Chapter One #3
Oh, hang it all. It’s not that difficult, is it?
“But… But you are a woman,” blurted out Mr. Acton, as though he were somewhat upset to inform her of such a fact.
Anger twisted in her gut. “And you are a man.”
Phylis did not bother to say ‘gentleman.’ Not when the blaggard clearly wasn’t one.
“But—But—But—” stammered Mr. Acton.
“I think what my esteemed colleague is attempting to say,” Mr. Thurlow said, a man who had barely spoken and let the others take the lead in the negotiations, “is that most sea captains are not ladies. In fact, I don’t think any—”
“Your surprise is noted,” said Phylis curtly, glancing against her better judgment at the longcase clock. Ten minutes to two. She might make it, if she really ran. “Well, if that is all, gentlemen…”
“But you cannot seriously think—”
“I seriously think that my ship is going to leave in ten minutes, whether I am on it or not, and I want to be on it,” snapped Phylis, pushed beyond breaking point and wishing to goodness she didn’t always want to cry whenever someone argued with her about who she even was.
“I seriously think these contracts are legally binding and whether you like it or not, gentlemen, I am good at what I do and so I do what I am good at. And what I am good at is captaining a ship, which is a tad difficult to do if that ship has left for Edinburgh with a cargo of fine china, so I say to you, good day!”
She did not exactly scream the last few words at them, but it was a very near thing.
Grasping all the paperwork that featured her signature and those of the accountants, Phylis didn’t bother attempting to stuff them in the satchel she had brought for such a purpose and instead rounded the corner, stomping through the door and out into the office.
Faces stared up at her from every desk. A pencil dropped.
“Oh, Zeus’s thunderbolts,” Phylis muttered before clomping forward to the door.
Ten minutes. Well, she did hate to run, but she was energetic; she could make it. And it had been ages since they’d had a good excuse to visit Edinburgh. She could see it now, the castle rising in the distance, the mountain overlooking the city.
“But Miss—Mrs.—Captain Seaton!”
Phylis ignored whoever was shouting. What did she care what he had to say?
The sea was calling her, the waves, the freedom, the escape from dry land and all its assumptions about her and about women and about what she could do.
The sea.
Phylis clung tightly to the signed contracts and ran.
It was difficult. London was never especially empty, and apparently, a warm day like today had brought out all the ladies and gentlemen who had nothing better to do than gad about filling up the streets, so she was forced to duck and weave and dodge around those who hardly saw her coming until she was gone.
“My word, that was—”
“Was that a woman in a man’s coat?”
A slow grin spread across Phylis’s face as she turned a corner, rushing past a beggar playing a flute and a stall owner hawking pies.
“Pies! Get your pies!”
A woman in a man’s clothes may have seemed like a most peculiar thing to these landlubbers, that she could well believe—but on the Dreamer, there was nothing better. Nothing more practical, either.
And soon she would be back on her, the ship that had made her fortune—well, not exactly fortune, but who had given her freedom. Down here, the alley would be an excellent shortcut. All Phylis wanted was to step on the deck and feel the solid boards beneath her—
“Arghhh!”
A cascade, a flurry, a snow of paperwork fluttered down from the sky. For a moment, Phylis could not understand how that could have happened. It had been a long while since she had spent much time in London, to be sure, but she was almost certain it didn’t rain paper here.
Her head hurt. And the sky was big.
She was lying on the ground.
How the hell did that happen?
One of the pieces of paper fluttered down onto her face and Phylis hazily removed it and tried to read it.
…agreed by Captain Seaton, aforementioned, that she and her crew of the Dreamer will transport and safeguard…
Phylis’s gaze sharpened. The paperwork. Her paperwork. The contracts!
Struggling to her feet as her head ached, she started desperately picking up the paper that had scattered all over the alleyway.
And for the second time in two minutes, she barraged into an immovable force.
“What the…?”
“Get out of the way,” Phylis snapped, trying to pick up a piece of contract before the brute stepped on it. “Don’t—oh, you buffoon!”
“I’m the buffoon?!” snapped the immoveable force, which coalesced as Phylis blinked at it into—
Into a man. A tall man, with a sharp expression and an even sharper jawline. He was looking at her as though she were possessed, and the eyes that he was using to look at her were a dark, rich blue.
Like the ocean, Phylis could not help but think.
And just like the ocean, the man was wide and seemingly impassable. He had also trodden on one of her contracts.
Phylis glared at the man. “Is it your natural predilection to get in the way, or is that just a gift for me today?”