When You Wish Upon a Duke

by Charis Michaels

  “What?” he asked.

  “You.” Her head was still shaking. “It’s as if your very person has been carefully assembled from all the cast-off parts of my former . . . former . . . poor judgment.”

  Now it was his turn to ask. “What?”

  “It’s a test, clearly,” she said, speaking to herself. “A challenge to all I’ve accomplished.”

  Again, “What?”

  And then he did the thing that he’d wanted to do since he’d watched her descend from the cab. He reached out and touched her. A gentle but firm gloved hand encircling the bare skin of her arm. She’d left her shawl on her chair, and the sleeves of her summer dress did not reach her gloves. Her arm was firm and warm and strumming with energy.

  She looked first at his hand on her arm and then up at him. “I do not think we should touch.”

  He explained, “I’m making a very important point.”

  “You’re touching my arm.”

  “Will you hear what I have to say?” he asked, dropping his hand. “There’s more.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she took off her hat, jerking at the ribbons like she was fashioning a hasty noose. The pins came next. When the hat was unfettered, she pulled it from her head and fanned herself with it.

  Jason paused, giving her time.

  They stood before an iron fence that separated the walkway from the empty shop. He leaned against the corner post. He crossed his arms over his chest and propped a boot on the bottom rung. He studied her, now free of the tidy straw hat. She’d styled her hair in another large poof of a yellow bun, high on the top of her head. Upswept tendrils broke ranks and feathered her neck.

  “Do not gaze at me,” she remarked.

  “Oh right,” he said, looking away. “No given names. No touching. No gazing. But may I—?”

  “Fine,” she exclaimed. “Out with it. Tell me the rest. All the exciting, noble, unsanctioned bits. Why not?”

  Jason nodded and dug for a coin in his pocket. He flipped it, and hopefulness made the same flip in his chest. Her resistance seemed to have more to do with an internal battle and very little to do with him. He remained calm. He kept his body lax and his voice even. He explained how he’d verified the information she’d given him, how he’d come to realize that she would be his ideal translator and guide.

  Finally, he said, “I haven’t yet decided how I will approach the mission. I could negotiate with the pirates for the life of my cousin and his comrades. I could simply pay the ransom. Or I could steal away the lot of them under the cover of darkness. However I do it, I must be quick, efficient, and leave no diplomatic trace. I could devote another month to planning and research and anticipating all the things that could go wrong. Or I can simply enlist you as my translator and guide—and leave next week.”

  He snatched the coin from the air. “That is why I need you.”

  “What if I’ve already said everything there is to know about—”

  “I spoke to your uncle, Miss Tinker,” he said. “I know about your time in Iceland.”

  She went still, her hat frozen midarc. If possible, her blue eyes grew wider. She looked as if he’d held up a stolen broach.

  “Isobel?” he said carefully.

  “My uncle will not have told you everything,” she said finally. “Please be aware.”

  “No,” Jason said, “I don’t suppose he did.”

  “I don’t want to know actually,” she said, but she sounded anguished. She replaced the hat on her head, jabbing the pins and tying the ribbons.

  “Your uncle said,” Jason recited calmly, “that your youth was spent traveling Europe in service to your mother’s career.”

  “Ah yes,” she said, “my mother.”

  “It goes without saying, I suppose, that I learned she was the actress—”

  “Renowned actress,” Isobel amended. “Of international acclaim.”

  It was the first time he’d heard her boast of anything but her own competence as a travel agent. She was proud of her unconventional mother. As well she should be. Good for her.

  “Quite so,” he agreed. “Georgiana Tinker. I, myself, am a fan. I had the good fortune to catch her Lady Macbeth in Copenhagen. It was ’09, I believe. Transformative.”

  She would not look at him. She closed her eyes. He was treated again to her profile. Full swoop of lashes, pert nose, plush lips, defiant chin.

  He went on. “Your uncle described your girlhood and youth as unorthodox, but he passed no judgment.”

  “No,” she said, “he would not. He is a decent man.”

