Chapter Thirteen
“It was me! I was the one who—”
“You dirty rotten liar, it was me!”
“How dare you say that, you sea dog—”
“Quiet!” roared Phylis wearily, rubbing her forehead as she looked out across the deck of the Dreamer with tired eyes. “Quiet, you rogues.”
The pair of sailors who had been bickering shuffled their feet and looked down at their clasped hands before them.
Like naughty schoolboys, Phylis could not help but think with an ironic smile. At least, what she had always presumed naughty schoolboys looked like.
It was ridiculous. Someone—and Phylis had a rather good idea who—had cleverly reorganized part of the kitchen stores, making it easier for Cook to access the ingredients he used most often, without reducing the chill for the ingredients that needed to stay cold.
The trouble was, two different sailors had claimed credit for it…and even though it was an improvement, Cook wasn’t happy.
“Messin’ about in my stores,” he muttered from Phylis’s left. “They got no right, messin’ about in my—”
“Yes, thank you, Cook,” Phylis said wearily.
It had been a long day. She’d gone out with the Dreamer yesterday to Hull to deliver the cargo she’d secured in Southwark Market, deciding it was high time she spent some time on her own ship. And she’d enjoyed it. She had.
Phylis bit her lip. But something had been missing, and she had a horrible feeling she knew precisely what it was.
Mr. Michael Chance.
The man had somehow slipped into her veins and made it impossible to live without him. The idiot had invited her to his home and made her like his family.
It was infuriating.
And how they had just docked again in London, and she now had a thousand and one things to do before she could even think about bed, and instead of carrying them out like a good captain, all she wanted to do was…
Phylis shivered. Go ashore.
He was driving her mad. The man was actually going to push her over the edge.
“An’ I was the one who—”
“Enough,” thundered Phylis, allowing all her frustrations and tension about a certain gentleman to flow through her voice.
The entire crew stilled and looked at their captain.
Drawing a low, slow inhale, Phylis allowed her gaze to meander around the crew, meeting the gazes of each of them one after another.
It was a skill—well, a trick her father had taught her.
Make sure that every single one of them feels as though they could be the one to be thrown off the ship tomorrow.
Let it sink in that they are lucky to be a part of the crew of the Dreamer.
And then move on as though they were nothing.
Phylis forced herself not to smile as she did it, watching as each man bit his lip or looked at the ground or shuffled where he stood.
It works every time. Thank you, Pa.
“Right, then,” she said quietly, her voice the only sound other than the screeching of the gulls and someone chattering quietly on the docks. “Here’s how this is going to go. Cook, are you happy with how things are in your stores right now?”
Cook grimaced. “I don’t like other people touchin’—”
“Do you like it or not?” Phylis snapped.
Dear Lord, but I could do with a sit down and a pint about now.
Cook scowled. “It’s better.”
“Good. And as we don’t know exactly who did it, we’ll leave it like that. Anyone else touching Cook’s stores who isn’t Cook…loses a finger.” Phylis glared about her men with as much fury as she could manage.
Oh, they knew she’d never do something that drastic. She’d do something far worse.
They wouldn’t lose a finger. They’d lose the Dreamer.
There were plenty of men desperate to work on a ship that paid fair wages for fair work, and Phylis knew it. There’d be no more improvements of Cook’s stores now—worse luck.
But a good cook was worth more than half the deckhands combined.
Which reminded her. She would have to ask Michael just how his family cook had managed to get those chicken cutlets to taste so excellent. That luncheon had been divine, and if her cook could—
“—when you’re next sailing?”
Phylis blinked.
She was imagining things. That man’s voice just happened to sound like Michael’s; it was completely coincidental.
Lots of men had voices at that pitch, surely. It was not Michael.
“—hoping to sail in the next two weeks—”
Phylis swallowed. It did sound an awful lot like Michael—but they had no plans to meet this evening. She would definitely have remembered if they’d had plans.
“Captain?”
Was it possible… Surely, if he was going to come to the docks, he would come to see her. Why was he talking to someone else?
“Captain?” Drummond stepped to her side and muttered in her ear. “Any more orders, or shall I dismiss the men?”
Phylis ignored him. It would have been rude for a lady to do such a thing, she knew, but as she was not a lady, she did not concern herself overly much. No, she was concerned with something completely different.
