“Oh, no,” said the man at Payton’s right upon discovering that his seat was beside hers.
“Not you,” said the man at her left.
Payton hissed, “I won’t. I won’t sit between you. It’s not fair!”
“You think it’s unfair?” Hudson looked around the dining room furiously. “There’s scads of attractive, eligible ladies at this function, and we have to sit by our little sister? How do you think we feel?”
“I don’t know what Drake could have been thinking.” Raleigh glared daggers at his host. “There must be some kind of mistake. Quick, let’s see if we can trade—”
But chairs were already being pulled out all around them. It was too late to trade places. Besides, Lady Bisson, Drake’s grandmother, seated on Hudson’s right, had already given them a strange look as her grandson had helped her into her chair. While the look might have been directed solely at Payton, who had already thoroughly embarrassed herself by admitting—albeit unknowingly—to the groom’s family that she didn’t care for his bride, the two brothers thought it was meant for them, and they quickly took their seats.
The Dixons—at least the younger ones—were, it appeared, stuck with each other.
“Well,” Hudson muttered, unfolding his napkin. “This is a fine how-d’you-do.”
“Really,” Raleigh agreed. “Try not to embarrass us this time, Pay.”
“Me?” Payton scowled at them. “What did I ever do?”
“Oh, let me see,” Hudson said, feigning thoughtful contemplation. “There was the time you drove the fork into the waiter’s hand in Canton.”
“He deserved it,” Payton asserted. “I saw him try to lift Drake’s wallet. Besides, it wasn’t a fork, it was a chopstick.”
“What about that year you refused to eat anything yellow?”
“Need I remind you that I was eight years old at the time?”
“We were in the West Indies, for pity’s sake. All the food there was yellow.”
“Well, you needn’t worry. I shan’t embarrass you tonight. I’m sure that’s why Drake seated me between you.” She couldn’t help leveling a bitter glare at their host, who was chatting amiably with his grandmother. “He doesn’t trust me not to stab his footmen with my fish fork.”
“Right,” Raleigh agreed with a smirk. “Any more than he trusts us around those cousins of his, eh, Hud?”
Hudson chuckled lasciviously, and the two men exchanged leers over the top of Payton’s head.
Payton rolled her eyes. She didn’t blame Drake, she supposed, for forcing her to sit between her brothers, who were such incorrigible bachelors. Especially since so many of his pretty young cousins were in the room. But she wondered if that was really the reason he’d sat her there. More likely, it was because Connor Drake considered her a child, in need of adult supervision, and probably expected her to stand up and throw things during the course of the meal. If there’d been a separate table for his underage guests, Payton had no doubt she’d have found herself seated there.
Well, and why shouldn’t he consider her a child? Every time he saw her she was engaged in some kind of buffoonery, like that wrestling match earlier with her brothers. And now she had that embarrassing gaffe with his grandmother to worry
about. How was she to have known that the old lady was related to him? Of course, she ought to have guessed by all the questions—not to mention the old woman’s piercing gaze, an exact replica of Drake’s.
Lord, of course he thought her a child! She was forever acting like one. She twisted disgustedly in her chair. Georgiana could put her in all the corsets she wanted: the truth was, no one would ever consider Payton an adult woman, with an adult woman’s body, and an adult woman’s heart.
Payton slumped defeatedly in her seat—or as much as she could slump, with those stays pointing so uncomfortably into her ribs—and turned her attention to the head of the table, where Drake had risen, a glass of champagne in his hand. She sat only a few place settings away from him, since her brothers, as groomsmen, were part of the bridal party. She could see that the harsh lines that had been in his face earlier in the evening were still there. In fact, now that the sun had finally set, and the room was lit by candle flame, those lines were thrown into harsher relief than ever. Whatever was eating away at him, it wasn’t getting any better as the evening progressed. Well, it wouldn’t, she supposed. Not until tomorrow. Every man was nervous before his wedding day. She remembered that Ross had retched repeatedly the night before his wedding to Georgiana.
But then again, that might have been a result of all the rum.
“If I could have your attention, please,” Drake said, in his deep voice, the one that reminded Payton of velvet sky on a summer evening—not unlike this one. The fifty or so people seated at the long dining table quieted, and turned in their seats to look expectantly at their host. He managed a smile, though it wasn’t a very convincing one. Payton had seen Drake converse with hostile island natives with more ease.