  “He said that by the time you reached Iceland, you’d outgrown it all.”

  She laughed, a sharp, jagged sound. It left a cut on Jason’s heart.

  “We talked about the number of months you were in Iceland,” he recalled. “The estate on which you lived. On the topic of your return to England—‘outgrown’ was all he said.”

  Sir Jeffrey Starling’s lack of elaboration meant there was far more to the story, but Jason didn’t require the full story. He did want to know, but it wasn’t necessary for this mission.

  “I sought out your uncle only to verify your time in Iceland. You are an unlikely source of intelligence, Miss Tinker, but you offered so very much of it. It was too valuable not to confirm.”

  She seemed not to hear. She turned to face the fence, gripping it with both hands. She looked ready to rip out an iron slat and stab him with it.

  “All this for a ‘mission’ that you now say is more like a personal errand,” she said.

  “It is not uncommon,” he said, “for officers of rank to . . . act of their own volition for the common good. In the field.”

  “But you are not in the field. You are in Hammersmith.”

  “I am in the world,” he gritted out, “and I am a capable agent, and when I see injustice, I am obliged to set it to rights. I’m not staked behind a bloody desk in Middlesex—at least not yet.”

  This came out with more rancor than he intended. It had pained him even to travel to Hammersmith today. The placid, agrarian tediousness of every part of Middlesex caused him to twitch and pace and scan the green horizon for a hidden door out.

  Soon, he’d be back here to stay.

  Soon, there would be no way out, and he’d twitch and pace and run mad with the stifling sameness of it.

  But not today.

  Today, he’d come for her and—lovely surprise—it hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected. She was resistant to reason and stubborn to a fault but she kept things interesting.

  Now she watched him with open curiosity. He pressed the advantage.

  “Will you indulge me a moment more? Let me make my offer? Learn what you’ll receive in return?”

  “Oh yes. Another fifty pounds.” She stared at the empty storefront behind the gate.

  “No, in fact. Not money. Something far more useful, I hope.”

  “What is more useful than money?” A bitter laugh.

  “Property,” he said.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned her head.

  He kept his voice light. “It’s not in London, I’m afraid, but here. In Hammersmith. Not prohibitively far, as your journey in the hackney hopefully demonstrated. It’s another reason I wished you to meet with Aunt Harriet at her beloved Turnip and Tea. My London buildings do not really lend themselves to travel agencies—those are flats and warehouses mostly. But the Northumberland dukedom owns most of Hammersmith, or so I’m told, and that includes this high street.”

  He went on. “You could choose this very building, for example.” He nodded to the storefront before them. “If it doesn’t suit, there are others scattered throughout town.”

  He watched her. She tore her gaze away and looked at the empty building as if she had not noticed it before.

  Jason gave her time to study it.

  “If you will help me, Miss Tinker,” he said softly, “if you will travel to Iceland and assist me in recovering my cousin without incident, I
will set you up in your own office, and you may have a travel agency on your very own terms. You may employ Samantha and whomever else you like. You may lure away all of your devoted clients, my aunt among them, and be free of Mr. Drummond Hooke. You may do as you please.”

  He swung the creaky gate wide and stepped through it. He could feel her watching him as he mounted the steps. His heartbeat began to pound.

  This was, of course, the thing he’d wanted to say from the moment she’d appeared in front of the tearoom.

  He’d wanted to give her a building, even if she wouldn’t help him.

  Surely this was one benefit of being duke? Bestowing his copious properties on whomever he chose.

  He reached for the doorknob. It was locked, of course, but he’d had his brother’s steward—his steward, he reminded himself miserably—furnish him with keys to all the buildings up and down Queen Street. He unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  “What say you?” he asked, gesturing to the dim interior. Anticipation welled like a shaken bottle of champagne. She was on the cusp. Her expression had gone from frustration to disbelief to—dare he say?—hope. He bit back a smile, watching as she looked over the building with wild, searching eyes.

