When You Wish Upon a Duke

by Charis Michaels

  “Oy!” Jason said, and darted after her. He captured her arm, tucking it beneath his own. She did not pull away. The boat rocked and she nudged inward, allowing him to steady her. She was noticeably slighter than she’d been the last time he’d touched her. Her body beneath the cloak felt less substantial than heavy wool itself. He found her hand, small and limp, and clasped it. Again, she did not pull away.

  “Are you able to take food?” he asked. “And water? Broth?”

  “I’ve no wish to discuss food,” she said. “Or my condition. Trust that I am miserable but it can be borne. I’ve done it many times.”

  “Right,” he said. “Stoic silence.” He guided her to the railing.

  He’d wanted to ask her about what to expect when they made landfall, but obviously she was in no condition to discuss strategy.

  “I wish to talk about my uncle,” she said. “Sir Jeffrey Starling.”

  Jason glanced at her once, looked away, and then again. But perhaps her condition did not preclude all talk.

  Another cold gust whipped across the deck, spraying them with icy water. Isobel gasped and Jason stepped up, meaning to shield her with his body.

  “No.” She leaned around him, eyes closed, straining to feel the fresh air on her face. “I need it.”

  Jason stood down, watching as she turned her face to the wind, eyes closed, relief loosening the tension in her expression.

  He was still staring when she opened her eyes. She blinked, surprised by his attention.

  “I’d put my uncle out of my mind,” she said, turning away. “Distracted by the whirlwind of preparations. But now, on this brig, in the very rare moments when I have not been indisposed, my mind has returned again and again to my aunt and uncle.”

  Jason nodded. It had been a small subterfuge to approach her uncle, just like it had been a small subterfuge to invoke his aunt to entice her to Hammersmith. She would naturally be resentful of both.

  “What would you like to know?” he asked.

  “How long did you speak to him?”

  “Oh . . . an hour? I called on him at home, so there was tea. The conversation came to more than Iceland. We’re in the acquaintance of many of the same people.”

  “Of course you are,” she said, shrugging deeper into her cloak. She did not seem angry or betrayed, more like . . . resigned.

  “When we spoke of you,” he said, “Sir Jeffrey’s priority was discretion on your behalf. He was careful to answer only direct questions. He was effusive in praise. He referred to you as a beloved niece. He said you were like a sister to his daughters.”

  She smiled at this, her first nonmiserable look. She stared into the white foam of the churning waves.

  After a long moment, she said, “My aunt and uncle took me in when I was at a very low and desperate point in my life. We were barely acquainted; I’d not lived in England for nearly a decade, and I’d hardly known them before. But when I wrote to them, my uncle did not hesitate. He arranged my passage and they welcomed me into their home. They nurtured me in every possible way—love certainly. But they also outfitted me with a new wardrobe. They saw that I enjoyed watercolors and built a studio in their attic. When they holidayed at the seaside, they included me. I was part of the family in every way. I lived with them for . . . for years. They questioned nothing about my past. They were so very kind.”

  Now she leaned back, holding the railing with both hands, arms straight. She stared at the spot where the sky unrolled behind the sea.

  Jason was transfixed. Of all the things he needed to learn from her—about the pirates and the locals and the Icelandic terrain—this was what he’d actually longed for. Her life. She spoke calmly but her voice was steeped in gravity. She was warming to the topic. Familiar impatience crept up the backs of his arms, tickling his shoulders and neck. His fingers twitched.

  And then? he wanted to prompt.

  Tell me. Tell me who you truly are.

  But of course she should not be rushed. He took a coin from his pocket and rubbed the ridged insignia between his fingers. After two beats, he flipped it in the air.

  Casually, he asked, “Sir Jeffrey is . . . your mother’s brother?”

  She chuckled and shook her head. “Sir Jeffrey is no blood relation to me at all. I am his wife’s niece. My aunt Bonnie. She was my father’s sister.”

  “But Bonnie Starling is sister to the late Earl of Cranford,” said Jason.

