The vicar, standing before them on the dais, prayer book in hand, cleared his throat. He was a big man, who evidently hadn’t turned down an offer of dessert in quite a while. He seemed an enormous figure in his little sunlit church. Small—hardly big enough to fit fifty people—it was nevertheless quite a beautiful chapel, with its stained-glass windows, and the scent of rose blossoms hanging so heavy in the air.
Still, big as the vicar was, he was dwarfed by the four gentlemen standing to his right. Drake, Ross, Hudson, and Raleigh each stood a little over six feet tall, and with their deep tans and broad shoulders, radiated manly good health—well, except for the pallor of sleeplessness worn by Drake and the two middle Dixons. None of them looked very comfortable—they were all of them used to wearing considerably less clothing—but they were undeniably handsome.
Of the four of them, Payton supposed that Ross looked the least unhappy. He even, as Payton gazed at him, managed to give her a little wink, causing Georgiana to frown.
Drake looked the sickest. He looked, in fact, as if he might lose his breakfast at any moment. If he’d even had breakfast, which Payton supposed he hadn’t. Well, except for that cup of coffee she’d made him drink.
Since she was seated in the first right-hand pew, he stood
directly in front of her, not four feet away. She felt his gaze on her, though she refused to look up. Only the blush she could feel suffusing her cheeks gave away the fact that she was aware of his gaze, and she tried her best to tamp the color down. Think about something else, she’d urged herself. Anything else.
The letter. He hadn’t acknowledged it. She’d scrawled a few words—a warning about what she’d seen—on a piece of foolscap, and stuffed it into Hudson’s hand as soon as she’d entered the church. “Give this to Drake,” she’d hissed, careful not to let Ross see her. “It’s important.”
Hudson had been busy leering at Drake’s attractive cousins, whom Ross and Raleigh had had the privilege of ushering to their seats. “Right,” he’d said. “Anything you say, Pay.”
But if he’d succeeded in getting her note to Drake, Drake had obviously not taken it very seriously. There he stood not looking exactly as if he felt well, but surely not looking as sick as a man who’d just learned his bride was a spy for his mortal enemy ought to look. Hadn’t he been able to decipher her handwriting? Payton knew she didn’t write as beautifully as Georgiana, but her cursive was surely legible …
A lace-mittened hand settled upon her right knee, which Payton had been jiggling nervously up and down. When she looked up, she saw Georgiana smiling down at her.
“Don’t,” Georgiana whispered from the corner of her mouth. “You’re shaking the whole pew. Lady Bisson keeps looking this way.”
Payton turned her head a little. Georgiana wasn’t lying. Lady Bisson was looking their way. Or Payton’s way, at least.
And there wasn’t the least bit of warmth in that look, either. In fact, if half a dozen poisoned darts suddenly embedded themselves into the back of Payton’s neck, she’d have no doubt at all who’d launched them.
“I can’t help it,” Payton whispered back miserably.
“You can, and you will.” Georgiana removed her hand. “He can take care of himself, you know. He’s a grown man.”
Payton felt her cheeks turn crimson. “I know that. You
think I don’t know that? But if you’d just have let me see him, just for a minute—”
“Too late now.” Georgiana looked past her, nodding graciously at a mutual acquaintance.
“Well, you could have at least let me confront Miss Whitby—”
Georgiana let out a sound that might have been a snort. But that was ridiculous. Georgiana was far too ladylike to snort. “And had you blacken her eye before the ceremony? I think not.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt her,” Payton insisted. “I just wanted to talk to her …”
“Certainly you did.” Georgiana turned her face back toward the front of the church. “The vicar’s looking this way. Be quiet now. We’re in a house of the Lord, remember, so try not to swear.”
Payton fell silent, chagrined. A house of the Lord. Do you hear me, Lord? Payton raised her eyes toward the raftered ceiling. I just wanted to thank you very much. No, truly. This is just the nicest thing you’ve ever done for me, forcing me to sit here and watch Drake marry that harpy. Really, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this, but thanks for singling me out for this honor …
Did God approve of sarcasm? Payton didn’t know. But it was all He was going to get out of her, for the time being.
It wasn’t until the church organ suddenly wheezed that she looked away from the ceiling, startled by the noise, and inadvertently met Drake’s gaze.
Then froze, locked into that hypnotic stare. His eyes—the color, she’d often thought, of ice—seemed to bore into hers. It was unnerving, having those eyes, so unnaturally bright in that dark face, on her. What, she wondered sluggishly, in the part of her brain that hadn’t automatically shut down the minute that gaze locked on hers, does he want? Why is he staring at me like that? Did he get my note? Is that it? But if he got it, why is he still going through with the wedding?
She scanned his face, but could find no hint as to the reason
behind that enigmatic stare. Maybe, she thought grimly, this is his way of saying good-bye. Good-bye forever.