Well, she supposed, it had to be nerve-wracking: seated on either side of him was his bride-to-be and his grandmother, each woman gazing up at him raptly, Miss Whitby with a tiny smile that, to Payton’s admittedly jealous eye, was triumphant, Lady Bisson with a frown that, as far as Payton could tell,
was directed more at the footmen behind her grandson, whom she didn’t seem to feel were pouring the champagne into the guests’ glasses quickly enough.
“I’d like to thank all of you,” Drake went on, “for joining me on this very special occasion. I know that some of you have come a very long way, indeed—”
“Aye,” Payton’s father burst out, unable to contain his good humor. “All the way from London!” He elbowed Georgiana, who had the misfortune to be seated on his right. “All the way from London, right, my dear?”
“Indeed,” Drake said solemnly. “Some of you from as far away as London. And Becky—Miss Whitby, I mean”—the bride blushed prettily at this blunder—“and I would like to thank you heartily for coming, and helping us to celebrate what will, I hope, be a very happy day.”
“Here, here,” Raleigh cried, raising his glass.
“Cheers,” Hudson bellowed.
Everyone raised their glasses and tipped them in the direction of the bride and groom. Even Payton toasted them, and then wondered if she was going to burn in hell for uttering a swift and silent prayer as she did so that Miss Whitby might perish in her sleep. Quickly and painlessly, of course.
Was it really so very wicked of her to wish something like that? Yes, she supposed it was. She offered up another prayer, this one asking the Lord’s forgiveness.
When she set her glass down, she wasn’t the only one who was surprised to see that she’d swallowed the whole of its contents.
“Heave to, Pay,” Raleigh cried. “You’ll be tipsy before the soup comes.”
“She’s not the only one,” Hudson said, poking her rather hard in the ribs. “Look at Drake.”
Their host had swallowed everything in his own glass, as well. Smiling—this time more genuinely—he took his seat again with a shrug.
“Well,” he said. “I suppose that means Payton and I will just have to have some more.”
His footmen seemed only too happy to oblige. The champagne flowed very freely, indeed. According to the menu, which Payton found beside her plate, tied up with a piece of pink silk ribbon—a pink silk, she noticed, that matched the color of the rosettes in the bride’s hair—they were to expect a veritable feast, including lobster tails and lamb cutlets, two of her favorite foods, with a different wine or liqueur for each course.
Still, she could not enjoy the talents of Daring Park’s exemplary cook, or share in the high spirits—both literally as well as figuratively—of the rest of the table. She hated herself for this. Why—and when—had she developed this insufferable weakness for Connor Drake? She could not put her finger on the exact date it had occurred, but it was as clear as the bubbles in the champagne that was continuously poured into her glass:
She was in love with this man. And he was marrying someone else.
Not only marrying someone else, but marrying someone else without ever once having cast her, the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon, a second glance!
Oh, he’d shown her a gentlemanly civility once or twice: that summer night she’d been stretched out on the deck of the Virago, watching a spectacular display of falling stars. No sooner had she spied one flashing white streak in the sky than there’d been another. When everyone else, their necks stiff, had declared their intention of retiring, Payton alone had remained on deck, insisting on watching the dazzling light show until it ended, or the sun rose, whichever came first. And Drake, who’d gone into the foc’sle with the others, had suddenly reappeared, a blanket and a pillow in either hand.
Payton had thought, for one dizzying, glorious moment, that he intended to join her on deck. But he soon dashed those hopes, and awakened a different kind, when he’d fussed over her, insisting she keep warm, and use the pillow as a cushion for her head against the hard wood of the quarterdeck.
And Payton had been as touched as if he really had joined
her, for it was his blanket he’d brought her, and his pillow. They smelled of him, that odor that was peculiarly Drake’s, of salt air and fresh laundry and clean man, an odor she’d gotten used to in the years they’d traveled together in what was, at times, very close quarters, indeed. She had lain on the deck, wrapped in his blanket, her head on his pillow, and marveled at his sacrifice, since it meant he was sleeping on his hard pallet in the forecastle with no such comforts.
