When You Wish Upon a Duke

by Charis Michaels

  “ ‘Hired thugs,’ Your Grace,” provided Shaw.

  “Ah yes, I didn’t embark with twenty hired thugs to be marched around by pirates or protocol.”

  Isobel shook her head and made more notes. “That will never do. You underestimate Doucette.”

  “Doucette?” asked Shaw.

  “The pirate band that make Iceland their summer home is led by a Frenchman called Phillipe Doucette,” said Isobel.

  “Fine,” said Jason, “we’ll say we’re scientific researchers, come to study the volcanoes or the . . . moss.”

  Isobel narrowed her eyes and glanced appraisingly back and forth between Jason and Declan Shaw. “You look nothing like scientists, neither of you—and I’ve seen the others. You look like woodsmen. And before you take a shine to that idea, let me remind you that Iceland is almost entirely devoid of trees.”

  “Perhaps we’ll say we lost our way at sea . . .” considered Jason.

  “So you mean to portray yourselves as idiots?” Isobel surmised.

  Shaw chuckled.

  Jason said, “Why don’t we simply suggest that there is some mechanical issue with the brigantine, and that we’ve sought safe harbor to repair it?”

  Isobel thought for a moment. “That should work, so long as the captain can name some legitimate issue with the ship, something about which the locals can reliably gossip. You’ll want to order up repairs from the village. Everyone will be curious. Visitors are a rare and precious commodity in Stokkseyri.”

  “But should we drop anchor out of view and endeavor to slip into the port unnoticed?” asked Shaw.

  “Not if your plan is no plan at all. Even if you knew the location of the captives and meant to steal in and out in a night, complete anonymity would be a challenge. Anything out of the ordinary will be noticed. This part of the island is flat and treeless; there is literally nowhere to hide. You will be seen, that is my opinion. It sounds reasonable to claim damage to the ship, but you must also be able to say where you were going and how you came to limp into Stokkseyri.”

  “Fine,” said Jason. “I’ll say I’m writing a book of travel essays, and we were bound for Greenland. How’s that?”

  “That should . . . suffice.” She was clearly not impressed.

  “If we devise this elaborate fiction and chat up the locals, then I can rely on town gossip to inform what’s become of my cousin.”

  Isobel looked at him, tapping her pencil against the back of her hand. “Are you asking me or telling me, Your Grace?”

  “Ah . . .” Jason hedged. She was so very stern and irritated and . . . alive. He felt another lick of desire.

  She went on. “Am I to believe that you’ve no plan at all, Your Grace? Nothing?”

  Jason suppressed a smile. She was so very difficult to impress. He should not value this, but he did. Impressing her became the most important thing on his list of Important Things. After recovering poor Reggie, of course.

  He cleared his throat. “The manner in which I’ve always conducted my work, Miss Tinker, tends to be a more gradual, friendly kind of . . . amble. I turn up, I make friends—lucky for me, I’m a likable sort of fellow—and I observe. I scout for weakness and oversight. Unless I’m meant to infiltrate known enemy territory, I prefer a relaxed perusal of the field of play. I take it all in. I seek alliances. You’ll recall this tactic from the first time I encountered you.”

  This elicited a satisfying crimson blush from Isobel.

  Behind her, Declan Shaw closed his eyes and looked away, biting back a smile.

  Jason cleared his throat. “To you, this sounds like ‘not planning.’ To me, the plan is, be nimble. Be efficient. We’ll not be locked into some overstudied, overprovisioned choreography. Not before we’ve even clapped eyes on the place.”

  Isobel took up a fresh piece of parchment and made more indecipherable notations. Speaking to the sheet, she said, “Nimble it may be, but a ‘gradual amble’ takes time. By very definition, it’s slow and extended and, honestly, wasteful. Returning to England may be something you dread and wish to postpone, but for me it’s a priority. This is a sentiment I can only guess is shared by your cousin.”

