal Page 17