Of course, her brothers pointed out the following day that he’d been far too drunk to miss them. They’d all been imbibing heavily that night, Drake heaviest of all, and if, in a moment of morbid sentimentality, he’d loaned Payton his blanket and pillow, it was only because he’d been too intoxicated to know what he was doing. Drake had very nobly denied the veracity of this, but to Payton, it hadn’t mattered: even if he’d been drunk, he’d still thought of her. Drunk or sober, to be thought of by Connor Drake at all was no very small thing.
There’d been other examples of Drake’s superiority to all the men of Payton’s acquaintance, of course. That time they’d been involved in that brawl in Havana, and a pirate had seized Payton about the waist, and tried to toss her into the bay: Drake had shot him through the eyes with what Payton liked to think was almost loverlike savagery. And, more intimately, an evening when Drake had been recuperating from a disastrous love affair with a native girl—she’d turned out to be married; granted her husband had several other wives in addition to her, but their union was still legal—and had been drunkenly bemoaning the fact that he was never going to find a wife, and Payton had volunteered her services, if by the time she was of marriageable age, he still hadn’t found anyone. Despite her brothers’ guffaws at the idea of Payton marrying anyone—and their speculations as to Payton’s abilities as wife and mother—Drake had quite gallantly kissed her hand, and told her he had every intention of taking her up on her offer.
That had been, by Payton’s reckoning, only four years ago. But here she was, of eminently marriageable age, and no proposal was forthcoming.
Because, of course, he’d found a bride so much more appealing.
Looking across the table at Miss Whitby, Payton had no choice but to admit it to herself: penniless or not, Becky Whitby would make any man an enviable wife. She was everything a woman ought to be: soft, feminine, sweet, gentle. Miss Whitby never cursed, or found lice in her hair, or freckled. Miss Whitby never roughhoused, or stabbed waiters with chopsticks, or declared to anyone’s grandmother that she hated their grandchild’s intended spouse. Miss Whitby, to Payton’s certain knowledge, did not even know how to load a derringer, let alone fire one.
Miss Whitby was perfect.
Which was why Payton took the silk ribbon from her menu and slipped it, still in its bow, over her hand, to wear about her wrist. In this way, she hoped to bear a constant reminder to herself that what she wanted was most definitely out of her reach. Captain Connor Drake had never considered her anything more than the little sister of his three best friends. He had never thought of her as a woman, or even as female. He was marrying Miss Becky Whitby, and that was all there was to it.
And the sooner she got that through her thick little head, the better.
The ribbon helped. She looked at it every time one of her brothers rose to make a toast to the happy couple, toasts that became progressively bawdier as the night wore on. She looked at it every time Miss Whitby tittered and hid her face behind her fan. She looked at it every time Drake reached for his glass just as Miss Whitby reached for hers, and their fingers touched, and Drake, looking every hour more like a man approaching his execution than the happiest day of his life, murmured, “I beg your pardon.”
She looked at it so much, in fact, that finally Hudson noticed, and said, “Gad, Payton, are you so hard up for baubles you’ve got to start wearin’ the party favors?”
Fortunately, no one heard him. It was a gay and boisterous
party, with everyone talking at once. Payton, from years of long practice, was able to separate Drake’s voice from all the others. He was speaking to his fiancée and grandmother. Payton would have supposed that, since these two ladies who shared such important places in Drake’s life had just met, their conversation would necessarily revolve around getting to know one another: Lady Bisson might perhaps share an embarrassing incident from her grandson’s childhood. Miss Whitby would then relate some equally embarrassing incident from her own. In this way, Payton knew, from having watched her brother around his wife’s family, in-laws got to know one another.
But that was not the case here at all. Lady Bisson was absolutely silent, opening her mouth only to spoon soup into it now and then. And Miss Whitby was just sitting there, hanging on Drake’s every word.
And what was Drake, the night before the most important day—or what ought to have been, at least—in his life, discussing? Not his plans for their future. He wasn’t telling his grandmother how they met (he couldn’t know that Payton had, albeit unknowingly, already performed that function). No. He was telling them both about his last voyage to the Sandwich Islands. Payton could hardly believe it. He was going on and on about the island natives, as if they were the most interesting topic in the world, and he was doing it in a strange voice Payton had never heard him use before, a voice completely devoid of whatever it was that made Drake’s voice so distinctive, so that, whenever he was talking, she could easily trace his whereabouts on any ship, no matter what its size.
