An Improper Proposal Read Online Free PDF Page A

closed doors, Ross and Georgiana were quite different with one another—definitely different with one another, since she’d once walked into the parlor unannounced and overheard Ross calling Georgiana his little monkey , a pet name to which Payton would have had definite objections, had anyone—even Captain Drake—ever used it on her.
    But perhaps, she thought, Captain Drake and Miss Whitby, like Ross and Georgiana, were different with one another when they were alone. Maybe when they were alone, Drake enjoyed being called dearest. And Miss Whitby enjoyed being called his little monkey.
    The image of Captain Drake and Miss Whitby alone with one another made Payton feel a little ill, so she hastily put such thoughts out of her head.
    Turning back to the mirror, Payton spread her skirt wide and fluttered her eyelids, mimicking, in a stilted little voice that was much more highly pitched than her normal tone, ” I imagine your grandmother must he very curious to finally meet your fiancée.”
    Rising from the curtsy, she made a violent motion, as if she were kicking something—or someone. But the sudden movement caused her corset stays to pinch, and she immediately regretted the action, and put a hand to her hip to rub the tender spot there. “Bloody hell,” she murmured, to make herself feel better.
    Judging that the captain and his bride-to-be were well down the stairs by that time, and that she could, without fear of running into either of them, descend, Payton did so, looking about her with interest. She felt a certain curiosity about the house, which she had never visited before that day. In fact, though she’d never have admitted it aloud, she’d slept little the night before, so excited had she been about their impending visit.
    And, except for the fact that the master of the house was marrying a woman whom she couldn’t abide, Payton couldn’t say she’d been disappointed. Daring Park was the estate upon which Drake had been raised, where he’d lived most of his life before a disagreement with his family about his future had sent him to London to seek his fortune. The rambling, three-storied house was over a hundred years old, and filled with lovely old furniture that Georgiana assured her were all priceless antiques. This was very different indeed from the Dixon town house in London, where all the furniture had been bought new soon after Payton’s father had made his first five thousand pounds. It still looked new, since the Dixons were never at home for more than a few weeks a year, spending the rest of their time at sea.
    Still, Payton quite liked the look of Daring Park. It was one of the few places on land where, she fancied, one could safely walk around barefoot and never fear stepping on something sharp.
    And although she could see no telltale signs of Drake ever having inhabited it—no initials carved into the balustrade, or portraits of him hanging in the Great Hall—she could still picture him tearing about the place as a young boy,  tormenting his tutors and making his elder brother, with whom he’d never got on, cry. She liked the place all the better for that.
    These were of course completely fabricated imaginings: Drake never spoke much about his childhood, which had apparently been somewhat unhappy. Still, Payton’s overactive imagination filled in what she did not know, until she had him leaping about the roofbeams overhead with the same energy he leapt about the rigging on board the
Virago
, the ship he’d been commanding for Dixon and Sons for the past half a decade, and would presumably continue to command for a decade more to come.
    Not that Drake needed the job, let alone the salary. His brother’s untimely death nearly eight weeks earlier had left him a wealthy man, indeed. In fact, he needed never to go to sea again … at least, not in order to earn his keep. Whether he chose to continue sailing was entirely up to him …
    And the woman he was to marry upon the morrow, of