Dedication
For Cassidy
My favorite book for my favorite girl.
“If I only had one helmet I would give it to you.”
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Announcement
By Charis Michaels
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Mayfair
1817
Does this man think he’s invisible?
Isobel Tinker stared out the window of her Mayfair travel shop. On the sidewalk outside, looming with his face to the glass, a tall man stared back.
The window was several yards away and the man’s features were obscured by a hat, but she could see the shadowy outline of his eyes through the a and n that spelled “Everland Travel” across the pane.
She raised her brows in an expression of, Yes?
No reaction.
She gestured to the door. Come in?
Nothing.
She gave an elegant, two-finger wave.
He remained expressionless, as if he couldn’t see her at all.
“Samantha?” Isobel called to her clerk. “There’s a man standing at the window. Can you see him?”
“A man?” Samantha asked, sorting folios behind the counter.
“There. To the left. Purplish greatcoat, high collar, highwayman’s hat.”
“Oh yes, I see him,” said Samantha, cocking her head. “Shall I get the saber?”
Isobel swallowed a laugh. “The saber, I hope, would be precipitous in this moment. He appears simply to be—”
“Stalking,” Samantha said knowingly. “Or is he more . . . casing? Calculating?”
“I was going to say ‘standing,’ ” said Isobel. “He has the look of a man who wishes to come inside but for some reason . . . cannot. Perhaps he has a diametrical opposition to . . .”
“Rule of law?”
“Travel agents,” finished Isobel.
“Well, I’ve set the locks on the windows and he’s far too broad for the chimney. So if he will not use the door, never you fear—”
“I’m not afraid, Samantha. I simply wished to confirm that he isn’t an apparition. If you see him, and I see him, then he must be there.”
“Oh, he’s there, to be sure,” said Samantha. “And I don’t mind saying, I don’t like the look of him. Too tall by half. I cannot abide tall men. Never have done.”
“And why is that?” Isobel learned a new thing that Samantha could not abide nearly every day.
“They can see over the heads of crowds.”
“And this is a problem because . . . ?”
“Stampedes,” said Samantha. “Started by tall men, one and all.” Samantha’s fierceness was matched only by her deeply held suspicions. Never had a spectacled vicar’s daughter indulged such robust bloodlust.
“Right,” said Isobel, looking again to the window.
And now the man was gone. Of course.
Isobel muttered a curse. “I need fresh air,” she said, shoving from her chair. “I’ll take a turn around the block.”
“The saber is in the bureau by the alley door,” Samantha called, not looking up.
“I shall risk Lumley Street with no weapons today, save my parasol.” She took her umbrella and gloves and was halfway to the door when she paused.
“What is it?” asked Samantha.
“Nothing, I’m sure.” Isobel looked right and left out the windows. “It’s just that . . . this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this person. Do you think that’s odd? To see the same lurking man three times in one week?”
Samantha’s head popped up. She glared at the spot where the man had stood, narrowing her eyes as if she was taking aim.
“Do not overreact,” said Isobel. “I’ve noticed him here and there. He’s committed no offense.”
“That remains to be seen. Where ‘here and there’?”
“Waiting to be served in the tearoom on the corner. Leaning on the wall behind the flower cart. With a horse in the hostler’s yard at the end of the street. He appears one moment and is gone the next.”
“I knew it,” said Samantha, her voice filled with excitable dread.
“I really do think he means no harm,” repeated Isobel. “I’d not bother to challenge him, except for today. Of all days. He must not—”
“Hunt for unsuspecting women—”
“Loiter around the shop,” corrected Isobel.
“And your plan is—what? Stern words and a formidable look?”
“I’m hoping a simple introduction will suffice. Ask him how we can help. Request that he call another day. How long before Drummond Hooke arrives?”
“An hour. At most.”
“Right,” Isobel sighed, making a face. “An hour.”
Drummond Hooke was the disaffected and mostly absent owner of Everland Travel. Barely twenty-two years old, his parents had died three years ago and willed ownership of the shop to him. Drummond was lazy by nature and a miser by choice, and if left to his own devices, he would have driven Everland Travel to bankruptcy within months.
But he had not been left on his own; his parents’ will had wisely left ownership of the shop to their son, but management of Everland Travel to their most valued employee, Isobel Tinker.
Drummond accepted his parents’ terms so long as the shop succeeded—which Isobel made certain it did. She also indulged him as the unseen mastermind of the success, which he most certainly was not.
Isobel and Samantha devoted hours to preparing for each Hooke visit. The office and clients must appear prosperous and esteemed, while Isobel must appear humble and matronly. Meanwhile, Drummond’s role—despite being five years Isobel’s junior—would be critical and patronizing.