Then, all around her, people in the pews began to stand. For the only time in her life, Payton broke eye contact with Connor Drake first, and swiveled her head to look past the bunch of rose blossoms tied to the end of her pew. Between the time she’d slipped into her seat and now, looking back down the aisle, someone had laid down a carpet of white crepe for the bride to walk along during her approach to the pulpit. At the end of that long carpet stood Payton’s father, beaming proudly, blissfully ignorant of the secret pain his daughter was going through, with Miss Whitby, resplendent in ivory lace, a long veil lowered over her face, on his arm.
Beside Payton, Georgiana tugged on her sleeve. “Stand up,” she leaned down to hiss.
Obediently, Payton climbed to her feet.
Georgiana studied her young sister-in-law’s profile carefully. She was really very worried about Payton. It was clear the girl fancied herself in love with Captain Drake—or Sir Connor, as they were to call him now. It mustn’t be at all pleasant, Georgiana supposed, watching the man you love marry someone else. Georgiana wouldn’t have stood for it, herself. Why, if Ross had taken it into his head to marry someone other than her, she would have lain down in the middle of the church, kicking and screaming, if that’s what it would have taken to stop the ceremony. That Payton was restraining herself from doing so struck Georgiana as admirable in the extreme.
The organist launched into a wedding march. Slowly, Sir Henry Dixon and Miss Whitby began to make their way down the aisle.
Georgiana glanced at Captain Drake, to see how he was bearing up. Really, for a groom about to marry such a lovely young lady, he did not look at all well. Georgiana, of course, hadn’t missed the way he’d stared at Payton, for most of the time she’d been seated there in front of him. Georgiana fancied herself the most practical of women, without much imagination,
but she’d caught herself feeling quite certain that there’d been something in Captain Drake’s face, as he’d looked down at her little sister-in-law. Something not unlike … well, longing.
Oh, it was silly, she knew. After all, Captain Drake—oh, bother. Sir Connor—was more than a decade older, and a hundred times more sophisticated than Payton. It was hardly likely that a man like him would fall in love with a girl who, up until a few weeks ago, he’d probably never actually seen in a dress.
Still, there’d been something in his face. It had disappeared the moment Payton looked up. Like a gate crashing down over an entrance, Captain Drake had schooled his features back into stony impassability. But not before Georgiana had seen … and for the first time, she began to suspect that perhaps … just perhaps … some of her sister-in-law’s feelings might be returned.
But it was too late now. Because here came the bride.
And she was lovely, Miss Whitby was, in the gown Georgiana had chosen for her. It was scandalously low-cut in the front for a bridal gown, and Georgiana saw with disapproval that Miss Whitby had not, as Georgiana had suggested, inserted a piece of lace over the place where her décolletage dipped lowest.
Common, Georgiana thought. That’s what Becky Whitby was. Quite common. How she’d ever lured a man like Captain Drake into her bed, Georgiana couldn’t imagine. She supposed she had only herself to blame for that. She should never have allowed the creature into the house. Payton was forever collecting injured animals and birds and nursing them back to health again. Miss Whitby had, at first, seemed like one of those birds, a dove with a broken wing, or some such. Georgiana hadn’t noticed how common she was until it had been too late, and Captain Drake had already announced his plans to marry her.
Poor Payton. She’d never really stood a chance, with a woman like that in the house. Well, it would be a good lesson
for her: there were sirens everywhere, not just perched on rocks at sea.
Georgiana sent an anxious glance in her sister-in-law’s direction when Sir Henry presented Captain Drake with Miss Whitby’s hand, then stepped aside, to take his seat beside Lady Bisson in the pew across the aisle from theirs. But Payton didn’t flinch. She didn’t move so much as a muscle. When Captain Drake and his bride turned to face the vicar, Payton sat down calmly with the rest of the congregation, laying her fingers in her lap, not even curled into fists, as one might have expected, with a girl who was so quick to strike out at things … and people. Georgiana could not even detect a tear on Payton’s smooth, tanned cheeks.
She’s weeping, Georgiana thought, on the inside, and felt such pity for her young sister-in-law that she reached out and took the hand closest to her.
Payton did turn her head then, but only in surprise that her sister-in-law had taken her hand. Why, she wondered, is Georgiana being so nice to me? Not that it mattered. She had known, the minute she’d seen the sunlight streaming in through the round stained-glass window above the vicar’s head, setting Miss Whitby’s red hair, beneath her veil, ablaze, exactly what it was she had to do. After all, how did the saying go?
Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.
Well, it was morning. But it was Miss Whitby herself who had better take warning.
Payton wasn’t afraid. What did she have to fear? She’d already sat through the worst thing she could ever imagine, watching her own father walk her bitterest enemy down the aisle, to deliver her to the arm of the man she had loved for as long as she could remember. What could possibly be worse than that?
