Chapter Eighteen #2
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes.”
“And the family—the whole family is talking about it?” This question was directed at Irene, who had the goodness to look a little abashed.
“Yes,” his sister confirmed quietly.
“And you have all tried to think of arguments to keep me here?” Michael asked helplessly, looking at all four of his sisters.
Gwen looked at Teddy, Irene looked up at her husband, and Jessica looked out of the window.
And yet somehow in unison, all four of his sisters said, “Yes.”
Michael leaned back in his chair and attempted to take it all in.
They knew. They had known, clearly, for some time now, that he had no intention of staying in England…and they were all going to band together to try to force him to stay.
He girded his loins. At least, metaphorically. He wasn’t sure girding one’s loins in front of one’s family was the sort of thing one ought to do. “Right. Well, you can all give me your best arguments against immigrating. I’m ready.”
His father leaned forward, his gaze steady as he said, “No.”
Michael stared. “‘No’? But you—you kept saying yes, and I thought—”
“No, I’m not going to stop you,” the viscount said breezily as he leaned back in his chair as though he had no care in the world. “If you want to go, go.”
This was not happening. Was this a dream?
“Yes, I think you should immigrate,” said Michael’s mother conversationally. “I hear parts of America are quite pretty.”
“I think he should go to Australia,” said Gwen. “Farther away.”
“If he’s going to immigrate properly, he should go somewhere like India,” chimed in Irene. “Don’t you think, Wilfred?”
Her husband beamed. “Anything you say, dear.”
Michael stared, not quite sure if he was hearing all this correctly.
They… They wanted him to leave?
They weren’t going to ask him to stay? Damn and blast it, but they were encouraging him to immigrate, not begging him to reconsider!
“I mean, I—I don’t think India would be right,” he said blankly, grasping on to the last thing someone had said like a life raft. “I hear the spices there can be pretty potent.”
“Oh, well, Australia it is,” said his mother with a shrug. “When do you leave?”
Michael gaped. “I—I hadn’t—I mean, I inquired about ships…”
“Sooner the better, I say,” said the viscount, nodding sagely as though he were discussing selling off a horse rather than getting rid of his only son. “Why prolong it?”
“I mean, I don’t want to leave tomorrow,” Michael said awkwardly as his gut roiled. Yes, he’d spoken to that Captain Pelham about a possible passage, but the discussed departure date had been today and he hadn’t felt like leaving yet. Besides, Phylis had warned him about trusting that captain.
“Next week, then,” said his father.
“Next week might be—I mean, I need to think about this…”
“Immigrating is an excellent idea for you, you know,” came the gentle voice of his sister Jessy from the window seat. “I think you should have gone sooner.”
Michael’s jaw dropped as he turned to her, then back to the circle of his family who were all blinking innocently at him. “You—You all want me to leave? But I don’t—I mean…immigrating. It’s a big step.”
All too late, he realized their shoulders were shaking.
Michael uttered a curse he had once heard Phylis use, which made his two brothers-in-law laugh, his mother gasp, his sisters giggle, and his father say sharply, “Steady on there!”
They were laughing.
They were teasing him.
Oh, to hell with the lot of them.
Michael rose to his feet, anger thrumming through his veins, and he had actually managed to take two whole steps before his father placed a hand on his arm.
“Michael—”
“You’re all mocking me!” he accused, glancing round at them all. “Well—aren’t you?”
“Well, it’s hard not to tease you when you make it so easy,” remarked Gwen with a wicked expression.
It was on the tip of Michael’s tongue to utter another one of Phylis’s more salty phrases, but he managed not to. “But you were encouraging me to immigrate!”
“You were the one who said you wanted to immigrate,” pointed out his mother, more than fairly, more’s the pity. “All we were doing was agreeing with you.”
“But I don’t—I mean, it’s—”
“Look,” said Michael’s father, tugging his arm and pulling him to the other window.
Well, he could hardly refuse to go with him, could he?
Shame and hurt and confusion twisted in Michael’s heart as he stormed off to the other side of the room with his father as his sisters started chattering with their mother about baby names.