  “You would simply give me a building?” she confirmed. She clutched the fence plats as if she might bend them into hooks.

  “Well, the leasehold, if that’s amenable. Choose a building with a storefront on the ground floor and a flat above for your dwelling. Or use both floors for your work and take a cottage around the corner. You’d have to say good-bye to city life, I’m afraid. And your clients will be forced to leave London to call on you. But perhaps you can convince them their journey to the Continent begins in Hammersmith.”

  “But why?” she rasped.

  “I’ve told you. I need your help.” I want you, I want you, I want you, he thought, and he realized this was his purest reason why.

  “But it cannot mean so very much as all this. It cannot.” She released the fence and took two tentative steps inside the gate.

  “What is the value of a favorite cousin?” he mused philosophically. “His life in peril?”

  “You would have found another way,” she said.

  “What is the value of keeping England out of a dispute with Denmark?” he speculated.

  “But a whole building?”

  “What is the value of my finally settling in as duke?” This question held less drama and more obligation. A question just as much for himself. “The sooner I return, the sooner I can install myself in Syon Hall. Do my duty. No more ‘derring-do’ as my aunt terms it.”

  The words were painful to say, and he wondered how he’d stumbled upon an informant for whom the price of cooperation was his own painful admissions.

  Luckily (and oddly, now that he considered it), he didn’t seem to mind the admissions. He found himself wanting to admit to the world if she was willing to listen.

  He finished with, “I do not want the dukedom, but I’ve put it off long enough. My mother and sisters need me. The estate and tenants need me. I cannot devote another year to, er, saving the world. Or even to saving Reggie.”

  She stared at him. She began, “I—”

  She stopped.

  She appeared to run out of excuses.

  She started again, “I promised myself I would never go back.” She spoke to herself more than him.

  And now it was his turn to resist, to be stalwart and not give in to her appeal for mercy.

  “The building is yours,” he said, the most he could give her under the circumstances. “Plus local tradesmen for whatever modifications you might require to set up shop.”

  She took three quick breaths. She shoved away from the fence. She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands at her sides—she was the figure of someone wringing consent from their very soul. She exhaled and opened her eyes. She blinked.

  Jason said nothing, waiting and watching.

  “Fine,” she called. Her voice held a new steeliness. She clipped up the steps and sailed through the door. Her green skirts swished against his boot as she went.

  “You win,” she called from the darkness within. “Show me every building. If one of them is suitable, I’ll do it. I’ll make the trade.”

  Chapter Eight

  Five days later, Isobel stood on the planks of the West India Company docks, staring up at a towering brigantine crawling with activity. Sailors scaled masts, swabbed decks, and maneuvered rigging while dockworkers heaved provisions up gangplanks.

  The mild August weather had turned wet and windy just in time for her to embark on her first sea voyage in seven years. An omen, perhaps; her stomach would pitch into misery as soon as they made open water.

  For the moment, she stood on solid ground; beside her, Samantha wrestled with an umbrella.

  “You packed the fan with the sharp spines?” Samantha confirmed. “The one that leaves a mark if you . . .” She made a slapping motion.

  “Yes,” confirmed Isobel.

  “And the cloak that keeps out the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about the—?”

  “You’ve kitted me out with everything I could possibly need, Samantha. Please do not worry.”

  “I only wish I could join you,” Samantha said wistfully, staring up at the tall masts, now disappearing into a foggy mist.

  “I know, but we’ve discussed it . . .”

  She let the sentence trail off, glancing at her friend. Abandoning Samantha alone in London was one of a hundred reasons to resent this journey.

  And yet . . .

  And yet a strange bubble of excitement had begun to swell in the pit of Isobel’s stomach. Seasickness would drown it out soon enough, but at the moment, she could not deny her anticipation.

  When she tried to regret or dread the journey, she was met with an exhilarating swell of eagerness instead. It had been so very long since she’d felt anything beyond the steady, stable balance of a life rebuilt. And stable and steady were very nice indeed. But oh, to look out and feel swooshing, bouncy anticipation. Was it wrong to crave an event that was unknown? Where anything could happen?

