An Improper Proposal (10 page)

“Oh,” he said, upon seeing his wife. “There you are.” He pushed the door open further and revealed a shirtfront completely covered with a dark brown, glistening stain.

“Aha!” Payton sat up. “No more’n you deserve, you stinkin’ lump of hardtack.”

Georgiana gasped. “Ross! Whatever happened?”

“It’s not blood.” Payton’s brother began peeling off his evening jacket. “It was Hudson. He threw a bowl of chocolate cream at me. I think he intended it for Raleigh, but I got in the way.”

“Good God.” Georgiana sprang from the bed, and went to help her husband out of his evening wear. Her face was tight with annoyance. “Really, Ross, you’ve got to speak to them. They’re going to ruin Payton’s chances of ever finding a suitable husband with their foolish antics. Someone has got to do something.”

“I’ve already thought of that.” Ross held out his arms while his wife’s nimble—and sober—fingers flew over the studs that held his shirtfront closed. “I’m sending them both on the Far East run. By the time they get back, Payton’ll be engaged.”

“What?” Payton climbed down from the bed. “What are you talking about? You promised I could go on the next Far East run! First you take away my ship, and then you take away my run?”

Ross looked over his broad shoulder at her. “It was never your boat,” he said calmly. “I can’t think what on earth ever led you to believe it was. And as for the Far East run, you can’t go. Georgiana says you’ve got to drop anchor in London until you find a husband.”

Payton let out a stifled scream. “For the last time, I don’t want a husband!”

“Payton, darling.” Georgiana wrenched the stained shirt from her husband’s enormous frame. “Don’t shout so. We discussed this. You’re going to stay in London with me and find a nice viscount to marry. Maybe a duke, if we’re lucky.”

“I don’t want a duke!” Payton declared. “I want—I want—” She broke off, shocked at herself. Good Lord, what was happening to her? She seemed to be coming unglued at the seams. She had practically admitted—and in front of one of her brothers, no less—who it was she really wanted.

“Payton, I know what you want, darling.” Georgiana spoke gently. “But you know you can’t have it.”

“Why?” Payton demanded.

“You know why, darling. It’s why we’re here.”

“But that’s what I don’t understand.” Payton shook her head until both her hair combs came out, this time. “Why is he marrying her?”

“Are you two,” Ross asked curiously, “talkin’ about Drake?”

“Yes,” said his wife, exasperated, at the same time that Payton shouted, ” No!”

Ross let out a snort. “I thought,” he said, “it was bloody well obvious why he’s marryin’ ’er.”

“Ross,” Georgiana said warningly.

“No,” Payton said. “I’d like to hear this. Why is he marrying her, Ross? Is it because of her looks? Because of her sweet disposition? Because all she ever says is ‘Yes, dear,’ and ‘No, dear,’ and ‘Anything you say, dear’? Well, I’d like to know what’s so bleeding great about that! If you ask me, it’s bloody damn well boring!”

“‘S’got nothing to do with all that,” Ross said disgustedly. “I thought it was obvious. It’s because—”

“Ross!” Georgiana cried, her fingers flying to her cheeks.

“—she’s carryin’ ’is brat.”

Payton blinked. She did not think she could have heard her brother aright. She thought he’d said the word “brat.” But surely that wasn’t accurate. He must have said “rat.”

But “rat” didn’t make any sense. Why should Miss Whitby be carrying Drake’s rat? Drake didn’t even have a rat. He didn’t especially like them, although he had never, like her brothers, killed any with the heel of his shoe, preferring, like Payton, to let the shipboard cats take care of the problem.

He must have said “brat.”

And yet that didn’t make any sense, either.

“Brat?” she echoed.

Georgiana flashed her husband an aggrieved look. “Really, Ross. I asked you not to—”

“Well, why shouldn’t she know?” Ross, shirtless, shrugged. “She’s nineteen, for pity’s sake. And if you’re going to be shovin’ ’er out into the marriage market, then she’d better bloody well get an idea of how these things work. Besides, it’s not like Payton’s exactly unfamiliar with the facts of life. Mei-Ling taught ’er all about ’em. Didn’t she, Pay?”

Payton was still too stunned to make any sort of reply, so Ross went on casually. “Well, you remember what happened at our wedding breakfast, don’t you, Georgie? How Payton so impressed your sisters by tellin’ ’em that if they took a sea sponge and cut it up and soaked it in some muckety-muck or another, and then stuck it up their—”

“Ross!” Georgiana had turned a delicate shade of umber.

