Chapter Twelve
Michael was not, definitely not, hovering by the door. Mostly not hovering by the door.
“Stop hovering by the door, lad!” Mrs. Kinley snapped as she tried to organize the post but accidently stepped on his toes. “What on earth are you waiting for?”
It wasn’t exactly what, but whom.
“Sorry, Mrs. Kinley,” Michael said hastily, apologizing to the housekeeper who had cared for the Pernrith Chances for as long as he could remember. “It’s just… I’m introducing a friend to the family today and… Well. You know how they are.”
The furrowed brow on the woman’s face faded as she smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry yourself, Mr. Michael.”
Michael grinned, his nerves flattening. “You think so?”
“Oh, yes,” said the housekeeper as she busily stacked the letters together. “I’m sure your family will approve, whatever the young gentleman is like.”
Michael’s smile faded rapidly. “Ah. Right. Yes.”
Well, he had asked his parents if Phylis could come to luncheon.
That was, he had asked his father if Captain Seaton could come to luncheon. Now that he came to think about it, he probably should have explained to the Viscount Pernrith that the captain who would be arriving at any moment was not a strapping seafaring man, but—
“Ah, there’s the door,” said Mrs. Kinley happily as the bell rang, the letters put back on the table nearby. “Shall I let him in?”
“No, I’ll do it!” Michael raced to the door, pulse hammering, and tried to remind himself that this whole thing was ridiculous.
There was absolutely no reason why he should have been so nervous that Phylis was going to meet his family. The two of them were friends.
Friends who rowed.
Friends who kissed.
Blast. Friends who had shared one of the most intimate things a person could share with another before he’d known her full name.
Michael pushed aside the thoughts and opened the door, his heart fluttering—“Oh, dear God.”
Phylis flushed as she gazed down at herself. “What?”
“It’s just… You… Good afternoon,” he said weakly.
Well, perhaps he should have been more explicit in his note. It had been dashed off at the last minute that morning, and naturally, he hadn’t had much time to think about what details to include.
Phylis—
Let’s have luncheon. Meet me at 14 St. Martin’s Street at one o’clock?
M. Chance
It was only now that he was looking at her that he realized that some important information had most definitely been left out.
“You think a tavern won’t like my trousers?” Phylis said airily, pulling at the fabric and causing Michael’s throat to knot. “I know it’s not expected of women to wear such things, but I was hauling cargo this morning and I didn’t have time to—oh. Good afternoon.”
Michael whirled around. Mrs. Kinley had been peering over his shoulder, and the horrified expression on her face was surely only a fraction of the response his own family would display.
Oh, dear.
“Good afternoon yourself,” said Mrs. Kinley tartly. “Though why you’re copying the Lady Francesca, I have no idea!”
Glowering at Michael before turning on her heel, the housekeeper stormed out of the hall muttering something about young people today, and ridiculous fashions, and scandalous ankles.
Michael smiled weakly as he turned back to Phylis. “Yes. Right, you see—”
“Well, wherever it is we’re having lunch, I hope they don’t respond like her!” Phylis said brightly, though he could see the hurt in her eyes regardless. “Where are we eating, anyway?”
Oh, hell, I have gotten myself into this nightmare. “Yes, well…here.”
Phylis blinked, then swallowed. “No, we’re meeting here. But your note said… I mean, I assumed…”
“Yes, I can see how that’s happened, and that’s my fault,” Michael said awkwardly, wishing to goodness he had spent more than five seconds writing the note. “You see, I… Well, I wanted to introduce you to more of my family.”
In a heartbeat, Phylis’s nostrils flared and she took a hasty step back. “You must be mad!”
“Yes, well, I actually presumed—”
“How the hell can I go in there and meet your family like—like…” Phylis tugged at her trousers again and glared with furious eyes. “Like this!”
“I didn’t think—”
“Michael Chance, you never think!” she hissed vehemently.
“I couldn’t agree more,” came a cordial, clearly amused voice from behind him.
Michael groaned, and without turning around, said heavily, “Mrs. Seaton, you remember my mother?”
It is most unfair, he thought darkly, that my mother has to look so damned amused by the whole thing.
Still, she had not been named a flourishing rose of the Season for nothing. Michael watched, transfixed, as the Viscountess Pernrith transformed the situation with a few gentle words.
“Come in, my dear Mrs. Seaton, and how smart of you to be wearing trousers—I hear from my niece Frank that they are all the rage. No, I insist. We wish to know you better over luncheon and one’s attire has no bearing on one’s conversation.”
