The swells, she saw with relief, as she bobbed along with the waves, were nothing. The sea was gentle and still. Land, in the form of one of the many islands Drake had mapped, was not far. Only that morning, she had seen some far-off humps on the horizon.
They were home.
Well, almost.
Swimming to the side of the longboat, Payton pulled herself up into it, dripping like a mermaid. Drake, who’d regained partial consciousness only briefly, lay dead to the world at the bottom of the boat. Won’t he be surprised, Payton thought, with pleasure, when he wakes up, and finds himself far, far away from Sir Marcus, and the Frenchman, and the odious Miss Whitby?
She did not remind herself that the odious Miss Whitby was now his wife. She kept that thought firmly out of mind, in the same place she kept her fear that the midwatchman on the Nassau Queen might notice their departure. There was no point in worrying about it. There wasn’t a blessed thing she could do about either thing.
Except, of course, pray.
Which, after she laid down the knife and picked up an oar, she began to do with fervor.
Chapter Twenty-three
Drake’s mouth and throat were parched. He could never remember having been so thirsty.
He’d been tied to the mast before. It had been long ago, of course, back in his youth, when he’d set sail under a young captain Sir Henry had only recently hired. The man hadn’t been fit to command, but, to his credit, Sir Henry had had no way of knowing that. There wasn’t really much of a way to judge how a man whom one had only met before in a comfortable parlor would act once he was out on the high seas. This one had gone fairly mad, punishing his men for the slightest offenses. Drake’s had been that he’d dropped the captain’s shaving water. For that, he’d been tied to the mainmast for a day, and most of an evening, until the captain had gone to bed and the first officer had cut Drake loose. He’d suffered such severe sunstroke that he hadn’t been able to move for an entire day. His skin had blistered, everywhere except where the ropes had held him. Even his lips, chapped from the sun and surf, had swelled to twice their normal size, making it excruciatingly painful for him to sip the water that was eventually offered to him.
Still, Drake didn’t remember that he’d been quite this thirsty, all those years ago. Of course, back then, he’d been considerably younger, and able to tolerate hardship better. He was in no condition to do so now.
There would be no sympathetic mate to cut him down this time. He was going to die upon this mast.
That might have been all right—he wasn’t afraid to die. It might have been all right, if he hadn’t had Payton with him. He couldn’t die and leave Payton alone. Someone had to look after her. He didn’t know what Tyler intended to do with her. On the whole, he suspected he planned to kill her. He couldn’t, after all, let her live. She’d only return to England and tell everyone that Connor Drake had been coerced into his marriage with Becky Whitby—that his father-in-law had been the one who’d murdered him. No, Tyler couldn’t afford to let that happen.
But he wouldn’t necessarily have to kill her to keep her from talking. There were worse ways to keep people silent than killing them. Particularly women, white women like Payton, who fetched high prices at the sort of markets men like Tyler frequented—markets that specialized in the peddling of human flesh. England had enacted her antislavery laws some time ago, but not every country had followed suit—nor had every shipping company pledged, as Dixon and Sons had, not to transport human chattel.
He couldn’t let that happen. Not to Payton.
But what could he do? He was tied here, weak as a kitten already from the burning sun. What was happening down below? What were they doing to Payton now? He’d kill them, kill them all if they harmed her. He’d meant it when he’d said it, though Marcus had laughed. He’d done a lot of laughing that afternoon, as his daughter and Drake had been declared man and wife. It was a mockery of a marriage, Drake knew, but what else could he do? He knew Tyler had no honor. He knew he’d kill Payton—or worse—whether Drake agreed to marry Becky or not. But he had, at least, to hope that if he gave them what they wanted, they’d go easy on the girl. It was all he could do.
