Chapter Ten
“And where,” said his father with a wry smile, “are you going?”
Michael froze with his top hat halfway to his head and did his best to arrange his face into an innocent, general smile with absolutely no deep meaning within it whatsoever.
The Viscount Pernrith took a step back. “Are you… Well, are you having difficulties with the lavatory, lad?”
Oh, hell. “No, Papa,” said Michael, a true smile surfacing at that remark. “No, I was just…just going out.”
The hallway of the Pernrith townhouse was bathed with light. It was going to be another hot day, and if Michael could have gotten away with it, he would have gone out without both jacket and hat.
But he was not here to bring shame upon the family by going out improperly dressed. Heaven forbid.
He was going to bring shame upon the family by disappearing in the night and never being heard from again.
Guilt twisted in Michael as his father continued, “Out. Good. Out is good. And you’re coming back?”
Michael dropped his top hat. “What do you mean by that?”
“In time for luncheon,” his father said calmly, as though it were a perfectly normal thing to say, and not at all suspicious. “Will you be back in time for luncheon?”
The trouble with his father, Michael had always thought, was that the man could not lie.
It was not in his nature. There was no subterfuge in Frederick Chance, Viscount Pernrith, and there never had been.
Oh, the family legend said that he and his wife had once pretended to be engaged to avoid a scandal…but as far as Michael could see, there was not much pretending about it. They had wed, hadn’t they? Wed, and had five children. He couldn’t see much subterfuge in that.
And so it was difficult to look into the smiling face of his father and…well, extend the truth.
“I don’t know if I’ll be back for luncheon,” said Michael carefully.
Well, that was accurate, wasn’t it? His intention was to get the information he needed today, and he did not know how long that would take. He couldn’t promise to be back in time for luncheon.
His father’s eyes narrowed, just for a moment. “But you will be back today?”
Michael’s pulse skipped a beat.
He didn’t…know, did he? Surely, neither of his parents knew he was planning to immigrate. He had been most careful, and Reeny had promised not to tell them.
But he had never entirely understood how Reeny had found out. What if it had been his parents who had told her? What if the entire family knew, and they were just waiting for him to admit to it?
Michael swallowed, mouth dry, as he tried to feel through the conversation. “Of course I’ll be back.”
“And you’ll always come home, won’t you, Michael?” the viscount asked quietly, his tone affectionate, but his eyes somehow glaring with warning. “Back to us. Back to your home.”
Oh, hell’s bells, he does know!
But then why not come straight out with it? Why not ask him directly?
Michael hesitated, then said slowly, “Home will always be here, with you all.”
His father’s brow relaxed, and a smile crept across his face as he stepped forward to clasp his son into an embrace. “Good. That’s good.”
Try as he might, Michael could not embrace his father in return without a twist of regret in his stomach.
Well, damn. Now he felt awful.
“I love you, lad,” his father said, his voice muffled in Michael’s ear. “Don’t ever forget that. You are loved.”
Great. Now there were tears prickling in the corners of his eyes.
As Michael pulled away, quickly darting his cuff to his eyes to dash away any moisture that might happen to find itself there through no fault of his, he spotted his father doing much the same thing.
Ah, well. The Pernrith men were both the same, Michael could not help but think with a dry smile.
“I’ll see you at luncheon,” the viscount said, turning back to the drawing room.
“But, Papa,” said Michael reasonably, “I’m not sure if I will have returned in time for—”
“I’ll see you,” his father said, his lips in a firm line, “at luncheon.”
The drawing room door closed behind him, leaving Michael alone in the hallway and feeling utterly wretched.
But this was the right decision. He knew it was as he stepped down to the street and saw the same old stalls and the same old people wandering about, seemingly purposeless.
Michael knew it was the right decision as he trod the well-worn steps to the circulating library, the place that had been there, unchanged, for as long as he could remember.
He knew it as the bells rang out from the same old churches as they always did to mark the changing of the hour.
It was all…the same.
If there was one thing he had to escape, Michael pondered cheerlessly as he stepped into the quiet of the circulating library, it was the sameness of it all.
New skies, new horizons. New people—even new food.
There had to be more to life than merely traipsing about the same place doing the same thing over, and over, and over—
“Ah, Mr. Chance,” said the gray-haired Mr. Norton with a bright smile. “The same as usual?”
