Chapter Seven #3
Phylis started. The question had seemingly come from nowhere, but as she took in the man before her, it was to see that it had been asked from a place of carefully constructed nonchalance.
Interesting.
“No,” she decided to say. Well, that was true. She had no husband on the Dreamer.
Michael’s face did not exactly fall, but he did not look happy. “Where is he?”
“Gone,” Phylis said shortly.
How was she supposed to explain that she had never been married? Oh, she’d shared a kiss or three with a few men of the sea, with the delightful knowledge that the likelihood of her seeing them again was essentially nil…but that was all.
Being a Mrs. Seaton in some situations protected her when being Captain Seaton wouldn’t. She wasn’t about to give up that protection to a man who didn’t seem to be able to decide whether he was coming or going.
Michael was still examining her closely. “And do you think you’ll ever marry again?”
Phylis forced a laugh to cover her embarrassment at the remarkably personal question. “I’m married to the sea. No man would stand a…stand a chance.”
She was not going to look into his eyes. She was not going to smile. She was not going to—
“You are very bold, you know,” Michael said conversationally, reaching out to push a curl of her hair behind her ear.
The movement was simple. It was over in a moment. It was not erotic in any way.
And yet it was—oh, God, it was. Phylis had to fight the instinct to close her eyes, to lean her cheek into his palm. Her pulse fluttered as he touched her, the merest contact burning into her, burning through her.
Setting her ablaze with a heat only the ocean could quench.
“…don’t you think?”
Phylis blinked. Oh, bilge, she had entirely lost track of what the blighter was talking about. “What?”
Michael exhaled a laugh as his gaze darted to his boots before returning to her face. “I suppose I’m not as interesting as I think I am. I’m never able to hold your attention for long, am I?”
Quite the opposite, Phylis could have said. Instead, she muttered, “I’d better get back. They need me.”
And I need to stick my feet in a bucket of cold seawater.
The disappointment that flickered across his face as he swallowed thickly was palpable, even if there had not been a moon. “Must you?”
Oh, it was tempting. To continue meandering up and down this dock with a gentleman who so clearly adored her. To hear his pleasantries, pretend for a moment that she was a nobly born lady who was being courted by this future viscount…
Phylis swallowed.
What was the point? At the end of it all, he could go off to a castle, or whatever viscounts lived in, and sleep on a feather bed with golden-gilt furnishings, or similar.
And she could go back to the solid, dependable Dreamer, and shout at whoever hadn’t swabbed the deck properly, and debate with Cook whether he could have an increase in budget, then go to sleep on a packed straw bed with no trimmings whatsoever.
Phylis smiled drolly as she looked up at the handsome gentleman before her. They were from different worlds—and worse, neither of them could step into the other.
She should put a stop to this. Right now. This very moment. It had to end.
“I want to see you again.”
Heat burned Phylis’s cheeks as she stared up at the man who had spoken such nonsense. “No, you don’t.”
“Oh, don’t I?” Michael smirked, though there was no teasing in his eye as he continued. “I like you, Phylis.”
“‘Captain Seaton,’” corrected Phylis in a whisper.
“Oh, no, you’ve been Phylis tonight and you’ll always be Phylis to me, even if I cannot address you that way in company,” said Michael seriously. “I like you, Phylis. I’d like to—”
“Absolutely not,” she interrupted firmly.
No, here was the line and she would have to hold it. She was not going to allow herself to be bedded by a future viscount—definitely not, no way in hell, not a possibility.
Even if it was a chance of a lifetime…
“—be friends,” finished Michael, raising an eyebrow at the vehemence in her tone. “I could use a friend. Before I leave.”
Before he leaves.
Phylis still could not understand it. Leave? Leave everything he’d known, just to go to another land with the same types of problems, the same types of snooty people? Did he really think he could outrun his own name?
“It wouldn’t be appropriate,” she said stiffly.
There it was—there was the sparkle of mischief in his eye. “Oh, really?” asked Michael lightly as they reached the Dreamer and Phylis stepped onto her gangplank. “I thought you were bolder than that, Phylis. I thought you were outside of polite Society and didn’t care for their rigid rules.”
“I don’t,” snapped Phylis, turning around to glare. “I—”
“Excellent. I shall consider you a friend from now on,” quipped Michael, light dancing in his eyes as he bowed, then strode off into the night.
Phylis stood in shocked stillness in the middle of the gangplank, hardly believing what had just happened. Friends? No, she couldn’t be—no woman could be friends with Michael Chance and live to tell the tale!
A voice came out of the darkness. “Ye told him to leave the docks, then, did ye?”
Phylis swallowed. “Yes, well. In a manner of speaking…no.”