“No. For God’s sake, Georgiana, Marcus Tyler is standing trial for his life. He’s been accused of piracy, for which alone he could hang. But there’s also charges of abduction, attempted murder, and conspiring to kill Drake’s brother. Payton’s a key witness. Her testimony is crucial.”
“Still.” Georgiana shook her head. “I don’t like it. Payton isn’t at all … well, herself.”
“What do you mean?” Drake demanded sharply.
“Just that … well, I’ve never seen her like this. I hardly recognize her. You’ve kept her locked in that room for a week, Ross, and she hasn’t once tried to escape. The Payton I know would have broken out in half an hour, and then laughed in your face about it.”
Ross looked troubled. “You’re right. By God, you’re right!”
“I just find it very hard to believe that the girl who lived for a month aboard a pirate ship disguised in boy’s clothes and that girl upstairs weeping into her pillow are one and the same,” Georgiana said. “Why, she’s acting so strangely, I’d almost think—”
She broke off quickly. Good Lord, what was she saying? And in front of men, too! Why, she was turning into Payton, there was no doubt about it, since she felt comfortable enough to say these sort of things in mixed company.
“You’d almost think what, Georgie?” Ross asked curiously.
Georgiana knew she was opening and closing her mouth, rather like a fish with a hook through its jaw. But she couldn’t help it. Every time she thought of something to say, she realized she couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t, say it. She hadn’t any proof. And it wasn’t as if Payton had been ill. True, she wouldn’t eat, and she hadn’t tried to escape, but she had been through quite a traumatic experience, so that was only to be expected.
Or at least it would have been expected, in any other girl but Payton. Payton had always seemed to take traumatic experiences in stride, as if, for some reason, she believed they were her due.
“Well,” she said finally, aware that everyone in the room was staring at her expectedly. “I was just thinking that one explanation for her rather, er, uncharacteristic behavior—the not eating, and all the weeping, and the fact that she won’t see Drake—I mean, Sir Connor—and that she hasn’t tried to escape, might be that she’s, um …”
“She’s um what?” Ross shouted. “Out with it, woman! What is she?”
“Well,” Georgiana said, with a gulp. “Expecting.”
“Expecting what?” Ross had leaned forward in his chair, but now he threw himself back into it again, disgustedly. “An apology? Well, she’ll be waitin’ a long time for it. I’m not apologizin’ till she does. After all, nobody asked her to save Drake. He could have bloody well saved himself. He’s done it a thousand times before.”
“Um,” Georgiana said. “That wasn’t what I meant. I meant she might be expecting, um, a baby.”
Georgiana felt her cheeks turn crimson. She couldn’t believe she’d just said what she’d said. It was quite unheard of, speaking of such things in front of men, even if the men were family—well, for the most part, anyway. Heat was rising into her face, which was uncomfortable considering it was very hot in New Providence anyway, despite the wide-open seven-foot windows, and the thick stones the villa had been built with. If she didn’t have to keep discussing these embarrassing topics, she wouldn’t be half so hot.
“Expecting a baby?” Ross blurted out, after a moment’s silence, during which she’d heard, quite distinctly, the sound of the gardener outdoors, snipping away at the bougainvillea. “Payton?”
It irked Georgiana a little, that he should look so incredulous. Why, perhaps Payton had a point. They had treated her like a fourth brother her whole life, and now they expected her to behave like a dutiful sister. And yet whenever any sort of evidence arose that suggested Payton to be a member of the fairer sex, they still balked like donkeys.
“It would,” Georgiana said mildly, “be a natural consequence of what you yourself accused her of doing with Drake. I mean, Sir Connor.”
“But—” Ross looked about the room. She didn’t know what he was looking for, unless it was some sort of assurance that what she’d said couldn’t possibly be true. “But then why won’t she marry him?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t know it herself. I don’t know. I only suspected it this morning, when she still wouldn’t eat. It would explain her moodiness.”
“But not why she won’t marry him!” Ross thundered.