If Isobel made everything appear immaculate, the young man would return to the Hooke estate in Shropshire and not be seen for another six weeks.
But lurking men were not immaculate. At even the slightest whiff of irregularity or alarming behavior, Hooke would usurp Isobel’s management role, relocate to London, and ruin everything.
Isobel was determined to outpace ruin by Drummond Hooke.
In fact, Isobel’s true goal was to save enough money to purchase Everland Travel from him and become not only the manager but the owner, free and clear.
She needed only five more years of savings. Ten at most.
Now she pushed out the door into Lumley Street, motivated to dispatch the Lurker well before Hooke’s arrival. The August sun was bright today, illuminating Mayfair with sparkling light. It would be impossible to hide in the brightness, and I
sobel didn’t try. If the Lurker had come to seek her out, well—here she was.
But he wasn’t stalking or hunting her, no matter what Samantha thought. The man didn’t feel dangerous to Isobel, merely out of place. Honestly, he seemed little more than curious. Isobel was accustomed to curious. She was a young woman who operated a successful business. Female businesswomen were unexpected at best and scandalous at worst. This was not the first lurking husband or brother she’d encountered.
Isobel Tinker designed seamless holidays for women and girls. Her voyages were safe, respectable, and luxurious. They offered the finest destinations in Europe with white-glove service. A lady’s world broadened. The envy of her friends.
It was why Mr. and Mrs. Hooke left her to run the agency instead of their prize-idiot son.
It was how she’d taken Everland Travel from a struggling budget holiday packager to its current premier status: “Travel agent to the most esteemed women in England,” as read her favorite quote in The Times.
It was her life’s work. If she was also a bit of a curiosity—well, she was a successful curiosity.
And if she could achieve her dream of purchasing the agency, she would not simply elevate Everland Travel to new heights; she would own it too.
“I don’t have time for this,” Isobel grumbled, glancing up and down the sidewalk. She turned left, eyeing the pedestrians of Lumley Street.
Despite the Lurker’s great propensity to disappear, his other distinguishing quality was his considerable height and breadth. He stood out like a professional boxer. The tearoom, in particular, had framed his size in striking contrast; its spindly tables and chairs seemed to bow and creak under his weight. The flower cart, which was an immovable rattletrap with warped wheels, wanted only his strength to be rolled spryly away. The horse he stabled at the hostler’s yard looked like a mythical beast. The Lurker himself, who’d been instructing a stable boy on the horse’s care when she’d seen him, had made Isobel think of . . .
Well, the phrase that’d popped into her brain had been Greek god.
Now she turned the corner at Brown Hart Gardens and pressed toward Duke Street. Here, too, the sidewalk was devoid of professional boxers or Greek gods. She was just about to turn into Duke Street when she saw movement in the alley behind her shop.
Isobel slowed, squinting into the dim, crooked passage. She tilted her head and listened. Footsteps crunched from the murk, the heavy footfall of godlike boots.
Isobel sighed, glanced at her timepiece, and followed the sound. Drummond Hooke was due in forty-five minutes. If the Lurker was in the alley, she had fifteen minutes to learn his business and dispatch him, and a half hour to settle at her desk.
Who’s the lurker now? she thought, picking her way around alley debris. A cat leapt into her path, and she jumped. She unhooked the parasol from her arm and held it perpendicular like a handrail. The rear door to her shop came into view. She saw her back steps. The rusty railing. Her mop bucket. And—
Him.
The Lurker stood on her back door stoop, his back turned.
She took a silent breath and flipped the parasol so that the pointed tip faced out. Her heart beat faster, but she felt no real fear. She’d traveled the world, for God’s sake. This was Mayfair. She’d yet to see anything in Mayfair, night or day, that rivaled her life before she’d returned to England. And anyway, what choice did she have but to confront him? Drummond Hooke frequently smoked in this alley when he visited. Discovering a giant man loitering on their back stoop would be unacceptable.
“I beg your pardon?” she called, staring at the Lurker’s broad back.
Her tone was sharp and demanding and the man tensed.
“Turn ’round, if you please,” she commanded. “Slowly.”
Obligingly, the man raised two giant gloved hands and slowly pivoted.
Isobel held her breath and watched him turn. She straightened to her full five-foot-two-inch height. His large shoulders were smoothly encased in gray-purple wool; his profile was chiseled, just peeking from a rakish, wide-brimmed hat. His greatcoat hung open, whirling slightly when he turned.
At last, he raised his head and she saw his face.
Isobel blinked.
His eyes were amber-hazel, the color of dark caramel. His mouth was . . . well, perfect was the only word that sprang to mind, as useless as it was. His nose (who noticed noses?) was not unlike his height: Greek-god-like.
Isobel took a deep breath.