Carefully stepping to the balustrade as though she were about to say something important, and was absolutely not getting distracted, Phylis said vaguely, “Yes, yes…rations will be as normal. We leave tomorrow for a Brighton run…”
She had other things to say, she was sure about it, but her words failed her as she reached the side of the ship and looked over at the dock to see—
Michael.
Her Michael.
Not my Michael, obviously, Phylis chastised herself silently as she tried desperately to keep her cheeks from pinking. But her…her friend? Her companion?
There wasn’t really a word for the way she felt about him. There certainly wasn’t much precedence for it in this Society of theirs.
She hardly had much precedence in this Society of theirs.
But it was definitely her Michael. He was standing on the docks, that wide stance of his that always made Phylis smile and made her think he was trying to find his footing on a shifting sea.
Even when he was standing on dry land, the man didn’t seem certain where he stood.
Her smile faded as she saw who Michael was talking to.
Captain Pelham.
“—easily get you there,” came the man’s words, light and convincing in the evening air. “Only the best traveling conditions for a gentleman such as y’self.”
“Can I see the—”
“Oh, no, wouldn’t expect a fine young man like you to waste time looking at your quarters,” Captain Pelham said hastily. “Best to trust me, see?”
Phylis rolled her eyes. Oh, yes, she could well imagine what sort of quarters Michael would be given by a man like Captain Pelham, sight unseen. Honestly! Michael would have to be some sort of idiot to—
“It certainly sounds very tempting,” came Michael’s cheerful voice. “And you set sail a week tomorrow, you say?”
A strange sort of twisting nausea rolled in Phylis’s stomach.
He was…leaving.
That was, she had known from almost the very first moment she had met him that he intended to leave, but he was…actually leaving.
Leaving her.
The thought was quashed immediately as Phylis’s cheeks burned, but it remained, echoing in her mind like a bell. He wasn’t leaving her; he was leaving his family, leaving London, leaving the only life he had ever known…
But he was leaving her; no one could deny that. And it hurt, hurt far more than she had thought it would, and that infuriated her.
How dare this man make me care so much?!
“Captain.”
“What?” Phylis snapped as she whirled around.
Drummond took a hasty step backward with hands raised. “Just—Just wondered if the lads could be dismissed. That’s all.”
She was breathing heavily, which made no sense for she had hardly moved—though Phylis almost felt as though she had run the length of the dockyard with the Dreamer on her back.
She blinked. The crew—her crew, they were all staring at her in confusion and wonder. Someone was muttering.
Phylis straightened and nodded softly. “Be off you, boys, and leave Cookie alone.”
“Captain!”
“You heard me,” she said, gesturing with a hand. “Go about your business.”
The deck was mostly cleared within a moment, but the trouble was, she could still hear him.
Michael.
“How many stops on your journey?”
“You’re the one paying,” came Captain Pelham’s voice. “Where do you want to go?”
Phylis groaned. So Pelham didn’t actually have a plan—and Michael was foolish enough to go along with the man because he was winning and charming.
Honestly. How did the blighter keep getting away with it?
Well, there was nothing for it. She was going to have to rescue him.
“Where y’going, Captain?”
“Shore,” Phylis answered briefly, not even turning around to reply to Drummond’s question.
“‘Shore’? But we need you here. We need to discuss—”
“Anything we need to discuss can be done when I get back,” she called to her first mate over her shoulder as she stepped onto the gangplank and started to make her way to the dock.
The evening air was warm, the sun still slowly setting, lighting up the land before her in a wash of pinks and golds…and there was Michael.
The jolt to Phylis’s stomach was so powerful, it almost tipped her off the gangplank and into the Thames.
She paused, instinctively doing what she had not needed to do for over a decade: thrusting out her hands either side of herself to balance.
Dear God, what would her father think of her now? As bad as a landlubber, Phylis thought darkly as her gaze fixed upon the pair of men before her.
Her frustration softened as her gaze took in the tall, lean form of the gentleman who was gazing around himself so eagerly, so excitedly.
There was a raw keenness to the man that Phylis could not help but admire.
Oh, she loved the sea, she loved sailing, but sometimes she forgot just how she had fallen in love with it all.
But seeing his eyes light up when he finally understood rigging, hearing him talk about a particular sea run that she had done a hundred times and he had only read about, seeing the expression on his face as he spoke about leaving this all behind…
Phylis smiled, despite herself, as she finished walking along the gangplank and reached Michael—a Michael who was now alone.
Where the devil did Captain Pelham go?