Chapter Ten #3
“Me,” she agreed, and now her smile was truly warm.
“My… My grandparents, I suppose, wanted to keep me—but my father insisted. He took me back to the Dreamer and I’ve rarely left it since.
He raised me to love the ocean, to respect it as well as fear it, to know my value as a seafaring woman.
He left me the Dreamer two years ago when he died, and I’ve captained it ever since. ”
Michael leaned back in his chair and tried to take in the tale.
A woman of Society, no doubt, entranced by a seafaring charmer. A hasty marriage. A swiftly arriving child, a birth so terrible that it had taken the mother. A father, arriving to find not his waiting family, but a funeral.
A child who knew no mother but the sea.
“I don’t regret my life.”
As Michael blinked, a proud and slightly defiant expression on Phylis’s face came into view. “You don’t?”
“Why should I?” she countered quietly. “I was raised on the sea, and I know so much. But I thought… Well, if I had been raised on land, there would be other things I would know. Other things my mother would have taught me.”
Michael’s gaze dropped to the book. A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Manners by Amberleen Trinkett.
She wanted to improve herself…because she felt inadequate.
Was this about Almack’s? Michael had not stopped smiling whenever he’d thought about the moment when Captain Phylis Seaton had stepped into Lady Romeril’s black ball in a glowing-white dress.
But to think that she was somehow lacking, to think she was less somehow because she…
oh, he didn’t know, wasn’t sure how to address a marquess—he usually went with Sammy when picturing one—or how to curtsy to a duchess—he chuckled at the idea of Irene deserving the deference—or what order to eat sandwiches in… it was ridiculous. It was madness!
Phylis sighed as she dropped the book in her lap. “I should have known I couldn’t learn this stuff from a book.”
“You don’t need to learn anything,” Michael said quietly. “You are perfect, just as you are.”
Her snort received a sharp look from Mr. Norton. “You’re just saying that because you want to get under my skirts.”
“I very much want to get under your skirts,” countered Michael, arching a brow as a smile flickered across Phylis’s lips.
“But I said it because it’s true. You have had much to overcome, Phylis—no, you have.
The loss of a mother… It is a tragedy no one truly recovers from, and you have no memories of her. ”
For a moment, just a moment, her hands tightened on the book. “Just my father’s memories.”
“And he lost her far too young,” Michael said quietly, his gut wrenching at the idea of it.
Losing one’s partner, one’s reason for living…
but then, the captain had had Phylis. He’d had another reason to live.
“You don’t have to learn manners, or curtsies, or whether a certain doily should be used in a morning room or a drawing room—”
“There are different ways to use doilies?” Phylis asked, her eyes widening.
A chuckle rippled up his throat as Michael shook his head. “Who cares?”
“‘Who—Who cares’?” For some reason, she was now laughing. “Why, you care!”
He stared. “No I don’t!”
“Oh, not you, but the whole pack of you! The nobility, the gentry, royalty, for all I know,” Phylis said, and her voice was growing in strength now as she fanned herself with a hand.
“All of you—can you not see yourselves? When I stepped into Almack’s three days ago, I thought I would have the opportunity to see you.
I didn’t think the whole world would want to glare at me in return! ”
Ah, now she was understanding it. “And that’s why—”
“And all these rules, and regulations, and restrictions—it would be enough to drive anyone mad!” Phylis opened A Lady’s Guide to Etiquette and Manners by Amberleen Trinkett and thrust a finger at a page.
“You see here? There are rules for how long one sits with a friend, and how to drink tea, and whether or not to be polite to your lady’s maid! ”
“Why do you think I want to—”
“And if you get any of these ridiculous rules wrong,” she continued, her color high now but from passion, not fury, “you’re given something called ‘the cut direct’! The whole thing is preposterous, I don’t understand how any of you stand it. It would drive me round the twist. I’d want to…to…leave.”
The last word was spoken by Phylis on a whisper as her eyes met his, understanding dawning so palpably that Michael rather thought he could reach out and touch it.
He reached out and took the book from her unresisting hands. “Do you understand now?” he asked quietly, placing the book on the table and sighing as he shook his head. “I can’t stand it anymore, Phylis. I can’t stand it. I have to leave—I have to immigrate. It’s the only way to have a fresh start.”
The way she looked at him…as though he were finally in focus. As though she’d been looking for him for years, and then finally, here he was.
Phylis’s breath caught. Then she rose to her feet. “Right, then,” she said smartly, though keeping her voice low as she glanced quickly at Mr. Norton before returning her attention to Michael. “Shall we look at Australia first, or America?”