An Improper Proposal Read Online Free PDF

course.
    But from what Payton had gathered, Miss Whitby had no great love for the sea. She had once stated, with a sideways glance in Payton’s direction that one would have to have been blind to have missed, that she thought salt air was rather hard on the complexion.
    But if Payton’s complexion had suffered from the years she’d spent accompanying her father, and then her brothers, at sea, evidently Mr. Matthew Hayford failed to notice it. Either he liked a woman with a tan, or he wasn’t shallow enough to let such incidentals get in the way of his friendships. Because as Payton reached the landing, she saw that Matthew was waiting for her at the end of the stairs, looking quite different in evening clothes than he did in his first mate’s uniform.
    “Ahoy, there, Miss Dixon!” he cried, obviously pleased to see her. “The captain said you were on your way. And I must say, it was worth the wait. Don’t you look a picture!”
    Payton, a little taken aback by this enthusiastic greeting, glanced around to make certain it was really she to whom it had been addressed. But there was no one on the stairs behind her. Unlikely as it seemed, the admiration on the young man’s face appeared to be for her. But she’d known Matthew Hayford for years, and he’d never told her she looked like a picture before. Could it be the corset? She glanced down at herself. More likely it was the décolletage. Men were strange creatures, indeed. Perhaps she ought to heed Drake’s advice, and think twice about being alone aboard an entire ship of the …
    Still, Payton greeted Matthew with a sunny smile and an outstretched hand.
    “Well met, Mr. Hayford,” she said, giving his callused fingers a hearty shake. “When did you arrive?”
    “Only just,” Matthew said. “Isn’t this place posh? Did you see those swans in the lake out back?”
    “Oh, that’s nothing.” Payton pointed to one side of the Great Hall. “Look at those suits of armor. Georgiana says they’re real. Real knights bashed about in them. Drake’s ancestors, I suppose. Can you imagine?”
    Matthew followed her gaze. “Lord,” he breathed. “Captain Drake’s ancestors were right short, weren’t they?”
    “They were not,” Payton cried defensively. Then, seeing that quite a few of the suits would have fit her, she said, “Well, they didn’t know anything about proper nutrition back then. You couldn’t expect them to grow much.”
    Matthew turned his admiring gaze back upon her. “Is there anything you don’t know about, Miss Dixon?”
    She gave the appearance of giving this question thoughtful consideration. Really, if she were to be perfectly honest about it, Payton would have to admit that there wasn’t much she didn’t know. She certainly considered herself better educated than most girls her age. What did they know about, except hair arranging and gossip? She knew how to bring down a sail luring a squall, chart a course using only the position of the sun and stars in the heavens as a guide, and kill, skin, and cook a sea turtle with no other utensils than a knife, a few rocks, and some dried-out seaweed. If she hadn’t seen it for herself from the deck of one of her family’s ships, then she’d heard about it from Mei-Ling, the Cantonese cook who had accompanied the Dixon children on almost every voyage they’d ever undertaken. It was only since Mei-Ling had returned to her native land to enjoy her well-earned retirement—and Ross had brought Georgiana into the family as a sort of replacement—that Payton had begun to realize how very lacking her education had been on one subject in particular: love and marriage.
    What, for instance, would Mei-Ling have made over the fact that, when he could have had any woman in the world, Connor Drake had chosen to marry the odious Miss Whitby? Payton had a feeling Mei-Ling’s thoughts on the matter would have been quite illuminating.
    But since she wasn’t prepared to share with anyone her