Payton knew a thing or two about the natives of the Sandwich Islands, and in her opinion, while they were quite interesting, they did not bear discussing just then, when so many other, more important topics might be explored—like whether or not the groom intended to give up his career upon the sea now that he’d inherited a baronetcy, or just why, precisely, he’d decided to marry this woman he hardly knew anything
about, beyond the fact that she had a pretty face and a remarkably bouncy bosom.
Payton became so incensed as she listened to Drake expound on what he called the charming rituals of the Sandwich Island natives, that she finally interrupted with the tart suggestion that he tell his grandmother all about the charming Sandwich Island ritual of imprisoning any woman suspected of having performed a licentious act, and then forcing her, by night, to service the local military officers. Wasn’t that charming?
That shut Drake up. Unfortunately, it also shut up everyone else within earshot. Payton, who’d really only said it to force Drake into using his normal speaking voice, and not that detached, polite tone she hardly recognized as belonging to him, blinked a few times. Drake sat frozen, a forkful of lobster halfway to his mouth. Lady Bisson leaned past Hudson to peer at Payton through her lorgnette, as if she were an interesting scientific specimen. Georgiana had sunk her face into her hands, and Ross, Raleigh, and Hudson were looking everywhere but in Payton’s direction. Only her father and the odious Miss Whitby looked at all pleased—Sir Henry because he was always proud of his little girl, no matter what came out of her mouth, and Miss Whitby because Payton had made such a perfect fool of herself … again.
But Payton wasn’t about to back down. Dabbing the corner of her mouth with her napkin, she said primly, “Well, it’s true.” She sent a reproving look at Drake. “You shouldn’t lead people to believe it’s all bare breasts and waterfalls.”
The silence that followed this piece of information lasted maybe a heartbeat, but to Payton, it seemed like a decade. Then Hudson, who could stand it no longer, let out a terrific whoop of laughter, which Raleigh echoed with one of his own. Soon, everyone—with the exception, Payton noted, of Lady Bisson and Miss Whitby—was laughing.
Including Drake.
Only Payton hadn’t meant to be funny.
Still, it was very hard not to laugh when so many people around her were doing so.
Payton tried not to smile, but she couldn’t help it—especially not after Hudson pounded her on the back, causing her to drop a large portion of lamb cutlet into her lap.
Well, she’d been looking for an excuse to leave the table, anyway. One of the many disadvantages of wearing a corset, she soon realized, was that it did press rather insistently against the bladder. She felt the need for a moment to herself, and not just to wipe the gravy off her skirt.
She was coming downstairs again, having realized a little belatedly that she was more than just tipsy, but downright drunk—how was she ever going to remember how to dance when the time came? Georgiana had spent hours teaching her the latest steps, and now it was all going to be wasted—when a gravelly voice arrested her on the landing. She looked down to find Drake’s grandmother waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
“Well,” Lady Bisson said, as if there’d been no interruption of the conversation they’d been having in the drawing room. “What are you going to do about it?”
Payton stared at the old woman. Earlier in the evening, she had taken Georgiana aside and shared with her the mortification of her interview with the woman who’d turned out to be Drake’s grandmother.
“I shouldn’t worry about it,” had been Georgiana’s surprising response.
“What? Georgiana, I told her I hate her grandson’s future bride! And you say I shouldn’t worry about it? Don’t you see what I’ve done?”
“Yes,” Georgiana had replied mildly. “You were honest with a woman who was very dishonest with you. If she chooses to share what you told her with Drake, or with Miss Whitby, then that’s her business. You can always deny you said it.”
“You mean lie?”
“Yes, lie. You’re quite a convincing liar, Payton.” Georgiana’s
smile had been knowing. Too knowing for Payton’s comfort.
That conversation had been very nearly as bad as the one Payton had had with Lady Bisson. But now, if she wasn’t mistaken, the old lady was looking for another one. Whatever for?
To torture Payton, no doubt, for having maligned her future granddaughter-in-law.
“Do?” Payton echoed unintelligently. She thought Lady Bisson must be referring to the wrongfully incarcerated women of the Sandwich Islands, and said, “Well, I don’t think there’s much anyone can do, of course, except lobby for reforms—”
“Not about that, you little fool!” Lady Bisson rapped her cane upon the floor. “About the fact that my grandson is marrying a woman whom you, as you put it, hate.”
