Chapter Nine
This was ridiculous.
Phylis tugged her shawl, which had somehow managed to become lopsided again, and wondered what on earth she was doing.
Honestly, this is madness! What was I thinking?
“What are you thinking?” Drummond had asked her only that very afternoon, his brow wrinkled.
“I just—I have business on shore and I trust you completely,” Phylis had said brightly as she’d smiled at her first mate. “It’s only a short run to Plymouth and back. You know exactly how to—”
“I know how to. Obviously, I know how to,” Drummond had said quietly, so the rest of the crew packing up the Dreamer couldn’t hear their conversation on the busy docks. “But I don’t do it because I’m not the captain. You are.”
She was, and so it did not make any sense at all that Phylis had waved off the Dreamer that very afternoon from the docks.
It did not make sense that she could be away from her home like this, staying on land like this—refusing to carry out her orders and instead handing over the responsibility to her second-in-command.
And yet it felt so right.
“This will be the last time,” she had told herself steadfastly after calling upon Mr. Todd and calling in that favor that he’d owed her since last year.
Phylis smoothed her fingers down the silk of her best gown—her only silk gown, as it happened, the soft white fading slightly but still brilliantly white. “The very last time.”
Get it out of her system. That was what she had to do. Force herself to face the fact that she and Michael—that she and Mr. Chance did not only have no future together, but no present, either.
The whole thing was all her in mind. He was a man who wished to bed her, that was all, Phylis told herself firmly as she marched along the cobbled street and tried not to fall over in these ridiculous shoes.
Honestly, how did any woman walk in them?
Give her solid, dependable boots any day of the week…
Phylis knew the way but couldn’t help but look up and down the street carefully as she crossed the street.
The first and last time she had been there had been a fluke; the footmen on the door had been distracted by a woman who had tripped out of a carriage, and so it had been easy to slip past them and into Almack’s.
But this time, she had an invitation. Or a ticket. Or a token. Or whatever they called it.
“And if anyone asks, you are a guest of Lady Romeril,” Mr. Todd had said quietly, handing over the ticket thing. “But if you can avoid mentioning her name at all, for the love of God, do it.”
That had certainly piqued Phylis’s curiosity, but even when pressed, the man would not say much more.
“Just hope you never encounter her sharp tongue,” the solicitor had said, shivering slightly. “Never again…”
And so it was with a certain amount of trepidation that Phylis approached the tall building wherein Almack’s could be found and forced a smile as the thin footman on the door looked her up and down with an expression that was more than a mite offensive.
“Forgive me,” he said coldly, as though he knew perfectly well that what he was about to say was rudeness of the highest degree, “but do you have a voucher?”
“A voucher, yes, that’s its name,” said Phylis before she could stop herself. At the sight of the footman’s raised eyebrow, she raised herself up and said as imperiously as she could manage, “But of course. Here.”
She’d been forced to borrow a reticule from Drummond’s wife, who lived in Cheapside, and the fastening was more fiddly than she had expected.
When Phylis finally straightened up and showed him the piece of paper that Mr. Todd had procured for her, it was to see the footman’s wide eyes as he examined the paper and flicked at it, as if somehow, it would crumble at the pressure of his finger.
Which should have been her first clue.
“Indeed. What a surprise—all in order. Well, please enter, Mrs. Seaton,” said the footman icily, straightening up and gesturing inside.
Phylis shoved the voucher back into the damned bag as she walked in, swearing vengeance on all footmen and related serving positions, but she had to stop thinking about the rude man as she walked into the large dancehall.
It was magnificent.
She had thought so the first time she had come a fortnight ago, but her mind had been focused on finding and accosting Monsieur Jacques at the time, a man whose shipping contracts were remarkable but whose bills were unpaid.
After a relatively tense conversation behind a fern, he had agreed to pay at least part of what he owed, which was in truth more than what Phylis had expected.
So she had not had much focus spare on the height of the ceiling, the sparkling chandeliers, the way every woman’s gown seemed to glisten as the candlelight shimmered on their black, silk gowns…
“Goodness, who on earth is that?”
“I don’t know. Some commoner, I suppose,” muttered the one replying. “Honestly, they let anyone in these days!”
“The cheek!”
And only then did Phylis’s mind catch up with her, and she groaned.