Michael forced himself to smile. “Not today, thank you.”
The place was quiet as it always was, though even he had to admit that there was a comfort to be found in the dependability of a library.
The bookshelves towered, crammed with books Michael would never get around to reading, and yet there was a contentment in knowing that they were there, if he ever wanted to.
To the left were the novels his sisters so adored, ahead of him were the factual books in which Michael took far more pleasure, and to the right—
Michael’s stomach lurched.
To the right were the rows of tables and chairs that Mr. Norton had put out last year after numerous requests from his patrons, and upon one of them, nose buried in a book, but her hair utterly unmistakable…was Captain Phylis Seaton.
It was strange, indeed, to see the beauty in a place he had not expected. A jolt to the stomach was insufficient, it appeared, for his body to be astonished, for Michael let out a gasp that somehow echoed loudly about the place.
Phylis looked up. Her book slipped to her lap. Her cheeks reddened.
“You,” she said quietly.
It was not censure. Not exactly.
But it could not be more clear that she was not delighted to see him, and that could do something to a man’s ego.
Prick it, for example.
Michael tried to smile. “Good morning, Cap—”
“Mrs. Seaton,” said Phylis swiftly, her cheeks burning an even darker red as she looked about her.
Interesting. The always proud, always defiant captain was ashamed of her nautical title here.
Most interesting.
It could not have been more obvious that she was just as startled to see him as he was her, and Michael found his feet stepping forward along the line of bookshelves until he was standing before her. Then, before he could stop himself, he was seated beside her.
Michael grinned. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Phylis said curtly, picking up her book and hiding behind it.
He only had a moment’s opportunity to read the title—A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Manners by Amberleen Trinkett—before Phylis snapped the book shut and sat on it.
She sat on the book.
“What on earth—” Michael began.
“What are you doing here?” interrupted Phylis sharply.
“Looking for a book. Lots of books, actually,” he said quietly, trying his best to keep his voice down. After all, Mr. Norton had thrown people out for less. “What else would I be doing in a circulating library?”
Evidently, she was a little startled at his reasonable answer, for Phylis’s cheeks flushed—if possible—an even darker red. “Oh. Yes. Evidently.”
Try as he might, Michael could not prevent his gaze from drifting down to the place where he had last seen the book Phylis had been reading.
It was a mere coincidence, he told himself, that it was now under the incredibly round and tantalizingly close buttocks of the woman he wanted to kiss most furiously.
Mere coincidence.
When he raised his gaze back to her face, however, he could see at once that Phylis Seaton was not going to be impressed by the ‘mere coincidence’ argument.
“What kind of books?” Phylis shot at him in a hiss.
Michael shrugged. “Well, I thought… I mean, you pointed out that I did not have a particular direction that I wished to go, and so I thought…research.”
She blinked. “What?”
That’s the refreshing thing about this woman, Michael thought with a grin. His sisters, or his cousins, or any of the other refined ladies of Society would have simpered and said something like, “I do beg your pardon, dear sir?” or similar.
Phylis just asked him.
“Immigrating,” he said succinctly. “To where?”
This time, she did not even bother with an audible response. She just rolled her eyes.
“Look, I think it’s worth thinking about!” Michael protested, his voice rising in volume.
“Shhhh!”
Turning to wave apologetically at the librarian, Michael turned back, abashed, to the woman who was a little less pink in the cheeks but still significantly distracting by way of her… Well. Her other cheeks.
“‘Worth thinking about’?” whispered Phylis. “You mean you are reconsidering immigrating?”
Michael shook his head. “No, I’m still going—but you’ve made me think…well, to where? All I’ve ever thought about is leaving.”
Which, now that he came to think about it, probably wasn’t a very good reason to immigrate.
He forced the thought from his mind. I’ve made my decision. I’m leaving.
“I always think you have to run toward something,” Phylis said quietly. “Not away from something.”
It was not a chastisement, not exactly. But it cut down, right to the core of who he was, and Michael did not like it.
Right. A distraction. Any topic except him.
Michael pointed to Phylis’s bottom. “Would I like that?”
All too late, he realized just how that could be misinterpreted, as Phylis swelled with obvious ire and opened her mouth to say something extraordinarily cutting.
“I meant the book,” he said hastily. “The book—the book you’re sitting on!”