“Oh,” Payton said, taken aback. “Well, nothing.”
“Nothing?” Lady Bisson looked significantly surprised. Leaning on her cane, she watched as Payton came all the way down the stairs, then stood looking down at her—Drake had obviously inherited his height from his grandmother, who, despite her age and infirmity, was quite an imposing figure. “That’s hardly the answer I expected to hear from a woman who has been around the world not once, not even twice, but, I understand, seven times.”
“There’s nothing I can do.” Payton remembered not to shrug. “He chose her.” Quite suddenly, it was all she could do to keep her voice from throbbing. “He loves her.”
“Does he?” Lady Bisson’s voice did not throb, or even tremble. It was as even and cool as ice. “Do you believe that, Miss Dixon? Do you really believe that?”
Payton, confused, looked about the hall for help. None was forthcoming. A few of the servants were pushing the suits of armor closer to the walls, to make way for the dancing to come later, and in the corner, the orchestra was tuning up, but no one offered Payton any answers.
What was wrong with this woman? Why did she keep pestering
Payton about her grandson? It was Miss Whitby she ought to be bothering about it, not Payton. Miss Whitby was the one Drake was marrying. Payton tried to remember if Drake had ever mentioned a grandmother before, and dimly recalled a conversation in which he’d admitted he had one, but that she lived in Sussex and seemed to favor his brother over him. This had to be the Sussex grandmother, then, his mother’s mother. Now that Drake’s brother was dead, she seemed to be concentrating the full of her attentions on her only remaining grandchild.
“If he doesn’t love her,” Payton said finally, “then why is he marrying her?”
“The very question I ask myself,” Lady Bisson said, giving the marble floor a rap with her cane. “Connor Drake is a man of independent means. A virile man, in his prime. Why should he marry a woman he doesn’t love, or even seem to like? She hasn’t anything at all to recommend her—”
“Oh,” Payton interrupted. “But she’s very beautiful.”
“Nonsense!” Now Lady Bisson revealed she didn’t need the cane at all, by raising it and waving it in Payton’s direction, so violently that Payton ducked, and just in time, too. The stick came perilously close to her head. “You’re just as pretty, and you’ve got money! Twenty thousand pounds your father’s settled on you for the day you marry, that’s what I heard. And five thousand a year, after he passes. And you inherit an equal share in the business with your brothers.” Payton raised her eyebrows. Lady Bisson had heard a lot for someone she hadn’t met until a few hours earlier. “So why isn’t he marrying you? That’s what I want to know. Why isn’t he marrying you?”
Since that was so very close to what Payton had been asking herself all evening, she could only murmur, “I really think we ought to be getting back to the table, my lady—”
“What kind of answer is that? That’s no answer! It’s up to you, you know. You’re the only one who can put a stop to it.”
That did it. Payton had had enough. She stamped her foot hard on the marble step and said, not caring a bit if Lady
Bisson thought her impertinent, “I shall do nothing of the sort! He wouldn’t be marrying her if he didn’t want her. And since he wants her, I, for one, will do nothing to stop him from having her. In fact, I’ll do everything I can to see that he gets her.”
“Oh, my.” Lady Bisson’s voice dripped unpleasantly with sarcasm. “You mean you love him too much to deny him something he wants?”
Payton glared at her. “Something like that,” she said. It was strange, but she didn’t feel the slightest hint of embarrassment at admitting to this woman that she loved her grandson. It didn’t seem a bit unnatural. It was a fact, plain and simple. Payton could just as easily be admitting she had a touch of quinsy. And like quinsy, she’d be getting over it one day. It might not be until she was a hundred years old, but she’d get over Connor Drake someday. See if she wouldn’t.
“How self-sacrificing of you, my dear.” Lady Bisson was sneering now. “You’re a fool, you know. Self-sacrifice never got anyone anywhere. It certainly won’t get you the man you love.”
Payton stood her ground. “Since the man I love doesn’t want me, that’s a moot point, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I see. You don’t want him unless he wants you, is that it? Don’t you know by now that half the time, men don’t know what they want until it’s too late?”
