An Improper Proposal

by Patricia Cabot

  In a flash, the dress Becky wore was over her head. Beneath it, she was clad in a rather surprisingly daring pair of pantaloons, and a hand-embroidered silk camisole. “Here,” she said, practically throwing the shift at Payton, as if she feared she might change her mind at any moment.

  Payton calmly donned the smock. It was still warm from Becky’s body, and hung on Payton’s smaller frame like a sack. She knew she did not look either buoyant or radiant in it.

  And that, she had decided at long last, was all right.

  Becky, of course, was a vision of loveliness in her borrowed clothes—the pelisse fit her to perfection, its high waist hiding her pregnancy, and the turquoise of the silk brought out all the ivory tones in her skin. Skin that was, unfortunately, hidden a moment later by the muslin veil. Looking at her, Payton knew that any woman would have been able to tell the difference between the woman who’d gone into the stall, and the woman who was exiting it, in a second. But none of the people they had to fool were women, so that was all right.

  Payton went to the pallet Becky had abandoned upon her entering the stall and lay down upon it, making sure her back faced the door. She was about to call to the guard, “Please let me out now, sir,” when Becky held up a hand to stop her.

  “I just have to know,” she said in a lilting whisper. “Why?”

  Payton had known the question would be put to her eventually. The problem was, she was as unprepared to answer it now as she had been in the wee hours of the night, when the scheme had first occurred to her, and she had asked herself the very same question. Why, indeed? Why go to so much trouble for a woman she had despised for so long?

  “Really,” Becky whispered. “I’ve got to know. Why are you doing this for me?” Then, before Payton could open her lips to make any sort of answer, Becky went on breathily, “It’s because he’s in love with me, isn’t it?”

  On the pallet, Payton leaned up on her elbows and said, “What?”

  “He’s in love with me.” Payton could see only the faintest outline of Becky’s head beneath the veil, and couldn’t see her face at all, but she saw the hat move, and could only assume the older girl had nodded. “I knew it. He put you up to this, didn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “Why, Captain Drake, of course.” Becky laughed, a sound that had thrilled many a man’s veins, but that Payton nevertheless found hard to discern from the neighs of the occupants of the adjoining stalls. “He was always in love with me. I suppose he couldn’t stand to think of me locked up in here, and put you up to this. And you’re such a stupid little thing, you agreed.” The veil swayed from left to right. Becky was shaking her head. “Poor, poor Payton.”

  Payton smiled. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t funny, really, except that … except that, well, it was.

  “That’s right,” she said to Becky Whitby. “That’s exactly right.”

  The veil jerked. Becky was tossing her head in triumph. “I knew it,” she said. And then she was calling for the guard to open the door.

  Payton had plenty of time, during that long afternoon she spent imprisoned in Becky Whitby’s stead, to reflect on the reasons behind what she’d done. Was it, she asked herself, because of Mei-Ling’s assertion that women must be supportive of one another? Or was it because she hadn’t liked to see a pregnant woman in jail? Or was it because of the expression the Frenchman had worn that morning she’d brought his breakfast, when he’d been so concerned for the health of his mistress and their unborn child? Payton hadn’t known then the identity of that mistress—she had seen only that Lucien La Fond, the self-proclaimed scourge of the South Seas, was a man every bit as violently in love with someone as she herself was in love with Connor Drake. And could a man who loved like that be all bad?

  Then she’d shaken herself. But of course he could! He was Lucien La Fond, the man who had killed Drake’s brother! What had she done? Oh, what had she done?

  By the time she was finally discovered—she feigned unconsciousness when the guard opened the door to bring in the prisoner’s supper, and then, when roused, claimed that the wicked Miss Whitby must have struck her from behind, and stolen her clothes—she had a headache that was every bit as painful as if she really had been struck from behind. But her headache wasn’t from any blow delivered by Miss Whitby, unless one counted the blow to Payton’s conscience over what she’d done. What was Drake going to say when he found out? He would despise her—if he didn’t hate her already, for refusing to see him all week.