Ross shrugged, then grinned down at his little sister. ‘Too bad you didn’t impart that little bit of information to Miss Whitby, eh, Pay?”

“Ross. Really.” Georgiana turned her concerned gaze on Payton. “Payton? Are you all right?”

Indignant at the chilly look his wife had shot him, Ross demanded, “What the hell did I do? Drake’s the one who couldn’t keep his trousers buttoned, not me.”

Suddenly, Payton felt extremely warm. It was midsummer, true, but up until then the house had seemed pleasantly cool, situated as it was on a hill, where a soft breeze continuously moved through the many open windows. Now, however, it was as if the wind had died altogether, and the wails of the manor house were closing in on her. She had a distinct feeling that some of the lobster she’d swallowed was creeping back up.

“What do you mean?” she managed to ask. “Are you saying … Are you saying Miss Whitby—”

She broke off, staring at her sister-in-law with wide eyes. Georgiana’s face was filled with pity. She left her husband standing shirtless and confused, and went to put her arms around his sister.

“I’m so sorry, darling,” she said, gathering Payton to her. “I made them promise not to talk about it in front of you. Really, it isn’t at all the sort of thing a girl your age should know anything about. But I didn’t realize then how much you—Well, I know now that it’s better that you know. I’m sure it doesn’t make it any easier for you, but now at least you know why—”

It was fortunate that Ross had been standing behind his wife, and so was in a position to observe his sister’s face. Having traveled with her under every conceivable circumstance and condition, Ross knew Payton’s expressions well, and the one that came over her face just then was one that was all too familiar to him. In a flash, he had the washbasin off its wooden stand and was holding it beneath Payton’s head just as she let loose every bit of her supper, and a good deal of the champagne she’d had, as well.

Much later, sitting on the window seat in the cool darkness of the guest bedroom she’d been assigned, Payton rested her chin in her hands and gazed at the long shadows the moonlight had cast across the garden below.

She was mightily disgusted with herself about the way she’d reacted to the news her brother and sister-in-law had imparted. Really, she was nothing but a great baby, sometimes. It wasn’t any wonder, really, that Ross had passed her over for command of the
Constant
. She hadn’t exactly acted with great dignity in her disappointment over that. True, she hadn’t thrown anything, or smashed any windows, as any one of her brothers might have. But she’d gone to her room and sulked. Sulkiness was a trait Payton despised almost as much as swooning. Mature women didn’t sulk. They might get a little quiet, in order to express their disappointment, but they never sulked.

And they certainly didn’t vomit when they learned a man they admired happened to have sired a baby with someone else.

She had just never suspected—it had never even entered her mind—that something like that was behind Drake’s decision to marry Miss Whitby. Stupid of her, she knew. But honestly, she’d never have thought it of Drake. Not that she doubted his virility; she knew perfectly well where it was he and her brothers disappeared to every time they reached port after an extended voyage.

But it was one thing to frequent brothels. It was quite another to make love to a girl who was staying in the room down the hall from one’s own.

And what about Miss Whitby? Payton had despised Becky Whitby pretty much from the first day she’d met her, for her sugary sweetness, her vapidity, her general air of a beached haddock.

But Miss Whitby wasn’t sweet at all, let alone vapid. She had known what she wanted, and she had gone after it, in the most devious, underhanded way possible—at least to Payton’s way of thinking.

It all made sense to her now. Why it hadn’t occurred to her before, she couldn’t imagine. She supposed because she really was such an ignoramus about these things. Oh, she knew all about the mechanics of lovemaking—one couldn’t spend as much time in the company of sailors as she had and not come away with that
—
and, thanks to Mei-Ling, she knew a good deal about things like preventing pregnancy, as well.

But she had never actually been in a position to try any of those mechanics—let alone those preventive measures—herself. After all, up until last year, she’d been mistaken for a boy a good deal of the time. No one had exactly been making love to her.

But apparently, there’d been a good deal of love making going on behind her back, and Payton had only herself to blame for it. Hadn’t she been the one who’d invited Miss Whitby to stay with the m in the first place? They’d all lived under the same roof for weeks, Payton in blissful ignorance of the fact that all sorts of illicit trysts and moonlit embraces were apparently taking place after the lights were put out. Payton, a sound sleeper, hadn’t had the slightest idea any of this had been going on. Drake and her brothers could have been entertaining half a dozen whores a night, and she never would have been the wiser.