  “Fine,” he said, “here’s the plan. Hardly my style—I prefer to make friends rather than enemies—but my plan will be to locate one of the pirates, isolate him—‘abduct him,’ if you will—and interrogate him. Assuming I can get reliable information from this method, we’ll know more within hours.”

  “And just where do you plan to locate a pirate?” she asked.

  “The pub.”

  Isobel harrumphed. “How simple you make it seem.”

  “I’ve never been to a port in the world that does not boast at least one establishment where men congregate to drink and gamble. Furthermore, never once has such a place been devoid of pirates. Trust me.”

  “Alright,” she said cautiously, “if you manage to turn up a stray pirate, I will pay a call to my old friends. The Vagns.”

  “Go on,” Jason said, taking up a piece of paper and pen. Now they were making progress. Old friends were far more useful than captured pirates.

  “They are a family I knew during my time in Iceland,” she said unsteadily, “who have a warehouse in the small dockyard at Stokkseyri. Assuming their warm regard for me has endured, this should give us somewhere to begin. I’ll ask them about the news since I’ve gone, especially anything about missing Englishmen. At least one of the brothers should be in the warehouse office. A visit from me will be odd and unexpected, but I will have your story about the brigantine repairs and we’ll invent some addendum about why I happen to be on it.”

  “So now you will have an alias,” Jason said.

  Isobel looked at him like he suggested they all leap off the deck and fly to Iceland.

  “Of course I will have a story. A single woman, traveling alone, cannot turn up with no justification. I can hardly say you bribed me with a building to translate your pirate attack.”

  Jason glanced at Shaw, who was slowly shaking his head.

  She went on. “As an English lord—in fact, simply because you are a man—you may step off a boat anywhere in the world with no excuses or explanation. You don’t even have to be cordial.”

  “I am always cordial.”

  “A single woman cannot turn up on foreign shores or even on the doorstep of an old friend without a litany of reasons why her presence is proper and approved and sanctioned and allowed. You know this, Your Grace; you would be a terrible spy if you did not.”

  He opened his mouth to reply but she cut him off. “Perhaps what is at issue here is not that a lady requires a backstory, but whether I am a lady.”

  “Stop,” he said, sitting up. “Call me a terrible spy if you like, but please do not make assumptions on whether I view you as . . . ladylike. Any oversight about our fabricated biographies can be chalked up to my personal brand of spy craft or to sheer laziness. But it’s nothing more than that, I assure you. Contrary to what you think, I don’t pass my days speculating about whether you—or anyone—is a lady.”

  She was silenced by this and shifted in her seat. She glanced at her notes.

  “Look, Isobel, of course you must have a backstory,” Jason said, softening. “What would you like?”

  “Well,” she began, calm again, “if you pose as a writer, I can be your translator—let us keep close to the truth—and perhaps also I am painting illustrations to match your text? I am never without my watercolors, and I was known to paint even seven years ago. Beyond that, I should be cast as your, oh . . . niece?”

  Jason made a choking sound. “Surely you are too old to be my niece.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Or perhaps you are too young to be my uncle. In any event, I must be a relative.”

  Behind them, Declan Shaw asked, “May I be allowed to leav—”

  “Yes,” barked Jason in the same moment Isobel said, “No.”

  “I’ve got it,” said Jason. “I’ll pose as your bodyguard. Shaw her
e has had a lovely run with this gambit.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

  Jason ventured, “Perhaps we should pretend to be married.”

  Isobel waved a hand. “That’s overdone, believe me. And it presents all sorts of logistical problems with how we met and why we suit and forced proximity.”

  “Sounds worth the effort to me,” mused Jason, thinking of touching her whenever he liked, sharing a room with her.

  “It’s not,” she said. “We will be cousins.”

  “Cousins,” he repeated, eyeing her. There was nothing cousinly about his regard for Isobel Tinker. He wasn’t certain he could manage the theater of it.

