An Improper Proposal Read Online Free Page B

great many more since she’d seen him last. Two particularly deep lines stood but from the corners of his mouth to the tips of his flaring nostrils. He looked, suddenly, like a man much older than his thirtieth year.
    “Of course,” he said to Miss Whitby. “I’ll be down momentarily.”
    Miss Whitby, however, didn’t move. “I do think we ought not to keep your grandmother waiting, my love,” she said brightly.
    Captain Drake said nothing for a moment. He seemed extremely interested in the pattern on the carpet. Then, suddenly, he looked up, and pinned Payton where she stood with the full intensity of his unbearably bright gaze. “Will you accompany us downstairs, Miss Dixon?” he asked.
    Payton, still a little alarmed by the transformation his face had undergone since Miss Whitby’s appearance—and completely transfixed, as always, by his stare—could only shake her head. “Um, thank you,” she murmured, through lips that had gone quite dry. “But no. I … I need a moment.”
    To her relief, the captain lowered his gaze.
    “Very well, then,” Drake said, and he offered his arm to the redheaded woman.
    ” Good evening, Miss Dixon,” Miss Whitby said very sweetly. And then the two of them turned to go, and Payton watched as Miss Whitby slipped her gloved fingers into the crock of the captain’s arm, and smiled sunnily up at him. “I imagine,” she said, “that your grandmother must be very curious to finally meet your fiancée.”
    “Yes,” Payton heard Drake reply. “I imagine that she is.”

Chapter Two
    Crossing the room after the captain and his fiancée had left, Payton went to the mirror hanging above the bureau.
    The tortoiseshell comb her brothers’ horseplay had knocked from her hair dangled behind her ear in a woeful manner. It had probably been there the whole time she’d been talking to Captain Drake. It had most certainly been there while she’d been talking to Miss Whitby.
    Sighing, Payton reached up and tried to tuck the comb back into place. But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t get it at the same angle as Georgiana had had it. When she was done,  the comb ended up sticking out rather comically from the side of her head. Rolling her eyes, she turned away from the mirror in disgust.
    Really, Payton thought to  herself. Her hair was the least of her problems. Even with her freckled and sunburned nose, her small stature and relative lack of bosom, she knew she was not, as Raleigh had so diplomatically put it, ugly. If she’d been truly ugly, her brothers would not have been so cavalier as to speak about it. But she also knew perfectly well that she looked nothing like other girls her age. She certainly didn’t look a thing like Miss Whitby, with her creamy white skin—not a freckle to be seen—and her waist
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length auburn hair. Payton looked nothing like Miss Whitby, and acted nothing like her, either.
    Take just now, for instance. Never in her life would Payton have been able to say, “Are you coming down, dearest?” to Connor Drake, and keep a straight face. Connor Drake was infinitely more dear to Payton than he would ever be to Miss Whitby—and anyone who said otherwise would get a taste of Payton’s knuckles—but she’d have sooner cut out her tongue than actually call him dearest. Of course, that might be because, had any of her brothers heard her calling their friend Drake dearest, she’d never have lived to hear the end of it.
    But still, Payton didn’t think men really liked being called dear. It certainly hadn’t looked to her as if Drake had much appreciated it. At least, his face, when Miss Whitby had uttered her “dearests” and “my loves,” hadn’t changed a bit, except maybe to get a little harder and more stern-looking.
    Then again, Ross never looked any different when Georgiana called him dear. But that was probably because his wife only called him dear when he was doing something of which she disapproved. Payton rather suspected that behind