How could she even have suspected it? No one had ever snuck into Payton’s bedroom after dark. No one had ever so much as tried the knob!

And why would they? She was such a hideous, unfeminine thing. Who would want her?

When she’d wailed this a little earlier in the evening, as Georgiana had been bathing her face and trying to get her out of her corset, her sister-in-law had responded by cooing, “Oh, there, there. That isn’t true. Lots of men will want you. Lots of them.”

But that was the thing. Payton didn’t want lots of men. She wanted one man. And he was marrying someone else upon the morrow.

So why did she still want him? How could she still want that no-good dockside dog?

Maybe because no matter what they said, no matter how much opportunity he might have had, no matter how much he and Becky Whitby might have been thrown together, Payton couldn’t bring herself to believe that Captain Connor Drake was capable of doing something so low, so base, as what Ross had accused him of doing. Get a poor orphan girl with child? Connor Drake? Impossible! Even if that orphan girl was in her mid-twenties, at least, and had hair the color of a gaslight flame, and a figure that caused men passing on the street to walk into lampposts. Connor Drake was not the sort of man who’d allow himself to take advantage of any woman. He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t.

“He wouldn’t do something like that,” Payton had informed her sister-in-law, when she’d folded back the bedcovers and urged Payton to climb inside them. “It isn’t true.” She’d looked at her brother, who’d been dispatched to fetch her a soothing toddy, and had just returned with it. “Did he tell you it was true?”

Ross shook his head. He had not understood a single thing that had been going on since he’d come upstairs, and had decided long ago that he probably never would. “You mean did Drake tell me he’d gotten Becky Whitby full in the sail? Well, no, not in so many words. But, dammit, Pay, why else would he be marrying the wench?”

But Payton ignored the question. “He didn’t do it,” she insisted. “I know he didn’t do it.”

“All right, Payton.” Georgiana extinguished the flame on the candle by Payton’s bed. “All right. You drink this, and then go to sleep. You’ve had enough excitement for one night. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Even through the closed door after they left, Payton had been able to hear her eldest brother asking bewilderedly, “Whatever’s gotten into Payton? I’ve never seen ’er get so fouled at the block before. Not even the time that damned pirate La Fond snuck on board and tried to slit Drake’s throat—”

“It’s your fault,” was Georgiana’s angry reply. “You and those brothers of yours. They encouraged her to drink more than was good for her, and you had to go and tell her about Drake. And after I told you, repeatedly, not to!”

“Humph. I don’t see why Payton should care a jot about Drake and Miss Whitby. Let him marry the little slut. He’ll soon regret not waiting until he’s found a perfect gem of a woman, like I did—”

There was the sound of a ladylike slap, followed by an urgent, “Don’t,” from Georgiana. “Ross, I mean it. Put me down. I’m extremely put out with you right now—”

“Do we have to go back to that damned party now?” Ross wanted to know. “I can think of something I’d like considerably better—”

Their voices faded into whispers and soft laughter, and then Payton heard the door to their bedroom close. Despite their differences and near-constant bickering, she knew that her brother and sister-in-law really were deeply in love. And she knew with equal conviction that she and Drake could have been equally happy with one another, were it not for two things: the fact that he didn’t seem to be aware of her existence …

And, of course, Miss Becky Whitby.

It was well after midnight, but despite the toddy, Payton couldn’t sleep. She could hear the music from the dance below drifting up through the open casement windows, along with the occasional ripple of laughter, and crash of crystal (Hudson and Raleigh’s handiwork, no doubt). She wondered how long it would be before the orchestra packed up and went home. The wedding ceremony was at ten o’clock—less than twelve hours away.

Less than twelve hours. Connor Drake had less than twelve hours of bachelorhood left.

And what was she doing? Just lying there. Sulking.

Well, and what was she supposed to do? Go downstairs and throw herself at him? Even if she didn’t believe he’d got Becky Whitby with child, he was obviously marrying her for some reason. It was undoubtedly a good reason, or he wouldn’t be doing it. Connor Drake wasn’t the sort of man to do anything without considerable deliberation; that’s what made him such a good navigator. Her brothers jokingly accused him of being too methodical, of plodding, even, but he’d never run a ship into a reef, even in areas where reefs lurked beneath the waves as densely as schools of silverfish. So for whatever reason he was marrying Becky Whitby, he knew what he was doing. Payton wouldn’t—she couldn’t—second-guess him.