  She turned her head and raised an eyebrow, an expression of And so she is.

  “Your father was the Earl of Cranford?” Jason nearly shouted. “But your mother—”

  And now he trailed off. He gave the coin another flip.

  Ah. So that’s it.

  Isobel turned away, staring again at the sunset.

  Jason’s brain churned like the waves. So Isobel Tinker’s mother, renowned stage actress Georgiana Tinker, had had an affair with the Earl of Cranford. Isobel was the earl’s illegitimate daughter.

  Jason hadn’t asked about Isobel’s parentage because it hadn’t seemed relevant. Her mother was an actress—this he knew. Isobel provided for her own living. She’d mentioned no brothers or guardian. The specifics of a father hadn’t come up.

  “But were you acquainted with your father, the earl?” Jason asked. “Before he died?”

  “I was,” she said simply. “When I was young. We saw him quite a lot until . . . well, until we didn’t. My mother and he had a falling-out. Not long after, she and I left England. She packed up the two of us and we sailed for France.”

  “During wartime?” Jason asked the question, but his brain was hung up on the fact that she was the daughter of one of the wealthiest and most revered aristocrats in England. And she toiled away in a Mayfair travel shop.

  Isobel was shaking her head. “It was ’99? So the war had not begun, but we remained in Europe, even after the fighting started. Officers and parliaments need a night out, don’t they? My mother lent her considerable talents to stages all over Europe. She was highly sought after and never wanted for work. It was . . . it was an irregular youth, to say the least, but it prepared me for the work I do at Everland Travel.”

  “You never had a desire to perform?” he asked. He didn’t see Isobel as an actress; she was too sensible. It took too much effort to get her talking.

  “Acting is my mother’s calling,” she said. “Before I went to live with my aunt and uncle, I’d given very little thought to my future whatsoever. Even when I was a guest of the Starlings—even when I knew I couldn’t remain with them forever—I’d not thought of my future. I was too occupied recovering from my past. Lack of planning is yet another reckless oversight of my youth.”

  Why not plan to marry? Jason’s first thought. But then he remembered Drummond Hooke and his doomsday proposal. Who was she meant to marry? Her speech and manners were impeccable, and she was educated and well traveled. No common man—say, the butcher’s son or a sailor or miner—would suit her. Meanwhile a gentleman would . . .

  He glanced at her, and her expression said, And now we can all acknowledge that I am a bastard daughter of an earl.

  Jason frowned, indignant and frustrated on her behalf, but also frustrated with himself. It was thoughtless of him to compel her to spell it out.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Planning for one’s future,” he mused, the first, most innocuous thing that popped into his brain. “I, myself, have not managed this for shite.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “One does not simply wake up and find himself working for the Foreign Office, Your Grace.”

  “One does,” he countered. “Or rather, I did. For better or for worse. And then I became duke almost the same way. Although more relatives had to die for the second bit.”

  Jason picked up his hat and reseated it over his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to talk about himself, and especially not the bloody dukedom, but he could have embarrassed her by raising the topic of her parentage. He’d say anything to salvage the conversation.
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  “You’re waiting for me to ask?” she said.

  “Hmm?” He flipped the coin again.

  “How does one awaken in the Foreign Service?” she prompted.

  “Oh, that.” He caught the coin and said, “It’s a boring story, really.”

  “Do I detect a deep aversion to the notion of boredom, Northumberland?”

  “Ah, I do not manage well with idleness,” he remarked, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “And that is why you dread being duke?”

  “That is why I dread being idle. Which is the very embodiment of being duke. So yes, that is why. Well, that is one reason.”

  The words came out more bitterly than he intended. Surely now they were even. He’d spelled out her dubious parentage in ungentlemanly detail, and she’d identified his gnawing impatience. Now they could move on.

  “Tell me how you were recruited,” she said.

  Or perhaps they would not move on.

  He tossed the coin again and let out a sigh. He glanced at her. She was so pretty, even wind-whipped and seasick and huddled in a cloak. It was her eyes. Curious, alight with intelligence. They were the opposite of idle, and he need only glance at her to feel the opposite of bored.