“What do you know about Drake?” Payton knew she was being unforgivably rude, but she didn’t care. “You hardly know him at all. You always liked his brother better—”
“Well, of course I did. His brother stayed home. I never had a chance to get to know Connor. He left home when he was still just a boy, and then he was always away at sea. But he’s a man now, and I know a thing or two about men—a lot more than you do, for all the time you’ve spent adrift at sea with them. And I’m telling you, Miss Dixon, he doesn’t want that woman. Marrying her will only make him unhappy. And if you love him as much as you say you do, then you’ll stop this travesty of a wedding from taking place.”
Payton hadn’t the slightest idea how to reply to this extraordinary statement. It seemed to her that Lady Bisson must have gone mad. Because Payton had no clearer idea of how to stop Drake from marrying Miss Whitby than she had of how to stop the moon from pulling out the tide.
Thankfully, Payton was saved from having to make any sort of reply since the doors to the dining room suddenly opened, revealing the subject of their conversation himself.
“Ah, Grandmama,” he called out “There you are. Come back to the table, would you? Ross Dixon is preparing to make some kind of speech. He says it’s dreadfully important, and that you’ve got to hear it.”
Lady Bisson, after fixing Payton with one last, disapproving stare, stalked back into the dining room. Payton followed more slowly. At the door, Drake, who’d waited to escort her—and not his grandmother, she noted, with a certain muzzy confusion—bent down to whisper, “I’m so sorry. Was she harassing you?”
Payton, too shocked at being noticed in such a manner to dissemble—and much too aware of the proximity of his starched shirtfront, all she could see from the abashed angle at which she hung her head—nodded.
“I was afraid of that.” Drake’s fingers were very warm as he grasped her arm, just above the elbow, and guided her back to her chair. “You’ll have to forgive her. She was deeply upset by Richard’s death—it was so sudden. I don’t think she’s recovered sufficiently. I really ought to have waited before …” His voice trailed off, but Payton knew he meant that he ought to have waited for a sufficient period of mourning for his brother before marrying.
“Well,” he said. They had reached her chair. On either side of it, her brothers were tossing candied cherries at one another. Drake did not appear to notice; he was too deeply engrossed in their discussion. “But that can’t be helped, now, can it?”
Payton didn’t want to cause a scene, not right there in front of everyone—and not so soon after that last scene she’d just caused. But still, she was sufficiently irked—and, if truth be
told, had consumed enough champagne—to demand, in a voice that wasn’t quite steady, “Why? I don’t understand, Drake. Why are you in such an all-fired rush to get married?”
But Drake only reached out and touched the tip of her nose. “Don’t,” he said, and this time, his smile was neither brittle nor forced, “worry your little head about it, Payton. Ah, look. Your brother’s making his toast now.”
Payton wanted to scream that she didn’t care what her brother had to say, that Ross could take his bleeding toast and shove it up his arse, for all she cared. But she happened to look up and notice, just at that moment, Miss Whitby’s gaze on her. Miss Whitby’s eyes were as blue as her future husband’s, but lacked the warmth that his so often held—when they were not skewering one with their intensity. At that particular moment, Miss Whitby’s gaze was icy cold, no doubt because Drake had had his finger on someone else … but on someone else’s nose, for pity’s sake. The man was forever pressing down the tip of her nose, as if she were four bloody years old!
But that didn’t seem to make any difference to Miss Whitby, who was leveling an extremely waspish look in Payton’s direction.
“Attention.” Ross had stood up, and was banging on his wine goblet with a spoon. He was so drunk that he’d begun to sway gently on his feet. Georgiana was gazing up at him a little trepidatiously, as if at any moment she expected him to come toppling down on her.
“Your attention, please. Attention.” The diners quieted somewhat, and turned their faces toward the eldest Dixon son. All except for Miss Whitby, of course. She continued to stare at Payton. “Thank you. Thank you. I’d like to take this opportunity to say, if I may, that on behalf of my brothers and I—I mean, me—oh, and my father—”
“And Payton,” interrupted Raleigh.
“Oh, and my sister, Payton. On behalf of all us Dixons, we—”
“No, no, no.” Sir Henry, not quite as drunk as any of his
children, pulled on his eldest son’s coattails with enough force to bring him plunking back down into his chair, where he sat, blinking confusedly. “That’s not the way to do it. Here, let me.” Sir Henry took the glass from his bemused son’s hand and stood up to make the toast himself.