And now he was dying. He knew he was dying, because he was beginning to hallucinate. That was what happened on the mast. First came the hallucinations, then the convulsions, and then, finally, death. His hallucinations, at least, were not unpleasant. He was dreaming that he was lying on cool, soft sand, in sweet, delicious shade. It was really quite a powerful image. He wished he’d begun hallucinating sooner. He could hear birdsong overhead, and smell the sweet scent of lemon blossom. Lemons! They grew plentifully in the Bahamas. When he brought a cargo of lemons back to the British Isles, he was guaranteed an enthusiastic welcome by almost every hostess in London. They were a most sought-after delicacy. The gift of a lemon was a precious one. And oranges, given to children at Christmastime, were a treat treasured above chocolate. How nice it would be, if he could lose himself completely in this hallucination before the fits started. If only he really were lying in the shade on a Bahamian island, inhaling the sweet fragrance of fruit trees, listening to the trills of parakeets …
The hallucination was so strong that when he flexed his fingers, he could actually feel the cool sand shift beneath them. This was not, he decided, the worst way to die. His lips, when he finally summoned up the strength to lick them, even tasted moist, as if water had been wrung into them recently. Fresh water, too. Water taken from a stream, not from a barrel full of the brackish stuff.
This, he realized suddenly, was no hallucination. This was real.
It was difficult—the hardest thing he’d ever had to do—but he managed to peel his eyes open. For a moment, he could only blink confusedly. He couldn’t understand what he was looking at. It ought to have been the deck of the Rebecca, or, in the event that his head had fallen back, as it appeared to, the mainsail. But what he saw was neither. It was a tangle of tree branches. Tree branches in full leaf. Beyond them yawned a cloudless azure sky. The branches were heavy with fruit. Round, yellow fruit. Lemons.
He was lying beneath a lemon tree. It appeared to be midafternoon. And he wasn’t hallucinating at all.
Nor was he dead.
Good God. He was alive.
He was alive, and he was no longer on board the Rebecca. Rising up to his elbows—he was stretched out on his back beneath the shade—he looked around. To his left appeared to be jungle. He saw a tangle of vines and fruit trees, banana, mango, and lime. To the right, much of the same. Not far off sat a longboat, apparently pulled from the surf, although not far enough to keep high tide from snatching it back again. Looking down the length of his body, he saw the sea, the aquamarine waves curling in a froth of white upon a cream-colored, palm-tree-dotted beach.
Looking down the length of his naked body.
That’s right. Naked. He wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.
That realization sat him up fast enough. His clothes were gone. His shirt, he realized, had pretty much disintegrated on board the Rebecca. But his trousers had been intact, not to mention the fact that he had, last time he’d checked, been wearing underclothes.
Now both were gone.
He couldn’t hear much above the rumble of the surf and the twitter of the birds overhead. But it seemed as if from somewhere behind him was the faint but unmistakable sound of running water. That, at least, would explain the presence of a hollowed-out gourd a foot or two from him, filled to the brim with what appeared to be fresh water. Whether this was a gift from the gods or something left by a passing native girl, Drake didn’t pause to think. Instead, he reached for the gourd and, raising it to his lips, drained it of its contents.
It was the best water he’d ever tasted. Cool and sweet, it immediately soothed the dryness in his aching throat, and quenched his powerful thirst. When he lowered the gourd from his face, he felt like a different man entirely.
Enough of a different man to wonder just where in t
he hell he was, and how in the hell he’d gotten there.
He wasn’t alone. That was certain. Besides the gourd, he noticed now that there were the remains of a fire a few feet away. A small fire, but a fire nonetheless, and one that he certainly hadn’t set. An ivory-handled dagger lay in the sand beside the charred hole. The dagger threw him. He didn’t know anyone who owned a lethal-looking weapon like that.
But the fire. The fire looked a bit like the kind Payton constructed, when she was of a mind to build a fire. He’d watched her argue with her brothers in the past over the kindling tower versus the kindling plus wood tower, Payton insisting fires burned better if the kindling wasn’t immediately smothered underneath pounds of driftwood, her brothers swearing the opposite held true. The fire before him had an odd appearance, as if someone had built it, spent a few hours trying to light it, then, exhausted, promptly fell asleep before adding the wood.