  It wasn’t until the magistrates finally—and reluctantly—released her, frustrated by her lack of answers to their many questions, that Payton walked out into the evening air, saw her brothers waiting for her, and knew. She knew, right then and there, exactly why she’d done it.

  Now her only problem was how—how in the world—was she going to explain it to Drake?

  It was only Hudson and Raleigh who came to retrieve her from the offices of the magistrates. When she asked where Ross was, they only glanced meaningfully at one another, and then Hudson replied lightly, “Well, when he’d found out you’d gone, and we didn’t know where, he started drinking—”

  “Because of the shock, you know,” Raleigh put in. “He never expected you’d disobey him quite so … blatantly.”

  “Right. And then when the messenger arrived a little while ago, to tell us you were down at the jailhouse—”

  “Well, he was a little angry.”

  Payton, seated between her two brothers in the chaise, glanced from one to another. “How angry?” she asked resignedly.

  “Well,” Hudson said, after giving the question serious consideration. “Angry enough to try to put his fist through a wall.”

  “Right,” Raleigh said cheerfully. “Only he forgot we aren’t in England. The walls here are made of stone, not plaster. He’ll be all right in a few weeks, I expect.”

  Payton nodded. She’d known Ross would have to have been seriously incapacitated to send these two in his stead—and to send them in an open carriage, no less. Payton, still dressed in Miss Whitby’s jail smock, was quite an object of interest to passers-by, many of whom pointed and said, quite audibly, “That’s her! That’s the one what was dead, and came back again!”

  Payton had never before realized quite how far the city jail was from her family’s villa. But it was far enough for Hudson to comment, as they drove along. “I expect your head must be smartin’ a bit, from where she hit you.”

  Since Payton’s head was smarting, she didn’t think it a lie to reply, “Yes, a bit.”

  “What’d she hit you with, anyway?” Raleigh wanted to know. “Horseshoe?”

  Payton craned her neck to look up at the night sky. “I suppose,” she said.

  “What balderdash.” Raleigh snorted. “Really, Pay, you’re goin’ to have to come up with something a bit better if you don’t want Ross chawin’ you to bits. Hit you with a horseshoe. Pshaw!”

  Hudson, holding the reins to the matched set of bays that drew them, agreed. “He’ll ask to feel the bump on your noggin,” he said. “You better come up with a damned good explanation, Pay, and right quick.”

  Miserable, Payton looked away from the sky. “I suppose I could just tell him the truth.”

  “The truth?” Raleigh rolled his eyes. “What for? You already told ’im the truth once, and look where it got you: locked in your room for a week.”

  Payton sighed. “I expect you’re right. Was … Does Drake know?”

  Neither Hudson nor Raleigh answered right away. Payton, sensing something was wrong, looked from one to the other and repeated her question, with a growing sense of unease. Finally, Hudson replied, “If he don’t know, then he’s the only one. Every man, woman, and child on this island knows that this afternoon, the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon—”

  “Otherwise known as the young lady what was dead,” Raleigh inserted helpfully.

  “—was involved in a jail break that resulted in the escape of a wanted felon.”

&nb
sp; “Wanted or wanton?” Raleigh quipped.

  Ignoring him, Payton asked, “What exactly did Drake say? When he found out, I mean.”

  “Not much.” The chaise had pulled up alongside the front of the villa, and Hudson laid down the reins. “He was the one who found you gone, you know.”

  “What?” Payton gasped in astonishment. “But how? I thought Ross wouldn’t let him anywhere near the house!”

  Raleigh clambered down from the vehicle. “Don’t be an ass, Pay,” he advised. “You know Ross. He can’t stay mad longer’n a mosquito can stay in one place. Drake’s been here all along, waitin’ for you to stop actin’ like such a girl. When he found you gone, he went straight back to his house, thinkin’ sure that’s where you’d gone. When you didn’t show up after a bit, he went out lookin’ for you. I don’t expect it occurred to him to look in the jailhouse, however.”

  “He was here when the messenger arrived,” Hudson put in. “He’d stopped in to see if we’d had any word yet. When he heard what happened—about you havin’ gone to visit Miss Whitby in jail, and her boltin’ like she did, he …”

  “He what?” Payton gripped the side of the chaise, blinking up at him in the soft lamplight reflected from the villa’s windows.

