Chapter Seven #2
Phylis was not imagining it. There was not a cloud in the sky, yet somehow, a shadow passed over Michael’s face and his expression turned deadly serious for a moment as he contemplated her question.
“‘What happened to him’?” he replied lightly as they passed another ship moored to the dock. “What happened was that he was born.”
This did not make a heap of sense to Phylis, but then, the vagaries of the upper classes rarely did.
Their problems were about…oh, how fast one’s horse had run at the last race, or whether blue or green silk was more fashionable.
Problems that weren’t really problems. Challenges that weren’t really challenges.
“‘Born’?” Phylis repeated, trying not to let the mirth into her voice. “Oh, well, I think we’ve all faced that.”
“Not like he did,” said Michael quietly, and there was a wry smile on his face as he turned to her and said lightly, “He was born the illegitimate and hated son of a duke.”
Phylis halted in her steps and stared up into the handsome face that bore—yes, she could see it now. The tiredness of one who had fought against an injustice for years and was still doing it.
“‘Illegitimate’?” she repeated in an undertone, as though there were anyone there to hear her. “‘Illegitimate’—but he was a viscount. Is a viscount, I mean. How could he hold a title if—”
“It’s complicated,” Michael said with a sigh.
Phylis could not help but grin. “Isn’t it always?”
His surprise was obvious as he tugged a hand through his hair. “What would you know about it?”
“Oh, you think that I’ve never come across two people who allowed their passions to get the better of them, and find themselves with the evidence of it nine months later?
” Phylis shook her head briefly at his expression.
“No, not me, you dolt—but there are members of my crew with…well, not a wife in every port, but a few daughters and sons scattered about the place. Passion doesn’t always end with the morning. ”
Michael was goggling at her now.
“What?!”
“That you can speak of such things with such—such calm!” spluttered Michael, his eyes still wide. “You, a lady—”
Phylis snorted. “I’m not a lady. I’m not highborn enough for that. I’m just a woman, Michael, and a practical one at that. I’m not here to judge the world; I’m here to sail it. So your father was illegitimate. Who cares?”
“Lots of people did,” was the dark reply as they continued walking along the docks, the moonlight shimmering over the waters.
“Lots of people still do. My grandfather had three sons, three legitimate sons, and while my Uncle William—he’s the eldest—was minded to accept my father, and my Uncle John happy to just ignore my father…
let’s just say that my Uncle George always sends a Christmas card each year, but it has the shortest message, shall we? ”
There was pain there. Pain for his father, Phylis could hear it. See it in the tension in his brows, the tightness of his jaw.
Michael loved his father, and how the man had been treated pained him.
Warmth stirred within her. “If that was how his family treated him, I can’t imagine how Society… No, that’s a lie. I can.”
Michael’s laughter was bitter as they reached the natural end of the dock, turned on their heels, and started walking slowly back the way they had come.
“Yes. Yes, my father became the Viscount Pernrith before I was born. My Uncle William split his estate’s titles between the brothers, a peacemaking attempt, I think, though it’s only vaguely worked.
Despite holding a viscountcy, my father has always received the smiles of Society to his face and the mutters of Society behind his back. He’s borne it well.”
But you haven’t.
Phylis did not give voice to the thought; it was far too obvious to even need spelling out. Here was a man who was desperately proud of his father, and desperately furious at the way the world had treated him…something she, of all things, could understand.
Most unlike her, she decided to choose her words carefully as she said, “So… So that’s it? The scandal was merely his birth, not his actions?”
Michael chuckled, shaking his head. “My father wouldn’t know a scandalous opportunity if it hit him in the face!
He’s spent decades making sure that no one could ever claim he’d done anything untoward, and my mother is the same.
The Pernrith family obsession with keeping our name out of the gossip rags…
Well, my cousins have a lot more latitude.
Their fathers are legitimate,” he said, and the bitterness was only detectable to someone really looking for it. “They can do whatever they like.”
And it was this hatred for Society that Phylis could suddenly understand.
What had it done for Michael Chance but poison people against his father for something he could neither help nor change?
“You hate being a Chance,” she said quietly.
Michael waved a hand in the air with a pinched expression. “I love it; I hate it. It’s complicated.”
“It certainly seems to be,” said Phylis, not bothering to hide back her thoughts now. “After all, you are not stained with the scandal, for want of a better word, of illegitimacy. You—You’re not, are you?”
The red flush on his cheeks was adorable!
Not adorable. Fascinating.
“You’ve met my mother,” Michael pointed out.
“Well, that doesn’t mean—”
“Yes, I’m legitimate,” snapped Michael, and Phylis made a careful note of his breaking point.
His mother. “But it doesn’t matter. When my father dies—or worse, when he decides he doesn’t want to be Viscount Pernrith anymore, as had become tradition in our family—he’ll hand the title over to me and then wherever I go… ”
“Everyone will assume that you’re illegitimate,” she whispered.
Oh, it made sense now. Here was a man who had seen the pain his beloved father had undergone…
and knew that pain was coming. The scandal, the ignominy his father had suffered, still suffered every day, it was merely a precursor for Michael.
Every day, he saw how his future would be shaped: dislike, distrust, distance merely because of an accident of birth.
Michael was nodding dismally. “Oh, some people will realize we are different people, but it’s the name. The title itself, it’s—it’s—it’s besmirched. Is that the right word?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know what it means,” Phylis said lightly.
The carefree nature of her reply clearly rankled with the man beside her, for this time, it was he who stopped, a glare on his face where there had only been curiosity on hers. “Don’t give me that—you’re one of the brightest women I’ve ever met!”
“Don’t be daft, man. I can read, but I’ve never been educated!”
For some reason, her statement caused palpable confusion in Michael’s eyes. “What, never?”
Phylis thrust a finger at the nearest ship. “What sort of an education do you think you’ll find on there?”
Evidently, that had been the wrong thing to say—and not just because Michael looked shocked, his eyes wide, but because as his mouth slowly formed a smile, he also looked curious.
Phylis bit her lip. She had never revealed so much about herself to anyone beyond her crew, and even they only knew half the story. What was she thinking, telling him that?
What was she thinking, talking to him at all?
She belonged on her ship. The Dreamer needed her, her crew needed her, and she needed them. She needed the ocean, the swell of the waves, the challenge of the storm.
Not… Not this handsome gentleman who stared like she was some sort of—of mermaid!
“Is your husband on the ship?”