“But of course it does. Don’t you see? She told me she doesn’t want him to think of her as another Miss Whitby, whom he felt obligated to wed.”
“Miss Whitby?” Ross exploded. “Miss Whitby? Still Miss Whitby? When am I ever going to hear the end of Miss Bloody Whitby?”
“When she’s hanged?” Raleigh suggested.
“Drake,” Ross shouted, spinning around. “This is all your fault. I told you not to—”
But his voice trailed off, because Connor Drake had slipped from the room some time before.
They found him easily enough, however. His cursing could be heard all the way down the stairs, when, a few seconds later, he opened the door to Payton’s bedchamber and found the room empty, the French doors to the balcony swaying lazily in the afternoon breeze.
Chapter Twenty-nine
As soon as Georgiana was gone, Payton lifted her face from the pillow she’d smashed it against. Really, she thought to herself. She was getting quite good with the theatrics. She was starting to be able to turn the tears on and off with an aplomb any actress would envy. Smiling bitterly, she pushed back the sheet that had been covering her.
She was, of course, fully clothed beneath it. While that in itself probably wouldn’t have startled her sister-in-law very much, the fact that the clothes Payton was wearing belonged to Georgiana might have caused her some consternation. Georgiana was generous to a fault when it came to lending personal belongings, but she might have asked why Payton felt compelled to borrow, of all things, her most voluminous pelisse. It fit Payton so ill that it made her look several stone heavier, and the train dragged rather more than was considered fashionable.
But all this was of course necessary, if the plan Payton had hatched during the night was to work.
It was not a particularly good plan. It was certainly not one of her best. It did not offer a single solution to any of the myriad problems Payton had wakened that morning to face—for instance, the fact that her brothers were trying to force her to marry a man who had only just escaped a forced marriage to someone else. It was, however, the only problem Payton knew of that she had the wherewithal to solve. And since she could not solve her own problems, it struck her as advisable at least to try to solve someone else’s.
Scrambling from the bed, she went to reach behind a couch for a bonnet that she’d also taken from her sister-in-law’s room. Donning it, she tied the wide yellow ribbons very securely beneath her chin, then lowered the white muslin veil that hung from the silk band. It wasn’t impossible to see through the muslin, just not very easy, and Payton wondered why in the world any woman would consent to wear such a thing, except to ward off mosquitoes.
Still, she managed to find her way through the French doors to her balcony. It was only the work of a moment to swing her legs over the balustrade, then climb down the bougainvillea that grew so copiously alongside the villa. Her landing was not the most graceful, and gave her a bit of a jolt, but she soon recovered. She was not, she supposed, quite as young as she’d been the last time she’d jumped from this very same balcony. Not as young, nor anywhere near as innocent, either.
But despite her past innocence, Payton had always known her way around the teeming, pirate-infested town of Nassau. As a young girl, her main entertainment while in port in New Providence had been wandering about the docks, poking into crates containing cargoes from the holds of strange, foreign ships, listening to the far-fetched yarns the sailors tossed back and forth like India rubber balls, and generally getting herself into mischief. Wh
ich was how she knew, with perfect assuredness, the location of the Nassau jail, and how she ended up in front of it a mere ten minutes after leaving the confines of her brothers’ villa.
The jailers were enjoying their midday meal when Payton knocked. Every bit as hard-bitten as their prisoners—they had to be, otherwise, considering the kind of scum of humanity that ended up in the Nassau jail, outbreaks would have been the norm, rather than what they were, the exception—they did not take kindly to having been disturbed. But when they saw their visitor was a lady—and what’s more, the most famous lady in Nassau, the one who’d come back from the dead, and brought with her more than a hint of disrepute—they were a good deal more cordial.
And when the famous lady-who-was-no-longer-dead stated the purpose of her visit, they were downright courtly. The lady wished to visit a prisoner? But of course! The head jailer himself personally escorted Payton to the cell. Due to the special circumstances surrounding the prisoner Payton wished to visit, this personage had had to be housed not in the jailhouse proper, but next door, in the town stables. There had, of course, been considerable outcry that even this was not proper, but, as the head jailer explained to Payton, there was nowhere else to put this person … not unless the prisoner was housed in the jailer’s own home, and, as he joked, his wife had refused to allow it!