  “He left,” Hudson finished, with a shrug.

  “Left?” Payton cried. “Left for where?”

  “Well, how should I know? ‘Snot my turn to look after ’im.” Hudson climbed down from the chaise, then turned to offer Payton a hand.

  “But how … how did he look?”

  “Disgusted’s the only word I can think of. I got the feelin’ he knew.”

  “Knew what?” Payton was so distracted, she didn’t even ask herself why her brother was helping her from the carriage, an act of chivalry he had never before performed for her benefit.

  “Well, that poor ol’ Miss Whitby didn’t exactly get away all on her own.” Hudson shot her a meaningful glance. “Now did she?”

  Payton swallowed. Good Lord. This was worse than she’d ever expected. Drake, disgusted? Disgusted by her? Well, disgusted by what she’d done, anyway. And why shouldn’t he be? She’d helped a woman who’d played an integral part in his brother’s murder to escape from prison! How had she expected him to feel? Delighted? A man like Drake—a proud man; a man’s man—wasn’t likely to look upon what she’d done with any sort of understanding. Fury, maybe. But not understanding.

  “Oh,” she said, under her breath. She tried to think of a swear word appropriately awful enough to describe her feelings just then, but all she could come up with was, “Dear.”

  She’d made, she realized, yet another bloody mess of things.

  Chapter Thirty

  Sleep was a long time in coming that night. Not that Payton leep was a long time in coming that night. Not that Payton wasn’t exhausted. Although she hadn’t exerted herself physically in any significant way, she went to bed as tired as she’d used to back on the Rebecca, when her limbs would fairly ache from the labors she’d performed during the day. She supposed she’d done quite a bit of emotional laboring throughout the day, and that might have counted just as well.

  Still, tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. How could she sleep, knowing her life was over? Because it was. She hadn’t needed Ross to tell her so, although he had, roundly and savagely, the minute she’d come through the front door. The surgeon had been there, placing a splint over her brother’s broken hand, so that might have had something to do with Ross’s foul mood. But there was no denying that his accusations were founded in truth, however hurtfully he hurled them at her. She was a fool—a double-damned one, just as Ross said. It was no good, Sir Henry’s happy greeting of her, and Georgiana’s warm embrace. Ross was right. Payton Dixon was a fool. What else could she do, but go to bed?

  Maybe, Payton thought to herself. Maybe in the morning, things would be better.

  But she didn’t see how. Not really. Not unless Drake forgave her. But how could he? From the very beginning, she had done nothing but interfere in his life. From stopping his wedding to getting him practically killed by her brothers, she had made his life a living hell. Granted, she had saved his life, back on the Rebecca. And he had seemed to have had a pleasant enough time on San Rafael. But other than that …

  Other than that, she had pretty much systematically destroyed his life.

  Well, it would all stop now. It was true that she still loved him. She would never stop loving him … could never stop loving him. But she could stop seeing him. She could stop interfering in his life. She could go back to England and have her season out and marry Matthew Hayford and settle down and have babies, the way her brothers wanted her to. Forget about Drake. Forget about the sea.

  Forget about her heart.

  It was just after Payton had decided that she would sooner jab a whaling hook through her foot than ever be able to forget about Drake that she heard an unfamiliar sound. Or, rather, a familiar sound, but a sound that was out of place. Sitting up, Payton peered through the darkness of her bedchamber, and saw, through the glass panes in the French doors to her balcony, a dark silhouette. Good Lord! Someone was trying to break into the villa!

  Then, her heart hammering, she realized it wasn’t a thief at all. It could only be Drake. Of course it was Drake. Who else had such a large, imposing shadow? But what would Drake be doing, climbing up onto her balcony and worrying her door like a burglar?

  He wanted something. An explanation, most likely. But maybe … just maybe … he wanted her!

  That thought alone sent Payton flopping back against the pillows, feigning sleep with as much theatrical energy as she’d feigned unconsciousness, back in Miss Whitby’s jail cell. Well, she couldn’t let him think she’d been lying awake, worrying about him, could she?