Of course, the nature of his nose or mouth made no difference. What mattered was that he was ever-so-slightly smiling. Just a quirked uptick at the corner of his (perfect) mouth.
It was the smile of someone who’d staggered from the pub and eaten the Christmas pudding the night before the feast.
“Hello,” said the Lurker.
His voice was casual. Playful. Confident.
Isobel felt an intermittent shimmer at her wrists and throat.
No, she thought. Oh no.
She’d left Europe seven years ago with only the clothes on her back and two solemn vows: never to return to Europe and never, ever to engage with playful, confident men.
The word danger began to burn in the back of her mind like a pillaged farmhouse.
The Lurker continued, full of innocence and good humor. “Do you happen to know if this door is always locked?”
It was a ridiculous question, which they both knew. Either he was trying to distract her from his larceny or catch her off guard to commit some worse crime.
Isobel was, to her extreme irritation, both distracted and caught off guard.
It had been so long. So very long.
“I do know that this door is always locked,” Isobel said, “as it is my door, and I lock it.”
“Always?” he wondered.
“Stop,” she said, unwilling to play along. If Isobel Tinker understood nothing, she understood the easy currency of flirtatious, handsome men who “played” at everything they did. She’d learned at the foot of a master, and it had nearly destroyed her. She’d survived instead, and now she was immune.
Or mostly immune.
“Who are you?” she demanded, tapping the parasol in her palm. “And what is your business at the alley door of my shop?”
“I was . . . hoping to come inside?” Another joke.
“Why not use the front door?”
“Why not have a back entrance?” he suggested. “Double your traffic?”
“Because this is an alley, and no one travels here except rats and men trying to pick the lock.”
“Well, there you have it—two potential customers at your disposal.”
“I’m sending for the constable,” she said.
“No, wait.” He reached out a hand. “I am a customer. I need to book passage. Truly.”
“Passage for whom?” The words were out before she could stop them. She gritted her teeth. If he’d been old, or wretched, or spotted, or anything but handsome and dashing and jocular, she would not entertain this conversation. Not for One. Second. More.
But he was handsome and dashing.
And she’d learned nothing at all.
Obviously.
“For myself,” he said. He leapt from the stoop and landed in the alley with a thwack.
Isobel took a step back. “Everland Travel provides holidays and travel services primarily for women,” she informed him. “I’m sorry, Mr.—”
“Northumberland,” he provided. “The Duke of Northumberland.”
Isobel let out a laugh. “The Duke of Northumberland?” She shook her head. “Charming. A stalker and an imposter.”
“Heard of me, have you?”
Isobel stared at him, taking in his posh accent, his finely crafted boots, his easy confidence.
Surely not.
He added, “I prefer to be called ‘North.’ ”
Surely, surely not.
He finished with, “I’m only now becoming accustomed to the title. It’s . . .” a sigh, “. . . new. To me.
”
Isobel opened her mouth to challenge this preposterous misinformation. A duke, new or otherwise, lurking in her alley? Highly unlikely. But something made her stop short of saying the words. There was no time for preposterous misinformation or challenges. There was only Drummond Hooke, due any minute.
“I’m forced to ask you to leave, sir,” she said. “And also, you really must cease your lurking.”
“My lurking—”
“The alley, the window, the businesses up and down Lumley Street? Today of all days, to be sure. Although I prefer a neighborhood devoid of lurkers on any day. So if you could simply . . .”
She walked her fingers through the air, the gesture of something small and invasive skittering away.
“Wait, but I—” he began.
“You’re mistaken if you think I haven’t noticed. You’re also mistaken to claim business with Everland Travel. And if you try to pass yourself off as a duke again, I really will call the constable. The Duke of Northumberland, as anyone knows, is a national hero. And he’s mourning the loss of his brother, the previous duke. May God rest him. Let us show respect for families who suffer such great loss. If we do nothing else.”
The man tried to interrupt, but Isobel pressed on. It was all coming back to her now—how to manage imposing men who exuded playful charm. You called them out and sent them on their way. You kept your distance.
She made a twirling gesture with her parasol. “You’re handsome and dashing—I’ll concede that—but I’ve not the time nor patience for lurkers or liars, no matter how they appear. In less than an hour, I’m convening a very important meeting inside the shop. There can be no interruptions or irregularities. Now.” Deep breath. “Please, sir. Be gone.”
She hooked the handle of the parasol over her arm, brushed her hands together, and began to stride away.
“Miss Tinker, I presume?”
Isobel faltered. She turned back. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are Miss Isobel Tinker?”
Many people know my name, she reminded herself. I’ve sold holidays to half the heiresses in London.
She stared at him, not confirming or denying.
“I thought you’d be older,” he said. “Considerably older. You’re not yet thirty. I’d put money on it.”
When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 1
