The old woman beside Payton smiled up at Miss Whitby, who’d come to stand in front of them.
“Indeed,” she said coolly. “And you must be the young woman who’s marrying my grandson upon the morrow.”
Payton blanched. Bloody hell.
Chapter Three
Drake exhaled, aiming a thin stream of blue smoke through the open French doors and at the ball of fire sinking fast to the west.
“I spoke to the gardeners, as you requested, sir.”
Gerald McDermott, who’d been butler at Daring Park for only a year, was anxious to please his new employer. He had enjoyed his situation with Sir Richard immensely—particularly as it kept him in proximity to his mother, who cooked for the nearby vicarage—and very much hoped the new baronet would maintain his employment.
It was rumored in the kitchens, of course, that Sir Connor intended to sack all of the servants and shut the house up immediately following tomorrow’s wedding ceremony, so that he could return to the sea he loved so much. But McDermott could not give this rumor any credence. Where, were the baronet to do this, would his bride reside? For surely even a man as adventurous and unpredictable as Sir Connor could not expect his wife to risk her health and safety with him on the high seas—not when it was so fraught with pirates and other maritime dangers. The idea was ridiculous.
No, McDermott had faith he would be living at Daring Park—and enjoying his mother’s tasty tea cakes—for some time to come. He had met the future Lady Drake, and he did not think her the type of woman to spend any significant amount of time on the wind-driven deck of a boat—even the well-built, highly livable clippers of the Dixon and Sons line.
Referring to the list he held, McDermott continued. “And per your instructions, sir, tomorrow morning the gardeners will fasten bouquets of orange blossoms to the sides of only the first four chapel pews—”
“Did you,” Drake interrupted, his eyes on the long shadows stretching across the front lawn, “reassign the rooms of those guests that I mentioned?”
“Certainly, sir.” McDermott refused, unlike the others belowstairs, to be intimidated by the cool gaze of his new employer. It was always easier to refuse to be so, however, when, like now, the baronet was not looking in his direction. “According to your specifications. I put Mr. Raybourne and Captain Gainsforth in the east wing—”
“Good.” Drake took another long drag on the cheroot he was smoking. “Thank you.”
McDermott had inhaled, about to move on to the next point on his list, when his employer uttered the words “thank you.” The butler looked up sharply. Sir Richard, as pleasant as he had been to work for, had never once, in the admittedly short time McDermott had been in his employ, thanked him. It was commonly asserted by members of the gentry that thanking their staff was unnecessary. After all, they paid them salaries to perform their duties: why thank someone for a service for which one had paid?
The fact that Sir Connor chose to thank his butler now, and for such a small act as rearranging the room assignments for a few of his guests, struck McDermott as gentlemanly to the extreme. He felt a sudden rush of warmth toward his new employer, and was just opening his mouth to say, “Why, sir, it was nothing,” when Sir Connor stopped him by saying, tersely, “And that will be all for now, McDermott.”
McDermott, taken aback, glanced down at his list. There were still seven or eight items that he needed to go over with the baronet. “Um, sir—” he began.
But Drake cut him off. “I’m certain,” he said, in that voice of his that was so deep, it quite frightened the chambermaids, forcing them to go to all manner of lengths to avoid his presence, “that you have duties to attend to elsewhere, Mr. McDermott.”
They were uttered quite pleasantly, those words of dismissal, but there was no mistaking the tone underlying them. It was unquestionably a tone of authority, of supreme confidence that the order given would be carried out, and with prompt efficiency. For a moment, McDermott had a glimpse into the reason why the baronet was so successful a ship captain—even the most hard-bitten sailor would hardly dare to disobey an order issued from that grim mouth, in such a commanding voice.
Gulping, McDermott made an awkward bow, nearly dropping his precious list in his haste to scurry from the room.
“Y-yes,” he said. “Yes, sir.”
He could not exit the room fast enough. It seemed to him it might not be such a bad idea to pour himself a taste of the port he was decanting for the gentlemen to consume after dinner. His mother would certainly disapprove, but it wouldn’t do for the butler’s hands to be shaking as he called his master’s guests in to supper. It wouldn’t do at all.