Phylis’s lips quivered. “I… I—I should return and change…”
“Don’t you change a thing,” Michael’s mother said genially, taking Phylis’s unresisting hand in hers and pulling her toward the drawing room. “Food is almost ready, but first I want to ask you about your hair; it is a most fine color. Your father is waiting for you in the study, Michael.”
Michael blinked. “‘Father’? Me?”
“Off you trot,” the viscountess said merrily as she dragged the wide-eyed and clearly panicked Phylis into the drawing room.
Well, there did not appear to be much he could do there.
It had been a lost cause as soon as his mother had gotten involved, Michael knew.
By the time he returned, she and Phylis would be chattering away as though they had known each other for decades; it was a skill of his mother’s that he had never quite understood.
Reeny had it. Gwen could have it, if she bothered.
Right. His father. Study.
The Viscount Pernrith looked pensive as he sat by his desk gazing out of the window, and Michael almost felt guilty for interrupting whatever important thought he was having as he stepped into the room.
“Sorry, Papa, but Mother said—”
“Yes. Yes. I need to talk to you.”
Michael should have known it was bad news from the instant he sat down. His father’s brow was furrowed most tightly, and there was a tension around the eyes he so rarely saw.
In fact, he could not recall ever seeing his father look this morose.
“I hope nothing is wrong?” Michael said tentatively, knowing that whatever disaster was about to occur, it was going to happen whether his father explained it or not.
The viscount sighed heavily, and a knot twisted in Michael’s gut.
Not good news, then.
“Michael, I didn’t want to have to—but I think this is right.”
It was not the most clear news, either. “I… I am not sure I understand,” Michael said helplessly.
“No. Of course you don’t.” The viscount sighed as he folded his hands before him and turned away from the window, giving his son his full attention. “I want you to know that I wasn’t going to do this for years. Perhaps not at all, in fact. I know you value your freedom.”
Michael smiled nervously. “Yes, I do.”
“Which is, I recognize, actually, in some ways, a lack of freedom.”
Oh. That sounded a little less positive. “Yes, but—”
“And so I want you to know that what I do now, I do with a mostly heavy heart,” said his father with a sigh. “But I think… No, I know that this is the right decision.”
The man wasn’t making a great deal of sense, from what Michael could make out. What decision? Why do it at all, if he was doing it with a heavy heart?
The whole thing was a nonsense, but there did not appear to be much that Michael could do to understand the damned thing if his father didn’t actually tell him what the hell he was talking about.
The viscount sighed. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
And it was in that instant that Michael realized what his father was about to do. “No.”
“It’s time—”
“No, no, it’s not!” Michael reached forward and grabbed the desk, looking his father in the eyes. “I don’t want it.”
“You have to—”
“I don’t have to anything. That title is yours until you die and I hope that day is a long way off,” Michael said firmly, trying not to allow the nausea roiling in his stomach to overcome him.
“I don’t care if Uncle William and Uncle John did the eccentric thing of stepping aside and passing on their titles prematurely. ”
“It worked well, giving their sons the responsibility of a title,” said his father sternly, “and you—”
“I am hardly irresponsible, Father!” Michael protested hotly.
It was most unpleasant, therefore, when the viscount looked at him closely, then said slowly, and with no hint of malice, “Aren’t you?”
Michael swallowed.
It was most unfair when a parent looked at one like that.
It should have been outlawed, banned in some way.
It was the manner in which they looked—yes, like that.
As though you weren’t exactly a disappointment, but you had not lived up to your end of a bargain that you had never made and had never been explained to you.
Michael sighed. “I don’t want to be Viscount Pernrith.”
“You will be one day regardless.”
“One day is fine—one day is absolutely fine,” Michael said desperately, hoping to goodness he could persuade his father not to do what he seemed determined on doing. “I don’t want you to give up the title, Pa, and hand it over to me. That’s not what I want—I am happy as I am!”
His father looked at him kindly and said the words that Michael had hoped beyond hope he would not say. “Are you?”
Michael swallowed and leaned back in his chair, his mind whirling with the myriad of responses that he could give to such a question.
Yes. Yes, he was happy. He had a wonderful life, didn’t he? Two loving parents, sisters he didn’t want to throttle more than half the time, a small income granted by said parents to enjoy life…
And he was bored. Bored, bored, bored.
He needed change. He needed adventure. He needed to live in a country where the name of Chance did not automatically dictate one’s life.
And he could not do that as Michael Chance, Viscount Pernrith.