  “Fine,” he sighed. “It was Spain. The Royal Army. I was captain at the time. My company was part of a regiment facing down French troops near Salamanca. We were in a stalemate because the French had positioned themselves around a working orphanage, and my colonel refused to engage with children in jeopardy.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she proclaimed, instantly enthralled. Jason felt a surge of gratification at her rapt attention but tried to ignore it. He’d been a soldier and spy too long to bask in the admiration of a pretty girl.

  “We were correct to stand down obviously,” he said. “But after three days and nights of crouching in a sodden field, I was losing my mind.”

  “The idleness,” Isobel surmised.

  Jason shrugged. “I took it upon myself to, er, approach the French colonel and ask him to kindly distance himself from the children so we could have a proper fight or move on. I made this request without asking my own command. Oh and I recruited nuns from a nearby church as sort of . . . humanitarian shields to wade into the enemy camp with me.”

  She laughed. “I can only imagine the nuns’ resistance to a handsome officer enlisting them to protect orphans.”

  “The holy sisters? Very cooperative. Every soldier should enjoy such courageous comrades in arms. The nuns and I snuck into the camp at dawn. It wasn’t an infiltration so much as a very stealthy and unexpected social call.”

  “No one endeavored to shoot you? You weren’t taken captive?”

  “I’ve a way with people,” Jason commented, flicking his coin.

  “I’ve seen your way,” she said.

  You’ve seen nothing yet, he thought, but he said, “I began talking, an aide translated, the sisters joined in, chanting prayers. We overwhelmed the man, honestly. He’d not yet had coffee.”

  “But what did you propose?”

  Jason took off his hat, scratched his head, and then reseated it. “We suggested it was ‘unsporting’ to employ orphans as a strategic cover, and surely this was not what Napoleon intended. We proposed the nuns be allowed to evacuate the children.”

  “And he agreed,” guessed Isobel.

  Jason shrugged. “The conversation never progressed so far. I’d positioned my company at the farthest corner of what would have been the field of battle and instructed them to ever so slightly antagonize any French soldiers within earshot. A skirmish ensued, confusion and panic began to seize the camp. The officers became suspicious, and the colonel’s attention was divided. He ordered me taken prisoner but I’d manage to, er, vanish—”

  “Of course you did.”

  “The nuns sprang into action, wielding their crosses aloft and ferrying the children to safety.”

  “You left the nuns to evacuate the children on their own?”

  “Well, perhaps vanish is too strong of a word for what I’d done.” He flipped the coin again, very high, so high they both tipped their heads to watch it rise and fall.

  “The next bit,” he ventured, “is almost too boring to relate.” Another coin flip.

  “Oh yes, heroics are ever so boring. But can you tell me how this led to the Foreign Office?”

  “When the dust settled—we won the ensuing battle by the way—I was approached by our colonel, and then our general, and then Whitehall came calling.” Another flip. “And there you have it. I began the day as a captain and awakened . . . oh, about a month later . . . as a foreign agent.”

  “There is more to it,” she guessed.

  “Perhaps a bit. The point is, I joined the army because life in Middlesex was tedious—maddening, really—and because the military is a natural path for the third son of a duke. I gave it no more thought than that. I joined the Foreign Service because someone asked me; also with very little thought. And someone asked me because they felt my rashness could be harnessed for the greater good.”

  She laughed again and he allowed himself to bask in the glow of it. He’d hardly been gunning for a laugh, but when had he ever discouraged the delight of a pretty girl? He’d been in the business of delighting girls for longer than he’d been in the business of rash behavior.

  “And that, Miss Tinker, is how the leopard got his spots,” he concluded, snatching the coin from the air. “Perhaps we both fly by the seat of our pants. Or we have done. At one time or the other.”

  Her laughter died down and her expression turned speculative. “Perhaps,” she said. “I . . . I actually fell into working as a travel agent after I’d given up on flying. It was during my time at the Starlings’.”