  “So . . .” Samantha was saying, showing herself to be a very good sport indeed. “Ten days to sail to Iceland, a handful of days to work with the duke on his secret mission, whatever it is . . .” she raised an eyebrow, “. . . and ten days to sail home.”

  “Yes. Gone the month of September—no more.”

  “And your mother knows,” confirmed Samantha.

  “My mother knows.”

  Isobel took a leave of absence every September to visit her mother in Cornwall. The holidays Isobel sold at Everland Travel were planned with a six-month lead time, and no one traveled in the bitter cold of winter. This allowed the month of September to be devoted to family and housekeeping and interviewing new chaperones, porters, and stewards.

  But not this year. This year, September meant the Iceland “mission.” Meanwhile, Samantha would stay back at Everland Travel, carefully evading Drummond Hooke and quietly transcribing five years of Isobel’s work.

  When Isobel returned, she would call on each client personally and explain the launch of her new agency. They could transfer their patronage to the new shop or remain with Drummond Hooke.

  “You’ll make certain Hooke won’t learn I’ve left the country,” Isobel confirmed, perhaps Samantha’s most important task while she was away.

  “Do not think of it again,” Samantha assured. “He will not know unless he travels to Cornwall and calls on your mother. And God help him if he does that.”

  Isobel nodded and squeezed her arm. Yes, God help him.

  It had been Samantha’s idea to give Drummond Hooke no clue about their future. Isobel had constructed a complicated excuse and a threatening but vague hint of “significant changes to come.” Samantha ripped up the note, insisting that their only obligation was a reminder that Isobel took leave most of September.

  “You shouldn�
�t call to the new building in Hammersmith during the workday,” said Isobel. “Go after you close the Lumley Street shop. If Hooke calls and you are gone?” She made a face. “Or you could visit Hammersmith on Sundays; your father will be appalled.”

  “My father adores you and everything you do, as you know,” said Samantha. “I intend to pop in on the construction at odd times actually. Keep the workmen on their toes.”

  After Isobel had finally consented, the duke had sealed her cooperation by giving her a tour of all potential buildings. He’d been clever and charming—if alarmingly clueless about the buildings in his possession—and she’d chosen a spacious redbrick building on the corner of Queen Street, with a large front window and a flat upstairs.

  Northumberland had then charged lawyers to transfer ownership of the new building. They had descended in a flurry of parchment and Latin addendums and moved everything along at a breakneck pace. An architect sent his card the very next day. Isobel met him in the afternoon to discuss her hopes for renovating the property.

  Tradesmen came next: carpenters, draftsmen, masons, plumbers, woodworkers. When she returned from Iceland, the office and flat should be ready.

  “It’s a moment in time,” Isobel told Samantha now. They locked arms beneath the umbrella, shrinking from the rain. “There are very big things in store for us. If I can manage Iceland. And you can manage Hooke. If Hammersmith evolves. If our customers will follow us. If, if, if . . .”

  “Indeed,” agreed Samantha. “I do hate it that you have to manage Iceland to achieve it. You don’t even want to go.”

  Oh, I want to go, Isobel thought.

  She said the words out loud, testing them. “I want to go.”

  “You want to go,” repeated Samantha slowly.

  Isobel paused, listening to the steady chant inside her head, her own voice repeating it again and again: Go. Go. Go.

  “Yes. I want to go.”

  After Isobel had finally agreed to the building, the duke had claimed pressing business in London and gone. He’d galloped off, leaving Isobel, heart pounding, cheeks flushed, standing beside the Turnip and Tea, pretending not to memorize his retreating form.

  When he was out of sight, when she could no longer feel the warm, firm press of his hand on the small of her back, or smell the woodsy scent of him, she had drifted inside the tearoom and dropped into an empty booth. Even before a fresh pot of tea arrived, she’d taken out her parchment and pen and scrawled out a letter to her mother.