Payton nodded. She’d known Ross would have to have been seriously incapacitated to send these two in his stead—and to send them in an open carriage, no less. Payton, still dressed in Miss Whitby’s jail smock, was quite an object of interest to passers-by, many of whom pointed and said, quite audibly, “That’s her! That’s the one what was dead, and came back again!”
Payton had never before realized quite how far the city jail was from her family’s villa. But it was far enough for Hudson to comment, as they drove along. “I expect your head must be smartin’ a bit, from where she hit you.”
Since Payton’s head was smarting, she didn’t think it a lie to reply, “Yes, a bit.”
“What’d she hit you with, anyway?” Raleigh wanted to know. “Horseshoe?”
Payton craned her neck to look up at the night sky. “I suppose,” she said.
“What balderdash.” Raleigh snorted. “Really, Pay, you’re goin’ to have to come up with something a bit better if you don’t want Ross chawin’ you to bits. Hit you with a horseshoe. Pshaw!”
Hudson, holding the reins to the matched set of bays that drew them, agreed. “He’ll ask to feel the bump on your noggin,” he said. “You better come up with a damned good explanation, Pay, and right quick.”
Miserable, Payton looked away from the sky. “I suppose I could just tell him the truth.”
“The truth?” Raleigh rolled his eyes. “What for? You already told ’im the truth once, and look where it got you: locked in your room for a week.”
Payton sighed. “I expect you’re right. Was … Does Drake know?”
Neither Hudson nor Raleigh answered right away. Payton, sensing something was wrong, looked from one to the other and repeated her question, with a growing sense of unease. Finally, Hudson replied, “If he don’t know, then he’s the only one. Every man, woman, and child on this island knows that this afternoon, the Honorable Miss Payton Dixon—”
“Otherwise known as the young lady what was dead,” Raleigh inserted helpfully.
“—was involved in a jail break that resulted in the escape of a wanted felon.”
“Wanted or wanton?” Raleigh quipped.
Ignoring him, Payton asked, “What exactly did Drake say? When he found out, I mean.”
“Not much.” The chaise had pulled up alongside the front of the villa, and Hudson laid down the reins. “He was the one who found you gone, you know.”
“What?” Payton gasped in astonishment. “But how? I thought Ross wouldn’t let him anywhere near the house!”
Raleigh clambered down from the vehicle. “Don’t be an ass, Pay,” he advised. “You know Ross. He can’t stay mad longer’n a mosquito can stay in one place. Drake’s been here all along, waitin’ for you to stop actin’ like such a girl. When he found you gone, he went straight back to his house, thinkin’ sure that’s where you’d gone. When you didn’t show up after a bit, he went out lookin’ for you. I don’t expect it occurred to him to look in the jailhouse, however.”
“He was here when the messenger arrived,” Hudson put in. “He’d stopped in to see if we’d had any word yet. When he heard what happened—about you havin’ gone to visit Miss Whitby in jail, and her boltin’ like she did, he …”
“He what?” Payton gripped the side of the chaise, blinking up at him in the soft lamplight reflected from the villa’s windows.
“He left,” Hudson finished, with a shrug.
“Left?” Payton cried. “Left for where?”
“Well, how should I know? ’Snot my turn to look after ’im.” Hudson climbed down from the chaise, then turned to offer Payton a hand.
“But how … how did he look?”
“Disgusted’s the only word I can think of. I got the feelin’ he knew.”
“Knew what?” Payton was so distracted, she didn’t even ask herself why her brother was helping her from the carriage, an act of chivalry he had never before performed for her benefit.
“Well, that poor ol’ Miss Whitby didn’t exactly get away all on her own.” Hudson shot her a meaningful glance. “Now did she?”
Payton swallowed. Good Lord. This was worse than she’d ever expected. Drake, disgusted? Disgusted by her? Well, disgusted by what she’d done, anyway. And why shouldn’t he be? She’d helped a woman who’d played an integral part in his brother’s murder to escape from prison! How had she expected him to feel? Delighted? A man like Drake—a proud man; a man’s man—wasn’t likely to look upon what she’d done with any sort of understanding. Fury, maybe. But not understanding.
“Oh,” she said, under her breath. She tried to think of a swear word appropriately awful enough to describe her feelings just then, but all she could come up with was, “Dear.”
She’d made, she realized, yet another bloody mess of things.
Sleep 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 looked 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 l
a
dylike 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 jail-house 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 1 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. “Oh 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.”