  Declan Shaw was rising from his stool. “Honestly, these details are—”

  “Stay,” Isobel sang out in the same moment Jason muttered, “Go.”

  Shaw slumped on his stool.

  “And which local family is this?” Jason asked. “For whom are we now posing as cousins?”

  “The patriarch’s name is Sveinn Vagn,” said Isobel. “The boys are Stefen, Gisle, and Sveinn the Younger.”

  Jason scribbled his own notes, taking great liberties with the unfamiliar spelling. “What else should I know about them?”

  Isobel shrugged. “They’re one of the ruling farm families in Iceland. Their estate is inland, but they warehouse their wool near the port for export to Denmark. They have a long-standing feud with the family that is allied to the pirates.”

  Jason looked up. “Oh yes, you mentioned the pirate allies. Another bit of luck if they don’t get on. Perhaps your friends will be motivated to help us.”

  “Perhaps, but I would not count on it. The Vagns do not fight with the other family, more like complain about them. And please be warned, they may well complain about me. I cannot say how they will receive me. Even if they are pleasant—which is by no means a guarantee—they may be disinclined to gush about local gossip. I’ve been away for seven years, and I was here under very strange circumstances. They may look back on my time in Iceland and feel a bit . . . deceived.” She blinked twice and looked down at her notes.

  Jason watched her, staring at the bun on the top of her head. Moments ticked by.

  Would she offer . . . nothing more? he thought. These people accounted for their only connection in Iceland. Surely there was more to the story. Jason bit his lip in frustration. He tapped the pen against the desktop.

  After a moment, he said, “And you knew this family how, Miss Tinker?”

  He’d meant to be casual but the words came out hard. Why would she speculate about the reception of a lot of Icelanders? Anyone should be happy to see her—it shouldn’t matter what happened seven years ago or if she was his cousin or translator or Anne Boleyn.

  Who were these people and what had they done to her? He’d wanted to know this from the start. Even her uncle, Sir Jeffrey, had been evasive about it.

  She was taken in by a respectable family who treated her as a guest, was all the older man said.

  “Isobel?” he prompted, but she wouldn’t answer.

  She shook her head at the parchment.

  The room went very quiet. Shaw shifted on his tiny stool and the wood creaked. A clock ticked on a shelf. Jason dropped his pen and the motion of the ship caused it to roll across the desk. The three of them watched its progress in loaded silence.

  Finally, Isobel raised her head. “I knew them as . . . friends,” she said. “Why must you know more than this? You will not even tell us your plan.”

  “I thought we established there is no plan,” said Jason. “And it’s useful to know about these people because . . . perhaps I should accompany you to this warehouse. Perhaps several of us should be with you. Perhaps our alias can be more effectively portrayed if I know more. Most of all, I cannot authenticate anything we learn from these brothers if I don’t have a sense of who they are.”

  “They are Icelandic farmers,” she insisted.

  “Fine, but are they thoughtful? What might cause them to be biased or unreliable? I want to know what we’re sailing into,” he said.

  “Now?”

  “Sooner rather than later.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “It’s not relevant.”

  “You’ve just said we must devise alibis and backstories and pretend to repair a fully functional brigantine, just to survive local gossip. Your history with these people may matter a great deal. It is very relevant, I’d say.”

  “No,” she disagreed, albeit weakly. She was shaking her head miserably. Jason’s heart began to throb.

  “Look,” he said, “I may be casual and appear carefree, but the key to my success has always been information. The more I know about everybody, the more I can either help or hinder whatever happens. It is, at its heart, the essence of being a spy. Knowing.”

  Without warning, Isobel shoved from her chair.

  Jason and Declan Shaw scrambled to stand.

  “I need air,” she said.

  “It’s raining,” Jason said.

  “I don’t care.”

  Without another word, she turned and quit the room.

  Jason grimaced at Declan Shaw, took up two coats, and followed.

  Chapter Twelve

  How foolish she’d been to believe she would never tell him.