“A little less than fifteen years ago,” he began, with a solemn bow toward Drake, who’d taken his seat at the head of the table and was gazing fondly at his employer, “a stunted little whelp of a lad came to me, lookin’ for a job. I felt right sorry for the li’l weevil—” This was met with general laughter, at which Sir Henry blinked a little confusedly. Still, he carried on. “So I made ‘im a cabin boy. Since then, he’s grown into one of the finest sailors I’ve ever known—no, I should say one of the finest men I have ever known. Why, he can ride out a sou’wester with the best of ’em, and tack up a topsail in no time flat. Not only that, but he’s an unerring navigator, the only man I know who’s actually managed to render a reliable map of those treacherous islets and reefs that make up what we call the Bahamas—”
“That’s the only reason we like ‘im,” shouted Hudson drunkenly. “For ’is damned map!”
“Finally,” Raleigh announced, with a hiccup, “we’ll have an edge up over that blighter Marcus Tyler!”
“Marcus Bloody Tyler,” Hudson corrected him.
Sir Henry sent his two younger sons an irritated glance. “Connor Drake is a man I’m proud to have in my employ,” he continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “A man I would be proud to call son. And it’s for that reason that I would like to offer Captain Drake a full partnership, equal to that of my own boys, in Dixon and Sons—”
A general gasp went up from the guests gathered round the dining table. And not only the guests seemed astonished. A quick glance at Drake revealed that he too seemed stunned.
But he could never have been as stunned as Payton was when she heard her father’s next words.
“In addition, as my way of thanking him for his years of faithful service, I’m hoping Captain Drake will accept, as a
small token of my gratitude, the Dixon ship Constant, of which he may take immediate command, as it is docked in Portsmouth, waiting to take the captain and his bride on their honeymoon to Nassau—”
If anyone thought it at all odd, a shipping merchant offering a baronet partnership in his business, as well as a boat he could have purchased five times over with a fortune the size of which Drake had inherited, one wouldn’t have known it from the way the people gathered round his dinner table behaved. Sir Henry’s announcement was greeted with cheers and applause.
Except, of course, from the youngest Dixon. Payton sat where she was, completely and utterly stunned.
Her ship. Her father had just given Connor Drake—who was not even a blood relation—full partnership in the family company. And her ship.
And not just any ship, either, but the Constant, the newest and fastest ship in their fleet. The ship that by rights ought to have been Payton’s, the one she’d asked for not once, not even twice, but several dozen times over the past few months.
The ship that—except for an act of nature, over which she had no control, that had determined that she would be female instead of male—would have been Payton’s when she turned nineteen.
For a moment, she simply sat there, dazed. When she did finally manage to tear her gaze away from her father, she swung it accusingly toward Ross. That traitor. He’d done it. He’d always said he would, but Payton had never believed it. Even when the gowns and other assorted fripperies for her coming out had started arriving, she hadn’t believed it. Her brother would come to his senses soon. She knew he would. He had to. Payton Dixon wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s wife. She was cut out to be one thing, and that was commander of the Constant.
But he’d done it. He’d actually gone ahead and done it. Skipped over her as if she didn’t even exist and given what was rightfully hers to his friend.
Shifting her gaze toward that friend, Payton found Drake’s
attention already focused on her. While everyone about him was shouting congratulations and raising their glass, Drake alone sat without a smile. For the first time, Payton thought she could read what was behind those inscrutable blue eyes of his. And when his lips parted, and he mouthed two words at her, she knew she had not read his expression wrong. I’m sorry, he said.
The worst of it was, regret was not what she’d read in his eyes. Instead, she saw an emotion Payton could not abide—not when it was directed at her.
Pity.
Well, that was enough. The man she loved was not only marrying someone else, he had also managed to take away the only other thing in her life that she had ever wanted—besides him, of course. And he had the gall to sit there and pity her!
She couldn’t stand it. She would not sit there and endure it, not for a minute more. Rising, Payton threw her balled-up napkin onto the table and stalked away.
But not before she’d caught a glimpse of the triumphant look on Miss Whitby’s face.