Sleep was a long time in coming that night. Not that Payton leep was a long time in coming that night. Not that Payton wasn’t exhausted. Although she hadn’t exerted herself physically in any significant way, she went to bed as tired as she’d used to back on the Rebecca, when her limbs would fairly ache from the labors she’d performed during the day. She supposed she’d done quite a bit of emotional laboring throughout the day, and that might have counted just as well.
Still, tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. How could she sleep, knowing her life was over? Because it was. She hadn’t needed Ross to tell her so, although he had, roundly and savagely, the minute she’d come through the front door. The surgeon had been there, placing a splint over her brother’s broken hand, so that might have had something to do with Ross’s foul mood. But there was no denying that his accusations were founded in truth, however hurtfully he hurled them at her. She was a fool—a double-damned one, just as Ross said. It was no good, Sir Henry’s happy greeting of her, and Georgiana’s warm embrace. Ross was right. Payton Dixon was a fool. What else could she do, but go to bed?
Maybe, Payton thought to herself. Maybe in the morning, things would be better.
But she didn’t see how. Not really. Not unless Drake forgave her. But how could he? From the very beginning, she
had done nothing but interfere in his life. From stopping his wedding to getting him practically killed by her brothers, she had made his life a living hell. Granted, she had saved his life, back on the Rebecca. And he had seemed to have had a pleasant enough time on San Rafael. But other than that …
Other than that, she had pretty much systematically destroyed his life.
Well, it would all stop now. It was true that she still loved him. She would never stop loving him … could never stop loving him. But she could stop seeing him. She could stop interfering in his life. She could go back to England and have her season out and marry Matthew Hayford and settle down and have babies, the way her brothers wanted her to. Forget about Drake. Forget about the sea.
Forget about her heart.
It was just after Payton had decided that she would sooner jab a whaling hook through her foot than ever be able to forget about Drake that she heard an unfamiliar sound. Or, rather, a familiar sound, but a sound that was out of place. Sitting up, Payton peered through the darkness of her bedchamber, and saw, through the glass panes in the French doors to her balcony, a dark silhouette. Good Lord! Someone was trying to break into the villa!
Then, her heart hammering, she realized it wasn’t a thief at all. It could only be Drake. Of course it was Drake. Who else had such a large, imposing shadow? But what would Drake be doing, climbing up onto her balcony and worrying her door like a burglar?
He wanted something. An explanation, most likely. But maybe … just maybe … he wanted her!
That thought alone sent Payton flopping back against the pillows, feigning sleep with as much theatrical energy as she’d feigned unconsciousness, back in Miss Whitby’s jail cell. Well, she couldn’t let him think she’d been lying awake, worrying about him, could she?
She heard the doors open finally—she hadn’t locked them—and then footsteps—cautious, surreptitious—approached her
bedside. She had time to ask herself if she should let her eyelids flutter gently open, the way Miss Whitby’s had, after she’d fainted in the church on the day of her wedding, or if she should continue to feign sleep for a while. And then a huge hand, its grip one of iron, clapped hard over her mouth, and she forgot all about feigning anything.
Her eyes flew open—there was no fluttering about it—and she saw that the person who’d come in through her balcony doors wasn’t Drake at all, but rather, Sir Marcus Tyler.
But not the Sir Marcus Tyler she’d last seen in the hold of the Rebecca. That Sir Marcus had been clean-shaven and elegant, coolly sarcastic and dry-witted. This Sir Marcus looked as if he hadn’t seen a razor in months—and, in fact, he had not, razors not being provided in the jail in which he’d spent the past eight weeks, for fear the inmates might use them upon one another, or themselves. His hoary face was pressed just inches above her, and there was nothing the least bit elegant about the way he smelled—quite pungently male. In addition, his fine clothes were grimy with dirt and tattered from constant wear. It wasn’t a wonder that, following his escape from jail, he’d been able to wander the streets of Nassau without being discovered, since he looked no different from many a weary sailor who, after months out at sea, staggered down the gangplank looking for wine and women.
But it wasn’t wine or women Sir Marcus wanted.
It was revenge.