  She was always going to tell him.

  And not even because he truly needed to know.

  She could make up a lie that served the mission and protected her privacy, but no.

  She would tell him because she wanted to.

  If the duke followed her to the misty haze of this rain-drenched deck, she would tell him.

  Isobel moved blindly in the fog, navigating crates and coils of rope, making her way to the railing. She was invigorated by the gusty chill. Her nerves were stretched taut, strained like the rigging; the threat of this conversation was wind to the sails. The raindrops were cold when they kissed her cheeks, but turned hot on her flushed skin. The fog seemed to swallow her up, and she was grateful. She wanted to be swallowed. Perhaps saying it all would be easier from behind a screen of mist.

  Almost no one knew what had happened in Iceland. With whom could she share such a great burden? Casual friends or relations would judge her, and those who loved her would feel undue pain on her behalf.

  She had told her mother, which, then and now, felt correct. She drew comfort from her mother. And a small part of her blamed Georgiana Tinker for all that happened.

  But Samantha? The Starling daughters? She had not elaborated. Why introduce the heartbreak to them?

  Northumberland’s heart will not break, she thought.

  No, not “Northumberland,” she reminded herself. He wished for her to call him “North.”

  North was big enough and strong enough and, perhaps most importantly, unrelated to her future (enough) to survive this story. He could absorb the terribleness of it without breaking stride.

  She wanted to try. It had been such a great relief to tell her mother. Perhaps every time she said the words, she could believe in her survival a little bit more.

  “Isobel?” North called from somewhere behind her.

  Shimmers dripped down her insides. He had followed.

  “I’m here,” she called back, speaking to the fog. “Starboard.”

  He materialized out of the vapor—first a man-sized shadow, then a silhouette, then all of him. Brown eyes and broad shoulders and large hands. His black overcoat swirled about him and his hat was pulled low against the rain.

  He held out a navy greatcoat to drape across her shoulders. The coat settled around her in a whoosh, immersing her in the musky, outdoorsy smell of him. Isobel closed her eyes and breathed in.

  When she looked up, he was hovering beside her. He looked alternately at the low, seeping sky and her dripping hair. He frowned.

  “Will you not come back inside?” he asked. “The rain is not likely to let up. And you can sit.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Drops of rain fl
ung from her hair, piercing the fog. “I’m too restless to sit. And I’ve no wish to look you in the eye while I . . . say the words. I am impervious to the rain.”

  “My God, Isobel,” he whispered, “what is it?”

  “I think you should call me Miss Tin—”

  “I will not call you Miss Tinker, so please stop asking. If you can reveal this very great secret history to me, so tragic that you cannot even look me in the eye, I will call you Isobel.”

  “The irony is,” she sighed, “my secret, tragic history is not half as harrowing as what you have doubtless seen on a field of battle or in godforsaken parts of the world. But it was devastating for me. I am still recovering. It is difficult for me to relate.”

  North stared a long moment. He looked like a man who’d opened a door he wasn’t certain he wanted to walk through. Finally, he nodded. He leaned a hip into the railing beside her and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Isobel tried to hold his gaze and failed. She looked out at the fog. It swirled in great, white drifts over the sea. She squeezed the railing and pinned her shoulders back; she soothed her throat with a gulp of cold, damp air.

  There should be no preamble, she thought. The preamble had been every evasion since they’d met.

  “Very well,” she began. “I’ve said my mother was an actress.”

  “Georgiana Tinker,” provided North.

  “Right. When your mother is an actress, your playmates are the children of other actors and people in the theater. We—that is to say myself and these other children—grew up in myriad backstage wings, dressing rooms, and theater-district boardinghouses. Even before we left England, this had been my experience, although we had a proper flat in London.

  “In Europe, we traveled constantly, lodging mostly in boardinghouses and hotels. The children of the other players, and of the costumers, and of the musicians and dancers—they were like brothers and sisters to me.