The stables did not seem too bad to Payton. They smelled a good deal better than the jailhouse, that was certain. And the faces that pressed against the bars in the windows, while just as hairy, were considerably friendlier. The guard who’d been posted outside the prisoner’s cell door was a pleasant fellow with impressive manners, who leapt up when she entered and gave a low bow, all before learning that she was the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon (“Yes,” her escort assured him, “the one what was thought dead.”)
The guard very obligingly agreed to allow her a brief visit with his prisoner, but only after gravely informing her of his charge’s extreme dangerousness. Payton was not to be deceived by the prisoner’s outward appearance, which was deceptively innocent.
And with that final warning, and the assurance that he would be but on the other side of the door, and that she had only to call and he would come, the guard opened the stall door, and Payton entered the straw-strewn and sunny enclosure.
Miss Rebecca Whitby, who had surely overheard everything that had been said outside the door to the stall in which she was locked, had risen from the pallet someone had thoughtfully provided for her, and stood staring at Payton with no attempt whatsoever to hide the contempt she felt for her.
“Well,” she said, in a hard voice that was very unlike the fluty one Payton was used to hearing her use, “if it isn’t the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon, back from the dead. You must be very popular. They don’t often see resurrections in this part of the world.” She tossed her cinnamon-colored hair. “I’m terribly flattered you were able to find the time to pay à social call on a lowly creature like myself, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t offer you any refreshment. They have a deplorable lack of amenities at this particular establishment.”
Payton pushed back the white muslin veil so that she could get a better look at this woman she’d spent such an awfully long time despising. It had been necessary to jail this particular prisoner in a facility that kept her separate from her fellow miscreants, and Payton could easily see why. Eight weeks of incarceration had done nothing to dim the glow of Becky Whitby’s beauty. If anything, she was lovelier than ever, with the sun spilling in through the barred window at her back. It set that thick auburn hair aflame, and brought out the creaminess in the prisoner’s skin. Her pregnancy was noticeable now, but rather than simply thickening her body, it brought a certain buoyancy to her figure, a ripeness that even the shapeless cotton gown she’d been given by her wardens could not hide.
She was, in every respect, still the most beautiful woman Payton had ever seen. A fact that had nothing to do with Payton removing her bonnet and passing it, expressionlessly, to her.
“Here,” she said.
Becky Whitby looked down at the hat. It was a frothy creation, far better suited to Georgiana than to anyone else Payton knew, and had probably been purchased for a handsome sum, and over Ross’s strong objections. Becky Whitby, however, did not look all that pleased to be presented with it.
“And what,” she demanded, her rose-colored upper lip curling, “am I to do with this?”
Payton, busy undoing the mother-of-pearl buttons to her sister-in-law’s pelisse, said simply, “Put it on.”
Becky Whitby laughed. It was a brittle sound, like glass breaking.
“Are you dense? They’re hanging me, Payton. This might serve to disguise my neck from the ax-man, but that is not, I understand, to be the mode of my demise. And while I certainly borrowed a good many of your things back when I stayed with you in London, this particular accessory does not exactly suit my coloring. I’m much obliged to you, but—”
Payton said, “You know, I always thought you were a great many things, Becky. Selfish, vain, manipulative, shallow—”
“Thank you kindly,” Becky interrupted sarcastically. “As long as we’re being honest, allow me to return the compliment by saying that I found you excessively irritating, with your ridiculous frankness and your mannish obsession for all things nautical. Most pathetic of all, however, was your little obsession with Connor Drake, whom, I might add, told me in confidence—I hope you don’t mind my saying it—that he always thought you quite unfeminine, to the point of being physically repellent to him.”
