Payton tugged self-consciously on the puffed sleeves of her white satin evening gown. She longed to tug on the points of her corset, too, which were digging uncomfortably into her thighs, but didn’t dare, with her brothers in the room. The ribbing she’d receive if they learned she was wearing one would be merciless, and, knowing them, they’d feel compelled to share the information with every single person they met at dinner. Payton had never worn a corset before, let alone hair combs, earrings, or even perfume. She couldn’t help marveling a little at her own transformation. Really, the addition of a sister-in-law to her family had not turned out the detriment Hudson and Raleigh had assured her it would. Sisters-in-law, Payton found, knew all sorts of things, and weren’t the least bit reticent about sharing that knowledge.
The information about Miss Whitby’s dress, for instance. Payton couldn’t have hoped any of her bothers would have been observant enough to deliver that. Raleigh might have got the color right, and Hudson might have had something to say about the size and shape of Miss Whitby’s breasts, but that would be all. How useful women could be! Having lived the entirety of her life almost exclusively in the company of men, Payton was quite astounded by the discovery.
“So she’s full rigged, is she?” Payton frowned at her reflection in the mirror above the bureau. “What’s she got on her masthead?”
“By that I suppose you mean how is Miss Whitby wearing her hair.” Georgiana shook her head. “Well, I’ll tell you. Down.”
“Miss Whitby, Miss Whitby,” Ross thundered. “Am I to hear of nothing but Miss Bloody Whitby for the rest of my eternal life? Isn’t anyone going to tie my damned cravat?”
Georgiana tucked the last of Payton’s curls into the tortoiseshell comb. “Really, Ross,” she said mildly. “Must you swear so?”
“Yes, Ross,” Payton said, eager to follow her sister-in-law’s ladylike example. “Shut your bleeding mouth.”
Hudson, who happened to be taking a sip from his own snifter of brandy, sprayed the contents across the room in his amusement over Payton’s indignant declaration. A few droplets of the amber stuff landed on the sleeve of Raleigh’s new evening coat. He leapt up from the window seat with an oath even more colorful than Payton’s, and the two men began instantly to wrestle, while Ross continued to demand loudly that his wife—or his sister, he didn’t care who did it, as long as it was done—tie his cravat. Georgiana commenced to insisting, for the thousandth time, that the Dixons employ a manservant, while Payton, to get Raleigh back for mimicking her, threw herself upon his back, and reached around his neck to destroy the cravat she’d so carefully tied a half hour before.
Raleigh let out a growl and put up both hands to seize hold of her wrists. Too late, it occurred to Payton that she might have thought first and acted later, an axiom with which her sister-in-law often admonished her. Wrestling with her brothers in her current state of dress was a bit different from wrestling with them in breeches. As she clung to Raleigh’s back with her knees, knowing that he was doing his best to unseat her, the stays of Payton’s tight corset dug into her ribs and thighs; the tight lacings restricted her movement more effectively than the most impassioned embrace—not that Payton was at all familiar with embraces, impassioned or otherwise. Small-boned and weighing less than half what her brothers weighed, Payton had always heavily relied upon her flexibility to get her out of whatever torture they thought up for her. The ironlike grip of her corset, however, now made such flexibility impossible.
Her sister-in-law must have realized this, since behind her, Payton heard Georgiana calling frantically, “Raleigh! Put her down. This isn’t amusing. Someone might get hurt. Put her down, Raleigh!”
“I’ll put her down,” Raleigh asserted. “Head first into the privy.”
Then, with a diabolical laugh, Raleigh made as if to pitch her over his head and shoulders.
Payton refused to beg. She was a Dixon, after all. Biting, scratching, and begging for mercy were all considered beneath the dignity of the Dixons—as was kicking one’s assailant in his privates, something Payton had learned early on in her life was guaranteed to unloose her from any man’s hold, but tended to engender in him a most unforgiving rage. She could only hope that Raleigh might realize, from the fact that she hadn’t yet escaped, that she was not exactly in her usual top fighting form. Closing her eyes, Payton silently cursed the day she’d allowed her sister-in-law to talk her into wearing a corset, and resigned herself to landing in an ignominious heap on the hard parquet floor beneath her …
Until a long, strong arm circled her waist from behind. Oh, good, Payton thought. It’s Ross. Thank God one of her brothers, anyway, had noticed her predicament, even if it was only because his wife was making him.
