Chapter Sixteen #2
“What, and act as my cabin boy?”
It shouldn’t have hurt so much, to hear such a dismissive tone in her voice. Michael straightened, holding his head high as best he could. “I thought you would give up your job and come with me to—”
“Give up the Dreamer? Are you out of your mind?” For some reason, Phylis was glaring at him now, all thought of genteel conversation clearly forgotten as she stared in confused wonder.
“You salt-crusted ninny—that is not just my job, as you put it, but my home—my family! They are everything I have ever known, and you think I can just walk away—and what? Marry you?”
Michael swallowed hard.
But Phylis gave him no time to speak. “The trouble with you, Michael Chance, is that you want everyone around you to conform to your expectations of them. You don’t want your family to miss you, you don’t want them to stop you going, so you don’t tell them.
You want to ravish me”—and here she dropped her voice into a hiss again—“but it’s about you, not me—you want me to give up my job!
But what are you giving up? Where’s your sacrifice? ”
“Now hang on—”
“No, you hang on,” interrupted Phylis, red dots appearing in her cheeks now as she glared at him with something like—oh, dear God. Are those…tears in her eyes? “The world does not revolve around you, Michael. It’s not all about you—”
“I know that—and I never thought that!” Michael protested, finally able to wrangle his tongue into speech. “But I thought, that night—I thought we came to an agreement!”
How could he have misunderstood so utterly? How was it possible that in that moment of complete harmony between their bodies, their minds could have been utterly at odds?
Michael tried desperately to think back to that moment, but unfortunately, he had been rather captivated by her breasts and her soft words, and he hadn’t paid much attention to logic.
Which was a shame. Because right now, he needed his damn mind to work, and there didn’t appear to be any thoughts left in his brain.
“‘An agreement,’” repeated Phylis softly.
Michael’s insides squirmed. “It sounds terrible when you put it like that.”
“That’s because it sounds like you were hoping to install me in some room somewhere as your mistress,” Phylis said flatly, her stern gaze never leaving his own.
“Somewhere private where you could come and take your pleasure from me then leave. Somewhere I would never venture out from, so I would always be available to you whenever you decided you wanted me. That’s what it sounds like. ”
“Well, I didn’t mean it like that!”
“Well, then, think, man, because your words matter!” Somehow, Phylis’s eyes had filled with tears, and when she spoke again, Michael wanted to crawl into a hole. “You say you love me, but you wish to contain me, to pin me down, anchor me to one place for your convenience!”
Guilt seared through Michael.
“It’s perhaps my most recurring nightmare. An anchor, around my ankles. Keeping me in one place.”
“You have absolutely no idea how good you have it,” Phylis continued, her voice unwavering, but her pain palpable. “Damn it, man, I have to work every day of my life and I’ll never have the riches or the comfort you enjoy right now, with no responsibility and no need to work!”
“I’ll be the Viscount Pernrith,” Michael began, but he wasn’t able to explain before the woman facing him had laughed bitterly.
“Oh, you poor thing! You have never appreciated being a Chance, never appreciated that a title and land and wealth—”
“It’s not that much wealth.” That was the wrong thing to say.
Now Phylis was really laughing, the dank alleyway echoing with her mirth. “I’m so sorry, my-lord-to-be. What is the correct amount of wealth?”
And something in those words stirred a part of Michael he had never permitted to be unleashed before—but he did now, and it was undoubtedly a good thing they were away from polite Society because this was not the sort of thing one said in public.
Or at all, if possible.
“You think I don’t know how fortunate I am?” Michael asked, taking a step forward and delighting in the way Phylis’s back immediately met the wall. “You are free, Phylis. Free to leave here and never see me again, free to go anywhere you want, free to do anything you want—”
“Free to starve!” snarled the woman with fiery hair and eyes he could lose himself in. “Free to struggle, to never have any certainty—”
“I could be that certainty.” Michael didn’t know precisely what he was offering, wasn’t sure what he would do if she accepted him, but he wanted her to.
Oh, I want Phylis Seaton.
Her eyes widened in evident confusion, and her lips parted silently for a few seconds before she managed to say, “What are you asking me, Michael Chance?”