Everyone—every woman, at least—was wearing black. Black gowns, black feathers in their hair, black fans. Their shoes were black, their gloves were black, and so were the glowers being shot her way.
Phylis swallowed. And she was wearing white.
“I cannot understand how it could have happened…”
“Someone should do something!”
“Ah,” said Phylis with a weak smile at no one in particular. “Oh, dear. I appear to have—”
“Good God,” came an all-too-familiar voice. “It’s you.”
Turning around slowly on her feet, and wishing to goodness that the entire world weren’t watching her, Phylis tried to smile into the astonished gaze of Mr. Michael Chance.
“Good evening,” she said helplessly, even as the flush started to rise up her décolletage and up her neck.
It was infuriating. She had given in to the desire to see him tonight and she had known from the very beginning that it had been a fool’s errand—but something in her had been unable to let it rest, and it was a thought she did not like.
I want him to see me as a woman.
Not as a captain. Not as a negotiator, or a person who struck a hard bargain, or…or a person in trousers.
No, Phylis had seen the desire in Michael’s eyes at the market and yet had seen him fight it, and a part of her—a very perverse part of her—wanted her to be seen by him as a woman and desired by him as a woman.
Which was ridiculous. She was not about to let some future viscount who was happy to abscond from all his responsibilities without a care in the world crawl into her bed!
Almost definitely.
The trouble was, in all her imaginings about what this moment would be like, and she had enjoyed a great number of imaginings, it had never featured the entirety of Almack’s muttering darkly about her.
Phylis smiled weakly. “I… Apparently, a note went out about a dress code?”
Michael’s face split into a grin, though his eyes were still wide. “Clearly. What the devil are you doing here?”
Red-hot embarrassment spilled through her. “What, you don’t think I belong here?”
“I think you should be dressed in black, even if you look marvelous as you are,” Michael said, dropping his voice to an undertone as he stepped closer to her, as though shielding her from the mutters of others.
From the glares of others.
The flush had reached Phylis’s face now, and it was all she could do to look him direct in the eye and hiss, “Mr. Todd didn’t say anything about requirements of my attire!”
Though now that she came to think about it, the man hadn’t actually been to Almack’s in the last year, wasn’t that what he had said?
Phylis groaned and turned away, shame drowning any hopes for the evening. “I’ll just leave.”
“Don’t you dare,” came Michael’s firm voice as he just as firmly grabbed her hand. When she turned back to look at him, the cad was winking. “Why leave, when we’re about to have so much fun?”
“You cannot honestly think,” Phylis began in a furious hiss, “I am going to stay here and allow myself to be a spectacle!”
“I think you look wonderful.”
Phylis wrenched her hand from his as a bitter laugh flowed up her throat. “Oh, yes, but you’re more interested in getting under the dress than the dress itself, no?”
“This must be the young lady you’ve been telling me about,” came a charming voice as a woman slipped her hand into the crook of Michael’s arm. “Goodness, she is sparkling.”
And all ability to speak was taken from her.
Phylis stared. The woman was…beautiful. Beautiful in that careless, elegant way that ladies of leisure always were.
Her skin was pale, saying quite clearly that she had never had to work outside a day in her life, and her smile was lilting, curiously, almost possessive in the way she looked between Phylis and Michael.
The way that she clung on to him too… Yes, this was definitely a woman who did not care that the world would see the two of them together like that.
Phylis swallowed the disappointment that rose inside her and instead chastised herself for allowing any sort of semblance of hope.
Hope for what? For Michael?
What, did she think the man who was so desperate to escape to America, or Australia, or wherever it was, would, what, join her on her ship for life? He, who couldn’t even walk on the ship when it was docked?
She thought the man who could so easily abandon his own flesh and blood would change his mind…for her? With this woman already in his life?
“Yes, Mrs. Seaton does indeed sparkle,” Michael said lightly. “You’re quite right, Gwen.”
‘Gwen’?
Phylis would have puffed out her chest and said something sharp if she had been in a tight spot on her ship. She would have said something cutting, made everyone else laugh, and then taken the person aside and explained she wasn’t going to put up with that sort of thing on her ship.
But this wasn’t her ship. This was Almack’s, a place larger than a ship and seemingly with just as many rules. Probably more of them.
Phylis swallowed. Gwen. Well, at least she knew.