But when the man who had hold of her waist spoke, Payton realized it wasn’t Ross at all.
“How many times do I have to warn you, Raleigh?” Connor Drake inquired in his deep, rumbling voice. “Hands off your baby sister.”
“Baby my arse,” Raleigh asserted, keeping Payton’s wrists looked in iron grips. “She attacked me, I’ll have you know.”
“Nevertheless, you’ll release her.”
“Why should I?” Raleigh sounded peevish. “She—”
“Because,” Drake said, “I said so.”
Payton couldn’t see what Drake did with his free hand, but whatever it was, it caused Raleigh to let out a bark of pain. Suddenly, her wrists were free. The next thing she knew, Payton was being lifted from her brother’s back by the strength of the single arm around her waist. An arm that was pressing her closely against the body to which it was attached. A very hard, very large, very masculine body. A body that Payton, over the past few years, had gotten to know very well, indeed—through observation only, unfortunately. To feel that body, now, molded against her—even if it was only for a second or two, and through a good many layers of petticoats and whalebone—made Payton feel as if Raleigh had succeeded in his boast, and that she was reeling from the impact of the floor to her skull.
But it was” really only the impact of Connor Drake’s body against hers that was causing her head to spin.
“And you,” she heard Drake say, his warm breath tickling her ear. “I thought I warned you to stick to picking fights you can win, with people your own size.”
As soon as her feet touched the parquet, Payton felt Drake withdraw his arm. No, she thought, with regret as sharp as an actual physical pain.
But she couldn’t, for the life of her, think of any way she could induce him to keep that arm there. Miss Whitby would certainly have swooned , or pulled some other such stunt, to remain in his arms. But Payton had never swooned before in her life, and hadn’t the slightest idea how to fake it, either.
So she had no choice but to turn toward her rescuer and say, as tartly as she could, “Thank you for your help, but I can assure you, it was unnecessary. I had the situation entirely under control.”
Or at least, that’s what she thought she said. When she actually raised her gaze to look Drake in the eye—and she had to tilt her chin up pretty far to do so, since he was so outlandishly tall, taller even than her brothers, and they had been considered giants in some of the distant lands they’d visited—all rational thought fled, and she could only stare.
Leaning casually against one of the bedposts, Drake had folded his arms across his chest, and was looking down at her with a smile playing at the corners of his wide, expressive mouth, his blue eyes very bright. He appeared quite devastating in a new black evening coat that fit his broad shoulders a little too well, in Payton’s opinion. In addition to the jacket, there was a new waistcoat of white satin, and a pair of breeches that, when she lowered her gaze to take them in, struck her as being perhaps a little too tight—to the point of being extremely distracting to a young lady like herself, who was interested in such things—in the front.
Then again, she seemed to think that about all of Captain Drake’s trousers; her sister-in-law had assured her that, actually, the captain’s pants were of quite a loose cut, and had suggested that perhaps Payton needed to direct her attention elsewhere.
While this was probably very sound advice, Payton had lately found it impossible to follow.
“Is that so?” Drake said with a drawl. “Well, I hope you’ll beg my pardon, then. To me, you appeared to be in some distress.”
“Nonsense.” Payton tossed her head, and realized, to her dismay, that one of her combs had slipped out during the tussle with Raleigh. It was hanging loose, dangling just above a bare shoulder. She lifted a hand to it, and tried to shove it back into place. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself …”
Payton’s voice trailed off, and not because her brothers were continuing to wrestle loudly behind her, but because Drake’s gaze, when she’d raised her hands to adjust her hair comb, had suddenly dipped away from hers and down to the neckline of her gown, which, as Ross had been lamenting a little while earlier, was already quite daring. A quick glance downward revealed that now it was not only daring, but downright obscene: while nothing absolutely crucial was showing, a good deal more than was supposed to had escaped from the lace cups of that treacherous corset during her wrestling match with her brothers.
Payton immediately began tucking her breasts back where they belonged. She hadn’t much in the way of a bosom—it seemed as if every other woman in the world had a good deal more up front than she did—but what she had was really getting quite unmanageable … at least to a girl who was used to having nothing there at all. But her sister-in-law’s sharp intake of breath told her perhaps she ought to have left well enough alone—at least while she was in the presence of gentlemen who did not happen to be her blood relations.