A sort of calm descended over her. She listened to the vicar’s monotone as he explained to the gathered assembly that they’d been asked there in order to witness the union of
one Rebecca Louise Whitby and Sir Connor Arthur Drake. She almost let out a hysterical bark of laughter upon hearing the Arthur. She’d had no idea Drake’s middle name was Arthur, but she supposed she had no room to talk. Her middle name was Fulton.
Beside Payton, something suddenly clutched at Georgiana’s heart. Seeing her sister-in-law’s expression change so dramatically from tense to calculating, she knew good and well exactly what Payton intended. She clenched the hand she held, driving her nails through the kid leather of Payton’s gloves. But Payton only looked at her and smiled. Smiled, with those hazel eyes of hers so clear and cool, they seemed fathoms and fathoms deep. No, Payton, Georgiana thought frantically. No!
When the vicar finally—after what seemed to Payton like hours—inquired of the assembly at large if there was anyone there who had knowledge of any sort of impediment to the match, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace, Payton felt Georgiana’s hand, still resting over hers, convulse. She clutched Payton’s right hand firmly, and shot her a look that was so very forbidding, had Payton been four years old again, she might have been quite frightened.
But Payton was nearly nineteen. So instead of being cowed, she merely lifted her free hand, and waved it at the vicar.
The vicar, who, expecting no interruption of his service at that point—he had doubtlessly married hundreds of couples, and never had a positive response to that particular question before—had glanced down at his prayer book to see what he ought to say next, when he became aware of a startled ripple through the assemblage, and glanced up …
And saw Payton’s hand very firmly in the air. He also saw that the young lady seated beside her was trying very hard to pull that hand down. Well, he’d noticed the two of them whispering together already. He ought to have known they’d be trouble.
“Um,” he said, in a somewhat distressed tone. “Yes, miss?”
Payton was aware that not only Drake and Miss Whitby had turned round to look at her, but all three of her brothers
were staring daggers at her, as well, Ross most particularly. She didn’t care. She stood up and said, “I believe there is an impediment, sir.”
The vicar swallowed. It was growing quite warm in the church, what with all the sun spilling in through the stained glass. He wasn’t at all certain he was in any fit state to handle this sort of interruption.
Fortunately, it looked as if he wouldn’t have to. One of the groomsmen, the eldest one, suddenly stepped forward, his expression one of abject embarrassment.
“Never mind,” he said to the vicar, as well as the congregation. “Please go on. She just needs a bit of air.”
To the vicar’s astonishment, the man then wrapped a single arm around the girl’s waist, lifted her feet off the floor, and began to carry her bodily from the church. Before he could say a word about it, however, Lady Bisson, the groom’s formidable grandmother, stood up, her expression dark as a thundercloud. Rapping her cane sharply upon the flagstoned floor, she snapped, “Put that girl down at once!”
Ross stumbled, and very nearly dropped his sister altogether. “W-what?” he stammered.
“You heard me.” Lady Bisson was now shooting her poisoned darts in Ross’s direction. “If the girl says there is an impediment, then I for one want to hear what it is.”
Payton elbowed Ross forcefully in the ribs. “See? Put me down, you bloody sod.”
The vicar noticed that a number of fans that had been produced by ladies hoping to combat the heat began to move quite a bit faster at the words “bloody” and “sod.” He cleared his throat.
“Now, see here, young lady,” he said. “Kindly remember that you are in a house of the Lord.”
Payton, whom Ross had deposited, none too gently, back on her feet, adjusted the bodice of her gown and said, “Oh, I do apologize, Vicar. It’s just that my brothers can be such galley rats sometimes.”
“Er, yes.” The vicar thought fleetingly about the roast his
cook had been preparing when he’d left home that morning. He hoped this delay wouldn’t cause it to be overcooked. “Now, what was that impediment of which you spoke?”
“Oh,” the young lady said. She was quite an extraordinary-looking little thing, he saw. Slender as a reed, she was quite tanned, with disgracefully short brown curls sticking out of the sides of her bonnet. Across her nose was a layer of—he was almost certain of it—freckles. And while she wasn’t precisely beautiful—the bride, Miss Whitby, was the only woman in the church who could have been called that—she was in no way unattractive. In fact, she was quite arresting, with her large, intelligent eyes, and boyish, husky voice.
“The impediment,” the girl went on, “is only that I believe Miss Whitby to be in secret alliance with Sir Marcus Tyler, Dixon and Sons Shipping’s arch rival. I saw them together this morning, in Captain Drake’s hedge maze.”
There was a collective gasp from the congregation, although few of them, including the vicar, had the slightest idea why such a thing connoted an impediment to marriage.
And then Miss Whitby astounded everyone further by dropping her bouquet and sinking, in a dead faint, to the stone floor.