  She heard the doors open finally—she hadn’t locked them—and then footsteps—cautious, surreptitious—approached her bedside. She had time to ask herself if she should let her eyelids flutter gently open, the way Miss Whitby’s had, after she’d fainted in the church on the day of her wedding, or if she should continue to feign sleep for a while. And then a huge hand, its grip one of iron, clapped hard over her mouth, and she forgot all about feigning anything.

  Her eyes flew open—there was no fluttering about it—and she saw that the person who’d come in through her balcony doors wasn’t Drake at all, but rather, Sir Marcus Tyler.

  But not the Sir Marcus Tyler she’d last seen in the hold of the Rebecca. That Sir Marcus had been clean-shaven and elegant, coolly sarcastic and dry-witted. This Sir Marcus looked as if he hadn’t seen a razor in months—and, in fact, he had not, razors not being provided in the jail in which he’d spent the past eight weeks, for fear the inmates might use them upon one another, or themselves. His hoary face was pressed just inches above her, and there was nothing the least bit elegant about the way he smelled—quite pungently male. In addition, his fine clothes were grimy with dirt and tattered from constant wear. It wasn’t a wonder that, following his escape from jail, he’d been able to wander the streets of Nassau without being discovered, since he looked no different from many a weary sailor who, after months out at sea, staggered down the gangplank looking for wine and women.

  But it wasn’t wine or women Sir Marcus wanted.

  It was revenge.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, in a horrible, rasping whisper. His breath was rather horrible, as well. “If it isn’t Miss Payton Dixon, back from the dead. I couldn’t believe it when I heard, but then, I should have known. You’re rather like a cat, you know, Miss Dixon. You seem to have any number of lives. Only allow me to assure you, this one is quite definitively at an end.”

  It was impossible for Payton to reply, with his hand pressed so tightly over her mouth. But she didn’t need words to answer him, not when she still had use of her extremities.

  She swung one of those up with lightning quickness, intending to plunge her fingers in her assailant’s right eye, another one of the defensive tacti
cs Raleigh had taught her. She hadn’t counted, however, on Sir Marcus’s speedy reaction. He seized her hand an inch within reach of his face.

  “Tsk-tsk, little cat,” he said chidingly. “It’s not a bit ladylike to scratch—”

  He broke off as Payton sank her teeth, as hard as she could, into the hand that pressed against her mouth. With a grunt of pain, Sir Marcus jerked his fingers away, then brought them back again before Payton could move, this time holding something shiny and sharp against her throat. She grew very still, feeling the prick of a knife-point against the place in her neck where her pulse beat.

  “That’s right,” Sir Marcus said. “It’s a knife. You see, Miss Dixon, when you helped my Rebecca to escape, she was so moved by the sweetness and generosity of the gesture that she felt compelled to repeat it. Her methods of setting me at liberty from my prison were a little different from yours, but then, Rebecca’s a bit more skilled than you are where men are concerned. There are some very happy guards down at the jailhouse tonight, I must say. How happy they’ll be in the morning, when their employers realize I’ve gone, I can’t say, but—”

  “It’s really very unsportsmanlike of you to kill me, Sir Marcus,” Payton couldn’t help interrupting, “after I helped your daughter the way I did.”

  Sir Marcus, she could see, even in the darkness of her bedroom, was grinning, his teeth yellow amidst his beard. “Unsportsmanlike? How charming you are. You know, in a way, I feel I’m almost going to regret killing you.”

  “Why do you have to kill me at all?” Payton asked. “I give you my word I’ll never say anything about how you had Lucien La Fond kill Sir Richard, or how you tried to kill Drake—”

  Sir Marcus looked, and sounded, quite regretful when he said, “Ah, but you see, Miss Dixon, the word of a woman doesn’t mean so very much to me. I’ve found that, for the most part, your sex is not to be trusted. So you’ll pardon me, but before I can leave the island, I must insure that should I ever again be brought to trial, the key witnesses against me will be regrettably unavailable.”