“Oh, Captain Drake,” Georgiana cried, rushing forward and seizing the captain’s arm. “Did we disturb you? Just another on family disagreement, I’m afraid.” When the captain’s gaze still did not leave the vicinity of Payton’s chest, Georgiana gave his arm a tug, pulling him back toward the open door through which he’d managed to stroll so completely unnoticed moments before. This, Payton supposed, was a strategy Georgiana had devised with the hope of distracting the captain long enough to give Payton time to put things to rights beneath her bodice, and she took advantage of it, giving her corset a violent t g.
“They are such boys, aren’t they, Captain?” Georgiana said, with a tinkly laugh, as they stepped over the prone bodies of her brothers-in-law—who had continued to wrestle with one another long after Payton’s rescue, finally falling together to the floor with a mighty crash. “I can’t think how you put up with them for so many years. Raleigh, Hudson,” she sang. “Our host is here. Do get up.”
Raleigh got up first, pulling his waistcoat back into place. “Host,” he muttered. “It’s only Drake, for pity’s sake.”
Hudson echoed his younger brother’s sentiment. “Really, Georgiana,” he said, miffed. “You’re going to give the fellow airs, calling him a host, like that. Next thing you know, he’ll be going around insisting he’s a baronet, or something.”
“Actually,” Drake said, “I am a baronet.”
Hudson regarded his sister-in-law sourly. “See what you’ve done,” he said.
Georgiana looked pained. “Hudson,” she said. “Captain Drake
is
a baronet. Remember, I explained to you in the carriage that he inherited the title when his brother died—”
“Don’t believe it,” Hudson declared.
“I won’t believe it,” Raleigh insisted. “We don’t have to s ir you now, Drake, do we? Because I for one won’t stand for it, not after all we’ve been through together.”
“I don’t think,” Hudson agreed, thoughtfully, “that I could sir a man I’ve beaten at cards as many times as I’ve beaten Drake.”
Drake gave a low bow. “Gentlemen,” he said with mock gravity, “I have full faith that neither of you will allow the change in my social status to tarnish the respect I know you’ve always harbored for me.”
“Kiss my arse, Drake,” Hudson suggested, and Raleigh made a rude noise with his lips.
“Oh,” Georgiana said, opening her fan and applying it to her burning cheeks with energy. “Dear.”
Drake rose from his bow with a smile across his face—one of those smiles that made Payton, even when she wasn’t wrestling with her brothers, feel a little breathless.
“It’s nice to know,” he commented, “that while a good many things may change, some things will always stay the same.”
“I say, Drake.” Ross fingered his still-open collar. “Georgiana says you tied that knot yourself. Is that true? You’ve got to show me how to do it, old man. I can’t quite seem to get the hang of it.”
“The gentlemen are gathering in the billiard room,” Drake replied, still smiling. “I’ll join you there, and happily give you what cravat-tying advice I can.”
“Billiard room,” Hudson echoed. “The blighter’s got a billiard room. There’s something to this baronet stuff, Ral.”
“I wager there’ll be whisky there,” Raleigh said. “There’s always whisky in a billiard room.”
There was no doorway in the world wide enough to admit all three Dixon brothers when they were on a quest for whisky, and the doorways of Daring Park were no exception. Payton watched with raised eyebrows as her brothers elbowed and jostled one another in their haste to exit the room. It wasn’t until they were gone that Drake, his own eyebrows similarly raised, turned to Georgiana and said, as mildly as if nothing unusual at all had occurred since he’d entered the room, “Mrs. Dixon, the ladies are gathering before supper in the drawing room, I believe.”
“Oh.” Georgiana fanned herself frantically, not having quite recovered from Hudson’s suggestion that Connor Drake kiss his posterior. “Thank you, Captain. That’s quite—It’s very kind of you to stop by, personally, to let us know—”
“It was my pleasure, Mrs. Dixon. I’m delighted to have you all here at Daring Park. I trust you find your rooms comfortable?”
“Oh,” Georgiana said. “Very. The house is charming, simply charming.”
Georgiana seemed quite anxious to get out from beneath the captain’s penetrating gaze. Payton could understand the inclination. She’d been the recipient of that cool, calculating gaze more times than she liked to remember.