Chapter Seven
“That,” said Drummond happily as he slammed his tankard down on the table, froth spilling over the brim, “was a damned good meal.”
Phylis smiled as the roar of her crew filled the room, a few of them banging on the table where they sat. “It was, indeed. Hail to the Cook!”
“Hail to the Cook!” bellowed the room, and cheers went up as Cook, flushing slightly with the unexpected praise, rose and gave a short, awkward bow with his burly body.
Phylis grinned as she watched Jack, their scrawny cabin boy, slap Cook on the back then duck as the older man pretended to swing ’round and bat him across the ear. The room was warm, her stomach was full of the most delicious stew she had tasted in a long while, and her mind was full of—
Don’t think of him, she told herself silently.
Michael Chance. Future Viscount Pernny, or something.
The man had absolutely no idea how good he had it, swanning about Society, enjoying its good opinion through no talent of his own. The man had been born powerful, and he wanted to walk away from it…for what?
Because his family loved him too much?
Phylis sighed and rose to her feet. Best to keep moving, best to do something. That always forced her mind onto other things. There was always a rope to tie, a knot to tighten, a sail to check…
“Y’all right, Captain?”
“Just going up on deck to think,” she said vaguely to her first mate, who nodded briefly.
“I could do with some thinkin’ meself.”
The pair of them strode up the steps, which, as far as Phylis was concerned, were hardly moving and had not necessitated the nonsense that Michael—that Mr. Chance had pulled yesterday. Why on earth he had acted like walking across the deck was the hardest thing anyone had ever done…
The fresh evening air bit at her skin as Phylis emerged on the deck and she inhaled deep lungfuls of it.
Yes, this was it. This was why she lived, how she lived. The freedom she possessed… It was everything she had ever wanted. Everything she had ever known.
“Yer father would be real pleased, y’do know that, right?”
Phylis almost stumbled as she reached for the balustrade, but she managed to pretend she was just leaning. It also meant she could look out across the dock rather than meet the eye of her far-too-perceptive first mate.
“I know,” she said softly.
Drummond joined her at the balustrade, his teeth on wide display. “Though I think he believed ye’d marry and keep her that way.”
“The Dreamer is mine. I’m not about to give her away,” retorted Phylis, raising an eyebrow at the man who had served two generations of Seatons now, and loyally too. “You think I should have just wed a landlubber and stayed on shore knitting doilies, or whatever it is they do?”
The man snorted. “You definitely wouldn’t last as a landlubber’s wife if you think all they do is knit dollies.”
“Doilies, Drummond,” corrected Phylis, trying not to smile. “They’re like…like little embroidery circle things to put things on.”
From the light of the moon, it was clear to see her first mate had no firsthand experience with doilies.
“Yer ma would have understood better’n me,” he said with a shrug. “A good woman, your ma.”
Phylis’s stomach twisted. “They both were.”
“Aye.”
There they stood, in the London moonlight. They had stood here in Marseilles moonlight, and Genoa, and Boston. They had sailed all over and her crew had, for the most part, stayed the same and stayed loyal.
A lump rose in Phylis’s throat that she forced down with the well-practiced art of a woman who had not allowed herself to show many feelings for…for years.
She couldn’t allow anyone to see her weakness.
She couldn’t allow anyone to think her weak.
“There’s yon idiot again.”
Phylis blinked, her gaze sharpening as a tall figure in a top hat came into view at the end of the docks. “Oh, by Poseidon.”
“Poor lad,” Drummond said generously, though there was a twinkle in his eye that suggested he had gained more than a little entertainment at the man’s antics. “He’s had a difficult start to life, that one.”
It was all Phylis could do not to roar with laughter. “You’re jesting with me! He’s a Chance. I asked around, they’re one of the wealthiest, most respected families in London. In the country!”
“Aye, I suppose some of them are,” continued her first mate levelly, “but not that one.”
Try as she might, Phylis could not stop herself from looking over at the figure of Mr. Michael Chance, who was meandering, seemingly without purpose, along the moonlit docks.
Not that one? Why not that one?
As though her first mate could hear her thoughts—and it wouldn’t be the first time—he continued with a shrug. “Ask him about his pa. There’s a scandal there, a right complicated one, if ye ask me. Something he’s fought against his whole life.”
Phylis stared. A scandal? But the Michael Chance she knew had been all smiles and confidence, all cocky charm and eager passion to immigrate and kiss her senseless.
The man had hardly been fighting for his reputation.