Irene was loudest. “And if it’s a girl, I like Edie—”
“You can’t use that,” whispered Jessica. “I want that!”
“What if it’s a boy?” That was Gwen.
“It won’t be a boy!” chorused Irene and Jessy together.
“Michael,” said the viscount in an undertone.
Michael dragged his attention away from his sisters and looked instead at his father.
He had been expecting the older man to be serious, perhaps even severe. But the expression on the viscount’s face was not livid, but loving.
“Michael,” repeated his father, a slow smile creeping across his face. “Look. We love you.”
Michael’s lips tilted in an unconscious grin. “I know, Pa.”
“And our love for you—it isn’t contingent on doing what we want. Perhaps acting how we want,” the viscount added with a shrug. “Treating people kindly, with respect, but we’ve never had to worry about that with you.”
“I know, but—”
“But being a part of this family,” continued his father quietly, “isn’t always easy.”
Behind him, Michael could see the squabble about baby names had already launched into a full-blown argument.
“And if you think for one moment that you can call your son Wilfred—” started Irene.
Jessica hissed. “Did I say I wanted that name?”
“I know what it’s like to not…not fully feel as though you belong,” said the viscount, his voice low.
Michael’s stomach lurched.
He had heard the stories. His father was the illegitimate half-brother of his uncles, and while their brotherly affection was clear now, it apparently had not always been that way. In fact, there were rumors that his father and Uncle George had once had a falling out so significant…
His father sighed. “I have not always felt as though my place was here. I can understand your desire to go, the feeling that you belong somewhere else.”
Did he?
It had never even occurred to Michael that anyone in his family would understand. This big, rambunctious family—everyone in Society wanted to be a part of it. Part of the joy, part of the laughter, part of the gossip and the scandal and the arguments.
Look at old Llyne over there, his sister Jessy’s husband. He’d initially proposed to her out of the blue, never having spoken to her before, merely because she was a Chance.
“Go with your captain.”
Michael almost fell over. “Wh-What?”
“You think we didn’t notice how you looked at her?
” His father smile was wry and his eyes all too knowing.
“You feel a great deal for her, and she—well, she might be able to give you something we cannot. Adventure. A different life—it’s not immigrating, but it might just be the next-best thing. You two…. You could be happy together.”
Michael’s stomach twisted in pain as he looked into his well-meaning father’s face and realized he could not tell him.
How was he supposed to explain the disaster he had managed to create for himself? Where were the words that could fully articulate how close he had been to utter perfection and how disastrously he had lost it?
“At least we can agree that we won’t be naming any of our children Michael,” came Irene’s words, drifting across the drawing room.
Michael could not help but smile. “I do not seem to have set a very good example for my younger sisters.”
“Perhaps not,” agreed his father—too quickly, for Michael’s liking. “But I had, in fact, hoped they would set a good example for you.”
Now that was certainly not something he had expected.
The viscount caught the look on his son’s face and chuckled.
“Michael, Jessy and Irene might be very different from you—hell, they are very different from each other. But both of them found a person, a partner they wanted to go through life with, who utterly adores them and is utterly adored in return. I had hoped when you found your person, that you would have been at least as intelligent as your sisters and marry her.”
Michael swallowed hard.
Marry her.
He would have given Phylis anything—anything.
But he could not compete with the Dreamer. He could not compete with the ocean. He could not compete with all the mystery and magic of sailing on the waves, never quite sure where the tides would take you next.
How could anyone compete with that?
“Where is she, anyway?” asked his father brightly. “I rather hoped to see her again.”
Dread twisted its way around Michael’s heart. “Gone.”
The viscount blinked. “‘Gone’?”
“Oh, Pa,” Michael said, his voice cracking as he blinked away tears. “I… I have made a complete hash of it—that ship has very definitely sailed.”
Sailed off into the distance, never to be seen again.
His father’s gaze sharpened, then softened. “Are you certain? But you love her.”
Trying to take a deep, steadying breath, Michael nodded. “I know. But I don’t think that was enough.”