  “Is that so?” Jason’s heart thudded heavily. It was one thing to impress her, but this was what he really wanted to hear. He flipped his coin and waited.

  She nodded. “But it was not overnight. Or even in a month.”

  Jason nodded and said nothing. He would wait—he could wait. Admittedly, Isobel Tinker made waiting less painful. With Isobel Tinker, it was exciting even to wait.

  “The Starlings,” she explained, “have four very charming but very demanding daughters—my cousins.”

  “Oh yes, I saw two or three of them when I called.”

  She nodded and smiled wistfully. “They are dear girls. And they were a balm to me when I came to live with them. It would be impossible to overstate how rattled and . . . and miserable I was when I joined their household. Most respectable families would have worried about my influence on young, impressionable girls, but Sir Jeffrey and Aunt Bonnie did not restrict my relationship with any of them. To the girls I was exotic, and grown up, and I’m sure I had a vague sort of . . . ‘fallenness’ to them. But my aunt seated me among them at dinner every night.”

  Fallenness? What the devil did that mean? Nothing pleasant obviously. Also, nothing consistent with what Jason knew of her. The Isobel Tinker he knew seemed regimented and resilient, not fallen.

  She went on. “When I’d lived in the Starlings’ London townhome for half a year, their oldest daughter, Jane, was invited to accompany an elderly aunt on a holiday to Paris. Jane was . . . oh, sixteen at the time? Barely out in society. Her parents would not allow her to go, but Jane refused to accept their decision. She begged and begged. For weeks, it was all we heard, unrelenting.

  “Finally, simply to validate her, I asked Jane to show me the details of this forbidden holiday so I could, perhaps, explain why her parents—who were generally rather progressive and open-minded—wouldn’t agree. I’d spent several summers in Paris and had traveled through France many times.

  “Well, her parents had been correct to disallow it. I was appalled when I read the proposed itinerary. The hotels were located in dodgy parts of the city; the schedule and tours were illogical. The porter who was meant to look after them and their belongings had no references or experience. Someone’s brother-in-law would co
llect them in a wagon in La Havre and deposit them at a coaching inn outside Paris. It would have been a debacle. When I began to explain all the reasons why, Jane begged me to suggest how I might restyle the holiday in such a way that her parents would allow it.

  “At first, I said no. I was so incredibly indebted to my aunt and uncle I could not undermine their attempts to keep Jane at home. But the girl was relentless, and finally I drew up a brief Paris itinerary—how I would see the city if I was a young woman in France for the first time, a journey I had actually taken when I was about her age. I’d kept my journals and old letters and used them as references. With little effort, I outlined hotels where she might safely lodge, museums and cathedrals that they might see if they were in the company of a knowledgeable, trusted porter, and the modes of transport they might hire. It was meant only to be an aspirational, ‘in theory’ sort of plan.

  “But when I showed it to Jane, she whisked it away—first to the elderly aunt and then to her parents, begging them to reconsider the journey. She said they would travel exactly as I had described it. By some very great miracle, Uncle Jeffrey said . . . ‘Probably.’

  “And that was the very first holiday ever commissioned,” she finished. She took a deep breath of cold sea air.

  “So you sorted it all and squired the girl around Paris?” Jason asked.

  Isobel shook her head violently. “Oh no. I’d vowed not to leave England again, and I meant it. You—well, the promise of your building—has been my only motivation to leave England in seven years.

  “I spent weeks researching,” she explained, “writing letters, making reservations, calling around London to old friends from the Continent. I planned every mile of the holiday from the moment the family carriage dropped them in Portsmouth until it collected them at the same spot a month later. I talked an old friend into traveling with them. We styled her as a ‘travel porter’—a sort of guide and chaperone, which is an amenity all of my holidays include to this day. They followed my itinerary, employed the travel porter’s savviness and ability to improvise, and used the old aunt’s money. I remained in London. In fact, I think I passed the entire month in my bedroom, pacing back and forth, praying for their safe return.”