“Well, well, well,” he said, in a horrible, rasping whisper. His breath was rather horrible, as well. “If it isn’t Miss Payton Dixon, back from the dead. I couldn’t believe it when I heard, but then, I should have known. You’re rather like a cat, you know, Miss Dixon. You seem to have any number of lives. Only allow me to assure you, this one is quite definitively at an end.”
It was impossible for Payton to reply, with his hand pressed so tightly over her mouth. But she didn’t need words to answer him, not when she still had use of her extremities.
She swung one of those up with lightning quickness, intending
to plunge her fingers in her assailant’s right eye, another one of the defensive tactics Raleigh had taught her. She hadn’t counted, however, on Sir Marcus’s speedy reaction. He seized her hand an inch within reach of his face.
“Tsk-tsk, little cat,” he said chidingly. “It’s not a bit ladylike to scratch—”
He broke off as Payton sank her teeth, as hard as she could, into the hand that pressed against her mouth. With a grunt of pain, Sir Marcus jerked his fingers away, then brought them back again before Payton could move, this time holding something shiny and sharp against her throat. She grew very still, feeling the prick of a knife-point against the place in her neck where her pulse beat.
“That’s right,” Sir Marcus said. “It’s a knife. You see, Miss Dixon, when you helped my Rebecca to escape, she was so moved by the sweetness and generosity of the gesture that she felt compelled to repeat it. Her methods of setting me at liberty from my prison were a little different from yours, but then, Rebecca’s a bit more skilled than you are where men are concerned. There are some very happy guards down at the jailhouse tonight, I must say. How happy they’ll be in the morning, when their employers realize I’ve gone, I can’t say, but—”
“It’s really very unsportsmanlike of you to kill me, Sir Marcus,” Payton couldn’t help interrupting, “after I helped your daughter the way I did.”
Sir Marcus, she could see, even in the darkness of her bedroom, was grinning, his teeth yellow amidst his beard. “Unsportsmanlike? How charming you are. You know, in a way, I feel I’m almost going to regret killing you.”
“Why do you have to kill me at all?” Payton asked. “I give you my word I’ll never say anything about how you had Lucien La Fond kill Sir Richard, or how you tried to kill Drake—”
Sir Marcus looked, and sounded, quite regretful when he said, “Ah, but you see, Miss Dixon, the word of a woman doesn’t mean so very much to me. I’ve found that, for the
most part, your sex is not to be trusted. So you’ll pardon me, but before I can leave the island, I must insure that should I ever again be brought to trial, the key witnesses against me will be regrettably unavailable.”
“Does that mean—” Payton’s blood went cold in her veins.
“Regrettably no, not yet, my dear. I haven’t been at liberty all that long. But I promise my blade will still be wet with the blood from your throat when it pierces his—”
A deep voice cut through the darkness that permeated Payton’s bedroom. “I think not, Marcus.”
Drake! Her heart, which she suspected had stopped beating, started up again joyfully. It was Drake!
Then her pulse skittered to a halt again. Drake! What was he doing here? He was going to get himself killed!
A second later, the knife was gone. Payton didn’t know if Sir Marcus, startled by the sound of that low voice, let it slip, or if he’d turned to hurl it in the direction the voice had come from. She didn’t waste time trying to figure it out, though. Instead, she rolled away from Sir Marcus, toward the far side of the bed. And she didn’t stop there, either. She kept rolling, until she landed on the floor. Then she crouched behind the bed frame, uncertain what to do next. Light a candle? No, that might reveal both her hiding place and Drake’s whereabouts in the room. Run for help? No, she couldn’t leave Drake alone with this madman. Scream? Should she scream? She would have, if she could. But no sound whatsoever would issue from her throat.
“Who’s there?” Sir Marcus was hissing. Payton saw moonlight, filtering dimly through the windows in the French doors, reflect against the blade her attacker still held, as he searched for the owner of that deep, penetrating voice. “Is that you, Drake?”
“It is.” Drake’s voice came rumbling from the darkness, low and steady, as if he were greeting Sir Marcus casually in a ballroom, and not in the middle of a murder attempt. “Put the knife down, Tyler.”
Marcus Tyler showed no signs of doing as Drake asked.