Drake, still leaning in the open French doors, looked out at the sloping lawns of his childhood home, perfectly unaware of the state of unease into which he’d thrown his butler. Or, if he was aware of it, he gave no more thought to it than he would a fly at which he’d swatted. He had far more pressing things to think about at the moment. The end of the cheroot he gripped between his teeth glowed as red as the sun setting behind the line of oaks at the edge of his estate, as he stood there wondering how he was going to handle this particular mess.
Connor Drake was used to trouble. It seemed that since the day of his birth, he’d known little else. His mother had died during his complicated delivery, and, having arrived a month too soon, Connor was considered by the midwife not long for this world, either. Ignored by his heartbroken father, who blamed his infant son for killing his wife, Connor’s care was relegated to a succession of wet nurses. A weak, unhealthy child, he was an object of near-constant derision by his elder brother, and was despised and ultimately rejected by his father. Small wonder, then, that at the age of seventeen, he’d run away from his unhappy home.
No one had been more surprised than Connor Drake when his pleas to be hired as cabin boy were taken seriously by an amiable ship captain, who caught a glimpse of the iron will in the boy’s silver-blue eyes, a will that belied those spindly shoulders and milk-white skin.
Henry Dixon often boasted that he never regretted his decision to hire Connor Drake, especially after that first summer he spent at sea, when he grew six inches and gained untold pounds in hard muscle. The milk-white skin turned brown and hard as coconut shell, and the spindly shoulders filled out until they resembled melons. When Drake returned to Daring Park three years later to attend his father’s funeral, no one recognized the tall, powerfully built man who stood in the back of the chapel, radiating strength and good health. It was a shock to everyone when it was revealed he was the whey-faced second son they’d all pitied or scorned.
But rather than remain at the park, as his brother, Richard, whom he was now larger than, had rather timidly suggested, Connor headed back to sea, and remained there for another ten years. He’d missed his brother’s funeral—there was no helping that. His death had been so sudden, there’d been no time to send warning of it, like there’d been with their father. Drake was back now, however, and for what was supposed to be a happy occasion … a wedding this time, and not a funeral.
So why couldn’t he stop wishing he were anywhere—anywhere at all—but here? Why couldn’t he look out at the green fields on his country estate and not fancy that the gently blowing grass was actually the rippling waves of the Caribbean? Why couldn’t he stop regretting that he was not standing on the foredeck of a fast-moving frigate, but on the parquet floor of a grand, richly furnished dining room?
A dining room that he now owned, and in which he’d received so many lectures on his inferiority to his superior—and now deceased—elder brother.
Maybe that was why.
He recognized the voice that croaked at him from the doorway behind him, even though he hadn’t heard it in a decade.
“Well,” his grandmother said. “You’ve certainly made a mess of things this time.”
Drake didn’t turn around. There was no need to. He knew what he’d see. A silver-haired replica of how his mother would have looked, had de
livering him not killed her.
“I could not even begin,” Drake said, his lips moving around the cheroot, “to guess your meaning, Grandmama.”
“You know precisely what I mean, you black-hearted devil.” He heard the tap of her cane on the shiny wood floor as she came closer. “I’ve just met her.”
“Ah.” Drake removed the cheroot, and blew out a plume of blue smoke. “And won’t she make the perfect wife for a man of my exalted wealth and status?”
“Stop talking nonsense.” Lady Bisson stood beside him now. He could smell the all-too familiar scent she wore, rose water, a fragrance that never failed to fill him with foreboding, since his childhood interviews with this esteemed lady had rarely resulted in anything except a verbal lashing. “And put out that nasty cigar. You might have spent most of your life out at sea with a lot of pirates, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to act like one. Smoking’s a nasty habit, and I’ll thank you not to indulge it in my presence.”