“Fascinating lad,” said Drummond with a shrug. “Right, I’ll help Cook with the washing up. Ye need anythin’ from me?”
But his father… Phylis had not met the viscount at Almack’s, and she’d not heard anything about him. Had that been on purpose? Was the man’s past kept a secret specifically because of the shame it might bring him?
“Captain?”
Phylis blinked. “What?”
Her first mate winked. “You just go talk to him, get him out of yer mind.”
She blanched. “I do not want to speak to him!”
“Fine, ye don’t wanna talk to him. Just tell him—tell him to leave the docks.” He shrugged. Drummond was the one man in the whole world who had known her from birth and wouldn’t put up with any of her nonsense. Not that she’d spouted any nonsense in years.
But this, Phylis could not help but think as she pushed out the gangplank and disembarked from her ship onto the docks, this was nonsense.
What the hell did she think she was doing? Her place was on her ship, and that was where she should stay. So why did she think it more important to go and talk to—
“Mr. Chance!” Phylis said in a gasp as he stepped out from the shadows.
Why there was this tug toward him, she did not know. Why her pulse should skip a beat at the sight of him was inexplicable.
Unfortunately, the heat that roared through her as their eyes met… Phylis was all too aware of what that meant.
Oh, call me a jaw-me-down…
“Captain Seaton?” Mr. Chance blinked into the darkness, plainly not quite gaining his night eyes. “Is that you?”
“If it hadn’t been me, you’d have been beaten, robbed, and down by now,” Phylis said sardonically, rolling her eyes. “Do you have absolutely no desire to live, man?”
“It is you.” And he smiled, and her stomach twisted.
Oh, no.
“What are you doing here?” she asked curtly, as though this were a business meeting of a sort and she had absolutely no interest in the man personally whatsoever.
Phylis had thought she’d pitched it quite well, which made it all the more disappointing when the man tilted his head and some curls slipped over his eyes.
“Miss me?”
Save me from presumptive idiots, Phylis thought darkly. Even if what they presume is correct.
Oh, son of a—
“What are you doing on the docks this late at night?” she asked, a not unreasonable question, though she probably didn’t have to allow so much sharpness in her tone.
Perhaps the sharpness was what got through, for Mr. Chance flushed, looked at his feet, and told his boots, “I… I wanted to see you.”
Do not, Phylis told herself firmly, be happy about this. Do not celebrate. Do not smile. Definitely do not—
“I’m glad to see you too,” she said before cursing herself to high heaven in the privacy of her own mind.
Mr. Chance’s cheeks were still flushed, but there was a smile dancing across his lips now. “You are?”
Phylis sighed. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”
It was most inconvenient, that was what it was. Oh, she had met a thousand men over the years, and she would meet a thousand more, and there were a few who quickened her pulse and made her conscious of her clothing.
But no man had ever looked at her like that.
Reverential, as well as lustful.
Phylis swallowed. Well, if she knew one way to darken the mood and take all the romance out of it, it was this. “What sort of a scandal was your father involved with?”
As expected, the man’s smile disappeared. What she had not expected was the sharp stab of pain in her own gut that followed, the regret, and shame that she had spoken so directly about something that obviously pained the man.
Mr. Chance’s breathing became shallow. “I only talk about such things with friends.”
“And we are not friends?” Phylis shot back, furiously determined to hide her discomfort.
“People who blackmail me are not friends,” the man pointed out, though with an arched brow.
“Perhaps not,” said Phylis with a shrug that was far too nonchalant. She started to walk along the dock slowly, her hands clasped behind her back. “But then you will notice that I haven’t actually blackmailed you. You can call me ‘Phylis’ while you tell me, if you want.”
One, two—
“Really?” said Mr. Chance eagerly as he reached her side and fell into step with her.
It was all Phylis could do not to giggle. Men! They were so predictable and therefore so malleable. Couldn’t he see that she had manipulated him to tell her—
Wait a moment. But was she not in turn the one who had been manipulated? After all, she was the one who had given him permission to call her ‘Phylis’…
Oh, son of a gun.
“Then you should call me ‘Michael,’” the gentleman said eagerly, not even bothering to hide his delight. “And we should talk about ourselves, about us, about the future of this…liaison.”
“‘Future’?” Phylis said blankly. “‘Us’? There is no us!”
It should not have pained her to see the disappointment on his face. It should not have twisted at her throat, made speech difficult, made breathing difficult.
“Besides,” she said decisively in what was definitely not a croak. “Goodness, this night air—besides, I want to know the story of your father. What happened to him.”