That someone, he thought, with a suddenly unsteady heartbeat, could only be the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon.
That thought was enough to send him staggering to his feet. His nakedness forgotten, he turned around in a circle, beginning to recognize the terrain around him. Of course. They were on San Rafael Island. He’d pointed it out to Payton himself once, on his map. One of the smaller islets in the Bahamian archipelago, it was not only the most secluded, but also one of the few that boasted its own fresh water source, instead of depending on the storms that regularly battered the tropics to fill its lakes. Because San Rafael was surrounded on all four sides by coral reefs, it was approachable only by longboat. Any larger craft would have their hull torn out instantly by the shoals. In fact, one could see the masts of ships whose captains had had the ill judgment to try to approach the island sticking up out of the sea, a perch for gulls and cormorants, while the rest of the vessel sat, fathoms below, on the reef.
She’d done it. He didn’t know how. But she had done it, just like she’d said she would.
And then his feet began to move. He ducked to avoid low-hanging branches and vines as he made his way toward the center of the island, from which he’d heard the sound of running water. His feet were bare, but he didn’t notice the sharp rocks and twisted roots that cut into him as he hurried over them. All of his concentration was on what lay ahead.
And then he burst through the last of the palm fronds and lemon-tree branches and vines.
The native Bahamians—those who had not yet been converted to Christianity—considered San Rafael Island a holy place. Their name for it was unpronounceable, but translated, it meant, more or less, Island of the Gods. It was for that reason—and, of course, the dangerous reefs surrounding it—that the island was unpopulated. Once a year, the natives gathered to leave sacrifices there—mostly fruits and vegetables, and the occasional goat—but the rest of the year, San Rafael was empty.
Which was a shame. Because once one got past the reefs, and the thick jungle that grew over most of the island, it really was the most beautiful place imaginable. A spring bubbled up in the center of it; fresh, clean water from deep beneath the earth. It came bursting out through the top of what might once have been a small volcano, but was now a small flower-covered mountain, all of twenty feet above sea level, the highest point on the island. The water burbled up through the crest of this zenith, then flowed down its side until it splashed into a deep spring. The banks surrounding the spring were rocky, and mercilessly without shade, but with water that cool and clear, what did lack of shade matter? It was possible to stand on the rocks beneath the precipice and allow the full force of the waterfall to shower over one, a sensation that was, Drake happened to know, one of the most enjoyable on earth—which was probably the reason why the native gods had forbidden their worshipers from experiencing it: in his worldwide travels, Drake had noticed that gods often forbade that which was most pleasurable.
But the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon was clearly ignorant of Bahamian religious law. Either that, or she was purposely and flagrantly defying it. Because as Drake cleared the thick jungle of growth he’d been fighting his way through, his gaze was drawn at once to the waterfall.
The force of the water wasn’t very strong; it really was more of a steady trickle than a cascade. Which was how he was able to see, quite clearly, the young woman standing beneath it, stark naked, and apparently not a whit self-conscious about it.
Well, Drake supposed that if he didn’t know he was being observed, he’d be unself-conscious, too. But he’d encountered a lot of naked women in his day, and he had never seen any who’d been quite as … well, happy to be nude was the only way he could think to put it. Payton Dixon was quite obviously extremely pleased to be without her clothes.
Taking into account that this was undoubtedly the first opportunity she’d had to bathe fully undressed in over a month, he could understand her enthusiasm. Still, there was no denying the fact that before him stood a young woman who was supremely pleased with—and confident in—her own body. Payton had always been more comfortable in men’s clothes than in women’s, and in that moment, Drake saw why: she was perfectly contented with the way she looked. Why would someone who felt so comfortable in her own skin feel the need to stuff it into a pinching, restrictive corset, and hide it under layer upon layer of petticoat?