Drake, unable to restrain a smile, threw the cheroot with all his might in the direction of the fish pond. The two swans swimming there heard it splash, and glided immediately to the area where it had hit. Serve them right, Drake thought perversely, if they found the bloody thing and ate it. He hadn’t much affection for swans; he had too many youthful memories of being chased by them, their giant wings flapping, their mouths opened to emit shrieking hisses. They were, he often thought, the most ill-tempered creatures imaginable, and several trips around the world had not given him cause to amend that opinion.
Lady Bisson had her fan out, and was paddling it rapidly in front of her face.
“I’m not going to ask you,” she said, her gaze also on the swans, “why you’re marrying her. I believe I know the answer to that. I am going to ask you, however, if you hadn’t considered there might be a less … permanent way to take care of the matter.”
“Matter, Grandmama?” For the first time all day—well, except for when he’d been talking to Payton, whose antics invariably put a smile on his lips—he felt amused. The Dowager Lady Bisson was actually stooping to impart some of her worldly wisdom upon him. This ought, he thought, to be interesting.
“We both know what I’m talking about. The Dixon girl told me all about it.”
This caused one of Drake’s tawny eyebrows to lift. “Did she, now? And what, precisely, did Miss Dixon have to say on the matter?”
“She’s in perfect ignorance of the matter, thankfully. But that’s only because she worships you, and it would never enter her head that her precious Captain Drake would be capable of doing anything less than noble.”
Now Drake did look down at his grandmother, straightening his shoulders uncomfortably beneath his well-cut evening coat. “Payton hardly worships me,” he said, recalling the many times she had very unworshipfully mocked him to his face.
Lady Bisson waved that remark away impatiently with her fan. “It hadn’t occurred to you, I suppose,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “that it might be simpler to pay her off, rather than marry her.”
Drake felt amusement again. Never in his life had he ever fancied he’d be having this sort of conversation with his oh-so-proper grandmother. “It did indeed occur to me,” he said dryly. “My offer was unduly rejected, however. The lady was very much offended at the very idea.”
Lady Bisson sniffed. “Then you didn’t offer enough. This isn’t any time to be stingy. She’s a fast piece of baggage, Connor, and sly as a fox. However were you stupid enough not to see through that helpless-maiden charade of hers?”
“Too many months away at sea, I suppose.” Drake let out a mockly regretful sigh. “I was a man primed to rescue helpless maidens.”
The fan was dropped to hang from a silken cord round a deceptively frail-looking wrist as Lady Bisson raised her lorgnette to her nose to peer up at her grandson’s face. “You’re teasing me,” she said at length. “You aren’t taking this a bit seriously. But I assure you, Connor, this is a very serious matter, indeed. Your good name is at stake here. This girl could seriously compromise it.”
Drake stopped smiling. “I know it. Why do you think,” he growled, “that I’m marrying her?”
“She could compromise it just as easily after the two of you are wed. She seems the sort, to me. You’re going to have to keep a very close eye on her.”
“That’s going to be difficult,” Drake observed.
Lady Bisson’s eyes, behind the lorgnette, widened. “Oh, no. No, you don’t. Connor, you are not leaving that girl with me. I will not spend the rest of my life cleaning up your messes—”
“Don’t upset yourself, Grandmama.” Drake turned his attention back to the fish pond, where the swans were squabbling over his cigar. “I’m closing up the park, effective immediately after tomorrow’s ceremony. I’m installing her in the villa in Nassau. You’ll never have to see her again—nor any of the messes I may or may not have engendered.”
Lady Bisson looked a little alarmed at this speech—and not just by the words, but the bitterness with which they’d been delivered. Her grandson may have been a milksop as a child, but the man he’d grown into was as hard and sarcastic as any she’d known. In fact, she hardly recognized him as her sweet, gentle daughter’s own progeny. He was nothing like his brother, Richard, who’d always been a good, if somewhat easily guided, boy.
Her youngest grandchild, however, was not one who followed, but one who led—and seemed not to tolerate anyone who might cause him to divert from a path, once he’d started down it.
“Well,” she said hesitantly. “I hardly meant for you to feel it necessary to keep her in the Bahamas, for heaven’s sake. I only meant it might be wise to keep her from the neighborhood, not the whole of Europe.”
