Chapter Twenty #2
“You weren’t that great.” Phylis winked.
Michael chuckled. “I know. And yet I do love you, woman, and I want to marry you. I know you’d be happy with just being together, but I want to claim you. I want the whole world to know you’re mine.”
Because she was. From the very first time they had met in that alleyway, Michael now knew, they had begun charting a course that could only end here.
Together. Happy. Forever.
“You… You really want to marry me?” Phylis asked in a quiet voice.
Whatever he had done to make her question this, he would be punished for it, Michael knew. How could he have allowed her to think he had no interest in giving her his name?
“I can’t wait to marry you,” Michael said aloud, and because it was in is nature to be contrary, “and make you the new Viscountess Pernrith.”
Phylis froze, her eyes wide with shock as her jaw dropped. “‘The—The new’…? No, you can’t possibly!”
“My father planned to get his solicitors to draw up the paperwork within the week, and that was four or five days ago,” said Michael with a laugh. “I suppose all that would remain is for me to return and sign as well. Look, can I get up? This wooden floor is murder on my knees.”
The love of his life snorted as she tugged him up into a chair beside her. “You’re not really cut out for a difficult life, are you?”
“I’ll go wherever you go,” Michael returned, still holding one of her hands. He squeezed it. “The Viscount and Viscountess Pernrith, sailing the seven seas.”
“It’ll be a scandal, you do know that,” Phylis said warily. “I mean, you hate the way that people of English polite Society point and stare at your father, and his illegitimacy was hardly his fault.”
“Yes, well, it’ll be hard for people of England’s polite Society to point and stare where we’re going,” he said quietly.
It was all so perfect, wasn’t it? After all, why limit themselves?
Why restrict themselves to one way of doing things, of one approach to life?
Why be hemmed in by the expectations of Society when Michael had discovered a long time ago—at least two months—that it was far more exciting to do precisely what he wanted?
Phylis’s expression glowed with excitement. “You haven’t given up the idea of immigrating, then?”
Michael blinked. “‘Immigrating’?”
Dear God, he had half-forgotten in the past few minutes that he had intended to immigrate. It all felt rather foolish now, the idea of upping and leaving, abandoning everything he knew merely because he did not want the life before him.
No, he had learned well enough that he wished not to depart, but to find something.
To find someone.
“Immigrating,” he said quietly. “It was about seeking something beyond the path that stretched out ahead of me. Immigrating was running from something.” Michael watched as the candlelight shimmered in Phylis’s hair. “This is about running toward something. Something I want more than anything.”
Her cheeks were pinking again. “Oh, yes? And what is that?”
Michael smiled. “You.”
The simple syllable encapsulated so much of what he could not articulate. He had never been one for words. He had never been one for overexpression, either—not like a few of his cousins whom he would absolutely not mention.
He wanted Phylis. He adored her, wanted only the best for her, and hoped to spend the rest of his life giving her that.
Immigrating wouldn’t solve his problems.
But an adventure alongside the only woman who had made his heart sing?
That was something worth seeking.
“I do love you, you know,” said Phylis quietly as she brought his hand to her lips and kissed it gently.
“Good,” said Michael, unable to keep his desire from his voice. “Because I am going to kiss you now.”
His future bride laughed. “Good.”
The kiss was decadent, and slow, and languid, and it sparked pleasure through every inch of Michael.
Oh, this woman. He could worship the very ground she walked on, and still, he would never be able to show her just how adored she was.
Her body responded to him in a way he could never have predicted—though perhaps he should have guessed from their first encounter, when he had made her whimper and mewl with ecstasy thanks to his clever tongue.
His clever tongue right now trailed pleasure through her mouth and it was all Michael could do not to sweep everything of the table to his right, lay her upon it…and feast.
When the kiss ended, and it was a disappointment that it did, he knew he could kiss this woman all over every minute of the day for the rest of his life, and he would never tire of her taste.
Phylis sighed happily. “I suppose we cannot stay in here forever.”
Michael glanced around the room and sighed himself. “No, I suppose not.”
“Time to head out, do you think?”
“After just one more kiss…”
In fact, it was after several kisses, a few of them in places that were scandalous in the extreme, that Michael finally reached out his hand and felt his heart leap as his future wife took it, standing beside him and looking up with adoration in her eyes.
“Ready?” he asked lightly.
Phylis nodded. “Ready.”
The scent of brine reached them the instant the door was opened, and Phylis marched forward across the corridor and up the stairs to the deck with Michael following her in quick pursuit.
The stars were out, the night sky a perfect picture of dazzling pinpricks of light nestled amongst a midnight blue with gentle clouds sauntering slowly past on a delicate breeze as they glided across the sea.
“Captain.” Phylis’s first mate nodded politely as they stepped past him to the prow of the ship. “M’lord.”
Michael groaned. “We have got to stop them calling me that.”
Phylis’s eyes danced with mischief. “Oh, I don’t know. It keeps you in your place, after all.”
“Careful,” he warned, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her into his side as they stood looking out across the water, the horizon showing nothing but them in the whole wide world. “Give it a few weeks, and they’ll be calling you ‘m’lady.’”
The expression on her face was absolutely priceless. “Well, call me a jaw-me-down, but why by Neptune would they—”
“When you marry me, remember,” Michael whispered, and a frisson of excitement fizzed through him, “you’ll be Lady Pernrith.”
Their laughter echoed out across the deck, swirling up the rigging and across the sails, and Michael caught the smile of a man halfway up the mast who quickly looked away.
“I will not!” Phylis spoke in a horrified hush, and it was all Michael could do not to snort with laughter. “You will address me as ‘Captain,’ all of you!”
“Oh, I always will, Captain.” Michael grinned, reveling in the way she responded so quickly to his teasing as well as his touch. “But I cannot control what your crew—”
“If you are going to be a bother on this voyage, Michael Chance, I’ll keelhaul you,” she said darkly, though she still leaned into his embrace and breathed out a long sigh.
“This voyage?”
Phylis nodded, turning to kiss him on the cheek fondly before saying quietly, “This voyage, this life that the two of us will lead. This adventure that stretches out before us, leaving behind all that you knew and all that I thought I wanted. The two of us, sailing into the future with no expectations but that we will stay be each other’s side. ”
Michael swallowed, his mouth dry. “God, I love you, Phylis Seaton.”
“Good,” she said sincerely, slipping a hand into his and tugging him back to the door that led to the lower decks. “Now come and show me just how much…”