Instead, he moved in the direction of Drake’s voice, the knife poised dangerously. “Show yourself, Captain,” he said sneeringly. “Or should I say Sir Connor?”
“You should have run when you had the chance,” Drake said, amusement in his voice. “You could have made it off the island by now. But now it’s too late. You’re caught again.”
“No,” Sir Marcus said. “You’re the one who’s caught. After all, I’ve got a knife.”
And he raised that knife. Payton saw it glitter, the whole of Sir Marcus’s arm silhouetted against the blue light seeping through the French doors. Then another arm shot out, and a hand seized Sir Marcus by the wrist. The knife trembled for a moment or two in Sir Marcus’s fingers … and then it dropped, with a clatter, to the floor. A second later, Drake had tackled the older man. There was a struggle, during which Payton could see nothing but two dark shadows that suddenly became one …
And then the shadow crashed into the French doors, splintering them apart, sending glass flying. Moonlight flooded the room.
And Payton, who up until then hadn’t been able to find her voice, let out an earsplitting scream.
A second later, she had flung herself at Drake’s back. Gripping his shoulders, she cried, “Drake, don’t! Don’t, you’re killing him!”
Because that’s what Drake seemed to be doing—fulfilling the promise he’d made back in the hold of the Rebecca, that he’d kill Sir Marcus, when he got the chance. Straddling the older man, Drake had wrapped his fingers around Tyler’s throat, fingers that had gone bloodless with the amount of pressure they were exerting. In a few seconds, he might snap the older man’s neck with the grip of his hands alone. Even in the uncertain light of the moon, Payton could see that Sir Marcus’s face was turning blue.
Drake was like a man possessed, however. He didn’t seem to hear her, didn’t seem even to be aware of her presense. He would not release his hold …
Until Payton’s family, roused by her scream and the sound of breaking glass, came racing into the room. It took all three of her brothers to pull Drake off Marcus Tyler, and when they finally did, everyone—with the possible exception of Drake—waited with bated breath as Ross bent down to check the unconscious man’s throat. A collective sigh of relief sounded at Ross’s terse assertion, “He’ll live.”
To Payton, the rest of the night passed in a sort of blur. Someone sent for the magistrates, who eventually came and placed Sir Marcus, who’d regained consciousness a few minutes before their arrival, in chains. He did not struggle at all. He seemed almost grateful to be taken away again. Payton supposed that was because he had finally figured out that while Connor Drake walked the earth, jail was the safest place he could be.
Someone else sent for the surgeon. Payton was surprised when she learned he hadn’t been summoned in order to tend to the injured Sir Marcus at all, but for her. She was even more astonished when she looked down and saw that she had bled all over the carpet from the cuts she’d sustained when she’d run across the broken glass to stop Drake from killing Sir Marcus. She hadn’t felt these injuries at all, but she certainly felt them very well indeed while the surgeon dressed them.
No one, she discovered later, sent for Lady Bisson, but she came anyway, and in her nightcap, looking extremely put out at having been roused so early in the morning, and for what she called a ridiculous reason. She berated her grandson for taking part in fisticuffs like a common footpad—Payton heard her doing so, out in the hallway—and then announced that she was going back to bed. But before she left, she insisted upon seeing Payton, who’d been put in Hudson’s room, with orders not to try walking for several days, to give her feet a chance to heal.
But all Lady Bisson did when she got into the room was glare at Payton, and not a bit kindly. “I thought as much,” the old woman said obscurely, but with feeling.
And Payton, who hadn’t any idea what Lady Bisson could be talking about, but who was certain that all of it, every little bit of it, had been her own fault, quite suddenly—and extremely loudly—burst into tears.
This seemed to satisfy the old lady no end, and she left the house with a contented smile on her face.
But Lady Bisson was the only one who greeted Payton’s tears with a smile. Everyone else stared at her in complete incredulity—particularly her brothers, who had rarely, if ever, seen their sister cry. It was Georgiana who finally managed to rouse them all, but not into giving Payton their sympathy. No, Georgiana made them all exit the room, leaving Payton alone …
Or so she thought. It wasn’t until the door had clicked firmly shut behind her sister-in-law that Payton saw that one person, and one person alone, had remained behind.
Drake.