It was an excellent question and one he actually wished someone else would answer, but as it was, the words that traipsed their way out of his mouth were, “I’m going to be the Viscount Pernrith.”
Phylis tossed her head with apparent irritation. “You said that. I know that one day when your father dies, you’ll—”
“Not one day. Now. Soon.” Michael’s pulse skipped a beat as she stared in disbelief. “My father, he—”
“I am so sorry,” the woman he loved murmured, some softness returning to her face. “I didn’t know—he looked so well…”
Now it was time for Michael to stare blankly, until he realized the misunderstanding. “Oh. Oh! No, my father is fine, he just—it’s this strange tradition my family has started… He’s going to retire from the title and give it to me.”
He could not blame Phylis for cocking her head. “Oh… Oh, yes. You told me that. I’d sort of thought you were joking.”
“I was completely serious,” Michael said heavily. “And that means…”
That means all my nightmares are coming true, he wanted to say. My anchor is here, and I want to throw it off and run away with you, but…but there’s clearly no room for me in your life.
The words stuck in his throat as his hands clenched by his sides, lest he reach out and clasp her to himself.
“I’ll be stuck here,” he said quietly, desperation slipping into his voice.
“Stuck here with all the responsibilities and no, there’s hardly any wealth.
Nothing beyond what the estate needs to run, and I’ll be in charge of my youngest sisters—” Oh, damn, his sisters.
Well, they could look after themselves at Don Saltero’s Coffee House for another five minutes. “All I want is you, Phylis.”
It had been difficult, being so open and vulnerable, but Michael could see his honest words had made a difference. Phylis was looking at him like—
“You want me because I represent freedom, nothing more,” she said quietly, no amiability in her voice. “And I thought—but I was just being stupid.”
“No. No, you weren’t!” Michael closed the gap between them, pinning her to the alleyway wall with his hips, and though she went to turn from him, she made no actual attempt to free herself. “Phylis, I told you, I love you.”
“You can’t love a caged bird,” she shot back.
His stomach twisted painfully.
Phylis was blinking back tears as she looked up at him, and Michael did not know how he had so mortally wounded her, but that he had… Well. That he could not deny.
“Phylis, I… I’m sorry,” Michael said humbly, lifting a hand to cup her cheek.
He had to be close to her. He had to be near her, and she shivered under his touch, which had to have been a good sign—did it not?
“You don’t even know what you’re sorry for,” she murmured, eyelashes fluttering as she leaned into his palm.
Michael exhaled a long, slow laugh. “No. No, I don’t.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Phylis’s eyes snapped open and she shoved him away from her with what felt, to Michael at least, an excess of force. “Stay the hell away from me!”
“Phylis, what the—?”
“You want to placate me. You don’t want to apologize.” She stormed onward, marching away from him toward the street. “If you were actually sorry, that would be different, but—”
“I don’t see what there is to apologize for! It’s not my fault I’m about to become a viscount!” he called after her desperately.
Something in what he said had clearly resonated, for Phylis halted, turned on her heels, marched back to him, and poked him in the chest, the papers in her hands rustling as she quivered.
“You think I’m angry at you because you are about to become a viscount?”
Ah. Probably not, then. “No?” Michael hazarded.
Only Captain Phylis Seaton could roll her eyes like that. “You’re a dolt. A bilge rat, a chowder head—”
“Hang on, there!”
“—and a blaggard,” Phylis said determinedly, her eyes flashing. “You are running away from a life most of us would dream of, and you have no regard, no respect for the hard work of others. You see me as something to entertain you—”
How the hell had this gone so terribly wrong? “No, Phylis, that’s not—”
“And I won’t be you or your family’s plaything!” She was blinking back tears again and her pain seared through Michael like a dagger. “I will be free, Michael. I will take my chance of a lifetime!”
“Phylis!”
But she did not heed him. Turning on her heels, Phylis half-walked, half-ran out of the alleyway and into the busy street, leaving Michael to stagger against the wall and feel relieved that it, at least, was steady and reliable.
What… What just happened?