Then again, he had to admit he was glad she’d done it. He never would have noticed her bewitching figure if she hadn’t shown it off in that ballgown and corset.
But there was no need for her ever to don a corset again, as far as he was concerned. In fact, he was going to do everything in his power to convince her to wear men’s clothing from now on. There wasn’t any need to let anyone else know that Payton Dixon’s body was perfection, the very essence of all that was womanly. Let the rest of the world exist in blessed ignorance of those small but perfectly shaped breasts; that narrow waist; those long, lean thighs; the enticing patch of brown curls between those thighs. He knew it, and she knew it, and that was enough. He anticipated that he was going to have enough problems winning her—let alone keeping her—without inviting competition.
Perfectly ignorant of his presence—he’d seen whores who were a good deal more modest, even when thinking they were unobserved—Payton raised her arms to massage the cool water into her scalp, throwing her head back to reveal the long column of her throat. She was slender as a reed, built on a much smaller scale than most women, yet there was no denying that her curves, though subtle, were very much there. She turned toward the spray, presenting him with an unimpeded view of her bare backside, and he found that he had to sit down, of a sudden, on a nearby stone. Those buttocks, which he’d noted through her trousers were pleasingly round, came together in a perfect heart shape below her small waist. He was going to have to rethink his plan of making her wear men’s clothing from this day forward. It would not do for that backside to be revealed to anyone but him, and trousers would certainly show it off disgracefully.
Flour sacks. He was going to have to see that from now on, she wore only flour sacks. That was the only possible answer. Anything else would be too revealing.
As he sat there, unable to take his eyes off her, he became conscious of an unpleasant dampness beneath him. He looked down and saw that he was sitting on his drawers. They had been, near as he could tell, thoroughly washed, then laid out to dry upon the rocks surrounding the spring. Glancing around, he recognized his trousers, then Payton’s shirt and vest, similarly strewn in the sun to dry. Well, that explained the mystery of his disappearing breeches. Then he raised an eyebrow, and turned his gaze back toward the bather on the rocks. So the little minx had undressed him. Saved his life; undressed him; then done his laundry. Here was a woman worth far more than her weight in jewels.
He was ruminating on this fact when the woman in question turned around and spotted him. Pushing some wet hair from her eyes, she peered at him as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
Then she let out a bloodcurdling scream, and jumped into the spring.
&nb
sp; Drake sat where he was, the scream echoing his ears. The shrill sound had frightened a flock of parrots from the treetops. Squawking indignantly, they took flight, their wings flapping noisily. Payton, who’d disappeared beneath the water’s surface, reemerged suddenly. Wiping water from her eyes, she blinked up at him.
“Drake?” she asked breathlessly. “Is that really you?”
He looked down at himself. “I believe so.”
“Oh, my God.” She was treading water. The pool was only six or seven feet deep, but Payton hardly stood higher than five. Her feet could not find purchase on the rocky bottom. And if she thought the water opaque enough to hide her nakedness, she was sadly mistaken. He could see far more, as a matter of fact, than before, since she had to kick her legs open to stay afloat.
“When I turned,” she said panting, “and saw you there, I had water in my eyes, and I didn’t recognize you, and I thought … Are you all right?”
He looked down at himself again. “I conscientiously believe so.”
“Because you didn’t stir.” She was paddling around the pool, looking for a place where she could climb out without hurting her bare feet on the rocks. She was talking every bit as fast as she was paddling. “I was so worried. You never stirred all night. Are you sure you’re all right?”
He grinned. He simply couldn’t help it. Never in his life had he felt such an immense attraction to a woman. It was absurd, because she wasn’t making the slightest effort to entice him. But that only served to remind him—as if he needed reminding—of how very different she was from all the simpering, flirtatious females he’d known before. Payton Dixon wouldn’t have known how to flirt if her life depended on it. And simper? Forget about it.
An Improper Proposal Page 26