Payton lifted an eyebrow at this—really, the last time she’d seen Connor Drake, he’d seemed anything but repelled by her, but she certainly wasn’t going to stand there and argue the point—and then said calmly, as if Becky hadn’t spoken at all, “The one thing I never thought you, Miss Whitby, was stupid. But that’s what you’re being now. Stupid.”
“Oh? Stupid, am I? Because I won’t accept this idiotic hat as a gift?” Becky threw the offending bonnet down upon the floor. “I don’t need a hat, you ignorant girl. I need a decent attorney.”
Payton looked surprised. “I thought surely your father would provide that for you. Sir Marcus has always had such powerful friends—”
“He did have, until he chose to tangle with you lot. Apparently—don’t ask me how—you Dixons have assembled quite a powerful bank of friends back in England. The kinds of friends who do things like exert pressure on public officials, and keep them from stepping forward on the behalf of the innocent men like my father—”
“Oh, please,” Payton said. It was her turn to laugh. “You forget. I was there, Becky. I heard it all. I know everything. I’m to testify, you know, at your trial, as well as at your father’s.” She shook her head. “You’re wrong, you know. They won’t hang you. They can’t hang a pregnant woman. Besides, you never killed anyone … that I know of. It’s your father they’ll hang. And you know where.”
Becky flinched. Well, Payton hadn’t wanted to remind her of it, but really, there was no call for the girl to be so cocky. Her father was going to endure the same fate as any pirate who’d been found guilty of his crimes: he’d be chained to a post at low tide on the sand bar in the bay. And there he’d be left, to dangle intra infra fluxum et refluxum maris, between high and low tides, until his trussed bones, picked clean by gulls and fish, finally crumbled into the sea.
Not a pleasant way to die. Becky might, perhaps, be forgiven her foul temper.
Not, of course, that she was going to suffer a similar fate.
“They’ll transport you, you know, Becky,” Payton said. “After the baby is born. Probably to Australia. Or possibly to the Americas.”
Becky Whitby stared at Payton, hard. “Where I’ll certainly be the most stylishly garbed convicted felon in history,” she said bitterly. “In your fancy hat.”
Payton shrugged, and the silk robe that she’d unbuttoned fell a little down her arms. “And my pelisse,” she said.
Becky narrowed her
eyes. They were very blue, almost the same blue as the bay her father was going to drown in. “What,” Becky demanded suspiciously, “are you talking about?”
Payton let the pelisse fall to the floor. She had only a thin white lawn dress on beneath it, a dress far too young for her, and a little tight, besides. Since her family had thought her dead, they had not brought any clothes for her from England, and so Payton had been forced to wear what she’d left behind during her last stay in Nassau: a good many white dresses far better suited to a fourteen-year-old than a nineteen-year-old who’d just spent two months marooned on a tropical island with a baronet.
“Put on the hat,” Payton said, speaking through gritted teeth not so much so that the guard wouldn’t hear her, but because she was rapidly losing her patience. “And the pelisse. They should fit. They’re Georgiana’s and she’s about your size. Tuck up your hair and pull down the veil. Then go.”
“Go?” Becky shook her head bewilderedly. “What … ?”
“Go. Your Frenchman is out there, somewhere. Go and find him.”
Becky’s ruby lips fell open. “You’re mad,” she murmured. “Absolutely mad.”
Payton shook her head. “Not at all. You love him, don’t you?”
“Who?”
“The Frenchman.” Payton rolled her eyes at the older girl’s slowness. “Captain La Fond. Don’t you love him?”
Becky could only nod, a good deal more stupidly than Payton might have expected from a young lady so skilled in the art of manipulation.
“Well, there, then. I know he loves you terribly. You two are better off together than apart. I know if I were having a man’s baby, I’d want to be with him, if I could.” Payton made a shooing gesture. “You’d better hurry, before they suss it out.”
Becky looked down at the pelisse, and then at the hat. Then she looked back at Payton. “You’re serious,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, I’m serious,” Payton said. “You’d better give me that brown thing you’ve got on. I’ll hold them off as long as I can, but—”
An Improper Proposal Page 31