Chapter Ten #2
Prevented from exploding in anger at the man seated opposite her, Phylis deflated and closed her mouth. Then she sighed heavily, pulled the book out from underneath her—Michael being very careful to take in every inch of her curves as she did so—and looked down at the book with pinking cheeks.
“No, I don’t imagine so. But for me, it’s sufficient. I suppose.”
It took Michael a moment to realize what on earth was going on. She was staring at the book as though it had done her a mortal injury, which, as far as Michael could tell, it hadn’t. Not unless it was particularly painful to sit on.
Only when he saw the emotion flickering in her eyes did his jaw drop and his mind finally catch up with the rest of him.
Captain Phylis Seaton…was embarrassed.
“You’re embarrassed,” he exhaled, hardly able to believe it.
If he had been in any doubt, her reaction confirmed it. Phylis slammed the book on the desk beside her, glared with red cheeks, and snapped, “No, I’m not!”
“Shhhhh!”
Phylis turned to direct her not inconsiderable fury at the librarian, but Michael stepped in. The last thing he needed was the two of them to be banned from Norton’s Circulating Library forever.
“Apologies! Sudden papercut. You know how it is,” he called over to the apoplectic Mr. Norton.
When he turned back to Phylis, she was still red, but she looked less likely to explode and stab someone through the heart with a saber.
Which was nice.
“You are,” Michael said quietly, a slow smile creeping across his lips. “You’re embarrassed, Phylis.”
“So what if I am?” she shot back in an undertone, refusing to meet his eye. “You’d be embarrassed too if you… If you…”
Michael stared, fascinated, at the woman who was always so prepossessing, always wholly in control of her faculties.
On the docks, in the market, on her ship, Captain Seaton was master—mistress of all she commanded.
She had the confidence of a king, no concerns about her capabilities, and she would have laughed in the face of anyone who doubted her.
But here…
Here, in this seat in the circulating library, she was…unsure of herself. Quiet, sinking down into the seat as though that could turn her invisible.
It was astonishing.
“Why are you here, Phylis?” Michael asked quietly.
Phylis glared, but obviously deciding that he was not going to go away without an answer—quite correctly—she sighed and informed the book on the table, “I… I’m here to improve myself.”
The words reverberated in Michael’s mind for a good twenty seconds before he could organize his thoughts into speech.
“I’m sorry, you’re what?”
“Look, I’m not a lady. I’ve not had book learnings and I don’t have manners,” Phylis said sharply, keeping her voice low as a pair of ladies sauntered past them, giggling about something probably to do with the novels in their arms. “And I thought…well, books have everything, don’t they? They know everything.”
Michael was still not entirely following, but he nodded at that last bit. Books certainly did know everything.
“And so I thought… It’s all so stupid.” At this, Phylis’s face fell, a look of genuine pain and sadness on her face as she said dully, “I can’t learn how to improve myself from a book.”
“You certainly can’t,” Michael said before he could stop himself.
He had expected anger. He had expected fury. Parts of him were already readying themselves to be whacked, perhaps with a book.
What he had not expected was for Phylis to look so…so defeated, shoulders slumped and head down. “I know.”
“Because you can’t be improved; you’re perfect already,” he added, hoping to goodness that she believed his explanation. “Look, I don’t understand this—you know everything there is about ships, about the sea, about being a captain. What else could you possibly need to know?”
It was only when Phylis swallowed and shifted in her seat that Michael realized just how close they were sitting.
Without a chaperone.
Not that she needed a chaperone, of course. She was a widow, wasn’t she? And if her father hadn’t been a gentleman, it was hardly expected of her to begin with.
But Michael had spent his whole life ensuring—at least attempting to ensure—that his sisters were properly chaperoned, and now to sit with a woman, alone—or at least, with no one glancing over their shoulders and tutting at regular intervals at them… It was strange, indeed.
Phylis sighed. “I was almost born on the Dreamer. Did I ever tell you that?”
Curiosity flickered within him as Michael leaned forward. “No, you haven’t.”
The smile that crept across her face was warm. “My father was the captain before me. He loved the ocean, loved it more than anything. More than anyone.”
Michael nodded, though already, he could see the problem that would crop up with such an attitude and a child.
Where was her mother?
Almost as though she could read his thoughts, Phylis added in a quiet voice, “He met my mother by accident when he was ashore in Bristol. She… She was very beautiful, they say, and a lady. A true gentlewoman. It was…a swift engagement.”
I could well guess, Michael thought wryly, if the daughter is anything like the mother. Why, if I could marry her—
Where the hell had that thought come from?
“My mother’s family… They were gentlefolk, you see,” Phylis said with a rueful, pinched expression that said much about frustration and snobbery without actually saying anything. “They did not want her to marry him at all, and when she said she was going to sea…they compromised.”
Michael blinked. “‘Compromised’?”
She nodded, picking up A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Manners by Amberleen Trinkett almost as though she were not thinking about it, turning the book over and over in her hands.
“She would go on voyages with my father if they were around Britain, but when he had to go farther afield, she would return to her parents and stay there, and wait for him.”
Now, Michael was no married man, but even he could see the problem here. “But she must have missed him—they must have missed each other terribly.”
Phylis’s smile was heartfelt, though her eyes were sad. “They did. And when I was born, my mother happened to be on land with her parents, and she…she died.”
Michael’s stomach dropped out of his chest.
“And he was not there.” Phylis blew out a long, slow breath, as though the story were physically painful to tell. Perhaps it was. “My father returned three weeks later to find a house in mourning and a baby.”
“You.”