“Thank you for the clarification.” He was smiling again, but his gaze held not the slightest bit of warmth.
Lady Bisson could see he’d missed the point. “It’s not that I wouldn’t welcome grandchildren, Connor,” she said quickly. “With the right kind of woman, I mean.”
“You’re forgetting that the right kind of woman wouldn’t have me, Grandmama.” Drake slumped back against the door frame, wondering what he could say that would shock this woman enough to make her go away. He had a sinking feeling there wasn’t anything he could do that would offend the dowager enough to cause her to stop speaking to him. God only knew, he’d tried. “I’m not exactly what women in your set consider a catch, you know. Certainly, I’ve a title now, and some wealth, but what good is a husband who won’t put in to port, if he can help it? And I’m sure you don’t know anyone who’d let their daughter spend the whole of her married life away at sea.”
“I most certainly do.” Lady Bisson pursed her well-formed lips. “And so do you. What’s wrong with the Dixon girl?”
Drake immediately straightened up, appalled. “Good God. You can’t be serious.”
“I most certainly am.” Seeing her grandson’s horrified expression, she thumped her cane sharply upon the parquet. “Well? What’s wrong with her? She’s obviously as enchanted by the sea as you are. And she certainly seems attached to you.”
“She’s a child,” Drake sputtered.
“She tells me she’ll be nineteen next month. I’d been married to your grandfather for two years by the time I was nineteen. And I’d had your mother.”
“That was fifty years ago,” Drake said. “Things were different back then.”
He hardly knew what he was saying, he was so disturbed by what his grandmother had suggested. Had everyone gone mad overnight? It seemed so. It had been seeming so since his guests had started to arrive. Imagine his complete bewilderment when he’d overheard two old friends, Raybourne and Gainsforth, waxing eloquent on the charms of a certain young lady. He’d supposed it was some nubile county miss who’d gotten them in such a lather. He’d hardly been able to credit it when he’d learned it was Payton. Raybourne had always been something of a hound, but to lust after a child …
Drake had be
en sure both men had taken leave of their senses, and had gone so far as to arrange to have their rooms changed to the opposite wing of the house from the Dixons’, just to be on the safe side.
But then he’d seen for himself that it wasn’t a child at all his friends had been discussing: oh, her brothers might treat her like one, but someone in the family—Georgiana, no doubt—had realized she no longer was one, and had decided to start forcing her to dress accordingly. And the truth was, Payton Dixon in a corset was a far different girl from the Payton Dixon Drake was used to, the one in vest and trousers. Payton Dixon in a corset was very definitely not a child. He’d seen the proof himself when he’d come to her rescue after the wrestling match she and her brothers had engaged in earlier that day. What had come dislodged during that battle were most definitely the breasts of a woman—a young woman, maybe; but definitely, most definitely, a woman.
When, he wondered again, as he’d wondered back then, had Payton Dixon gone and grown breasts?
“Things weren’t so very different then.” His grandmother’s creaky voice broke in on his ruminations on Payton Dixon’s chest. “Nineteen is a perfectly reasonable age at which to marry. I fail to see why you consider it—or her—too young.”
Drake shook his head, trying to clear it. It wasn’t right to think of Payton that way. She was, after all, the little sister of his best friends, and a guest in his house. He would protect her from any and all advances, even if it meant he had to ask Raybourne and Gainsforth to sleep in the dairy.
“This discussion is pointless,” Drake declared, a little more churlishly than he meant to. “I’m marrying Becky Whitby tomorrow morning, and if you’ll forgive me, Grandmother, I don’t much care what you think about it … or her, for that matter. After tomorrow, I can assure you, you’ll never see either of us again.”
Lady Bisson lowered the lorgnette. “I see,” she said, in tones of extreme mortification. “That’s the way it is, then?”
Drake looked away. The sun was sinking rapidly in the west. Soon it would be time to gather his guests for dinner. “That’s the way it is,” he said firmly.
An Improper Proposal Page 5