When You Wish Upon a Duke by Charis Michaels

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 Isobel 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.”

“What business is it of yours, my age?” She was seven and twenty as of last week.

“I was led to believe you were a cynical, gray-headed matron, running this shop behind spectacles and a stack of dusty travel books.”

A vision of Isobel’s future flashed before her eyes, and she wasn’t certain she liked it.

He went on. “And you’re shorter.”

“Led to expect by whom?”

“The Foreign Office.” He stepped up and gestured to Lumley Street with an open arm. “After you.”

Isobel’s feet moved of their own accord, walking toward the sunlight. “What foreign office?”

“The one that serves the interest of His Majesty King George outside our United Kingdom.”

“You’re lying.”

“The governmental office where national heroes mill about, doing their duty. For Crown and Country.”

Isobel’s brain began to spin. On leaden feet, she walked into Lumley Street. She blinked. She took a step toward her shop. And another.

“I’m sorry our first encounter was in the alley,” he said. “I’m not a thief, I promise you. I was doing a bit of reconnaissance, although very poorly, I’m afraid. I cannot account for the debacle of this introduction.”

“This is not an introduction.”

“I was being obtuse, and there’s no excuse, although I do have one.” He flashed her a heartbreakingly handsome look and Isobel turned away. She felt a ping inside her chest like a reverberating chime.

He went on. “My file on you and this shop was riddled with bad intelligence. Obviously.”

She looked back. He was staring in open assessment, his gaze methodical, like he was in the business of studying people.

“Deuced unprofessional,” he continued. “Amateur, really. No wonder you don’t believe I’m a duke.”

“I’ve asked you to go,” Isobel said weakly. No matter who he was, he had to go. Drummond Hooke, the meeting. She reached for the door—

“Not before,” he said, taking hold of the door above her head, “we discuss this journey.”

“But you cannot mean . . .” Her brain swam with the highly unlikely (and yet very small possibility) of dukes and foreign offices and national heroes and a file about her. She drifted to her desk.

Behind the counter, Samantha looked up. She stared at the Lurker with narrowed eyes. “You’ve found him, I see,” she said, her tone suggesting that a snake had been found beneath the barn.

“How do you do?” the Lurker asked pleasantly.

“Managed to find our door, did you?” Samantha asked.

“Indeed,” said the man.

“Did you tell him?” Samantha looked to Isobel.

Isobel stared back, her brain going almost entirely blank. Her only thought was, I’ll tell him nothing.

Samantha said to the man, “Please be aware, sir, that we’ve an important meeting in ten minutes’ time. The owner of this agency has traveled from Shropshire for a review. When he arrives, all customers will be asked to—”

“He’s not a customer,” corrected Isobel, her heart thudding in her throat. “Samantha, can I trouble you to prepare tea? Mr. Hooke relishes little flourishes.”

“The kettle is on,” said Samantha, looking back and forth between Isobel and the man.

“Go and check it,” Isobel bit out.

“It’s not whistled.”

“Please.”

“Right,” drawled Samantha. “Now may I get the saber—?”

“Samantha!” breathed Isobel.

Samantha backed from the room with exaggerated stealth. When she was gone, Isobel hurried behind her desk. With the safety of the familiar oak between them, she took a deep breath and turned to the Lurker. In two frustrated yanks, she pulled off her gloves.

He exhaled. “Can we begin again?”

“Can you be gone in ten minutes?”

“My name is Northumberland—North, if you prefer—and I’ve come to book a journey.” He approached her desk in two easy strides.

Isobel braced against his proximity. The alley was one thing, dark and easy to flee. Now sun through the window illuminated him like an angel and she was trapped behind her desk.

She checked the clock. How had he evaded her for days but now trailed her inside? Perhaps if she changed tack. What if she simply went along?

“This trip is for yourself?” she asked. She took up a pen.

“Yes.”

“As I’ve said, Everland Travel primarily arranges holidays for female clients.”

“But are you capable of booking passage for a man? It’s possible?”

She sighed heavily and sat down. She scooted her chair behind her desk. She hovered the pen over a blank piece of parchment.

“Where do you wish to go?” She looked up with faux professional interest.

“Iceland,” he said.

Her professionalism and detachment dissolved. Isobel blinked. She squeezed the pen. A single drop of ink dripped to the sheet.

“I beg your pardon?” she said to the drop.

“Iceland?” he repeated. “Nordic island? Recently ceded to Denmark? Covered with volcanoes and, one would assume, ice?”

Isobel felt the blood drain from her face in the same moment her cheeks caught fire.

“Why?” she rasped.

“I’ve business on the island,” he said simply.

“And your business is . . . shepherding?” she asked, her voice strange and high and breathy. “Goat shepherding? The only work to be had in Iceland at the moment is goat farming and agronomy.”

“No,” he said carefully, “I’m on assignment for the Foreign Office. As I’ve said.”

She closed her eyes. This again. “And why hasn’t the Foreign Office booked this Foreign Office–related travel on your behalf? Surely if the Crown dispatches you to . . . foreign shores, they manage the details of the journey.”

“My office could arrange it,” he said, “but it would take time I do not have, and the nature of the mission is particularly delicate. More secret than most. I’ve come to you because my file—that is, the background information on this mission—pointed me in the direction of a woman called Isobel Tinker in a travel agency in Lumley Street. It’s been suggested to me that you might know a devil of a lot about Iceland, more than anyone on the travel desk at the Foreign Office. And so here I am.”

“You’re joking,” she said, dropping the pen. She’d never had a conversation that sounded so patently false but also so terrifyingly possible.

If he was some sort of governmental agent, and he did have access to information (“files”?) on private citizens, was it possible his office knew something? About her? Isobel Tinker? After years of being so very good and so very stationary and so very . . . so very—

Isobel closed her eyes. Was it possible that her uncle had left a trail of documents when he’d extricated her?

Could this strange man possibly know anything about the time she spent in Iceland?

“It is not a joke,” he said easily. “And by the look on your face, I’d say you’re not entirely surprised that I’ve sought you out.”

“I am wholly surprised,” she whispered. “I am in shock.” The truth.

“Why?”

“Because Iceland is an obscure island that is impossible to reach seven months out of any year and difficult to reach the rest. The least traveled destination in all of Scandinavia, to be sure.” This was also true, but only a fraction of why she was surprised.

She managed to add, “It’s sparsely populated by common laborers and a handful of landowning families. There are no trees. To say that it is remote is an understatement.”

She scooped up the pen and jabbed it back into the inkpot. She shoved back from her desk. “That is really all I have time to say on the matter, Mr.—”

“It’s ‘North.’ The Duke of Northumberland.”

“Please stop saying that.”

“It’s my name.”

“You are not a duke . . . you do not work for the king . . . you are not standing in my travel shop asking to book passage to an island that I—”

She couldn’t say it.

“You don’t sell holidays to Iceland?” he asked. He looked so very confused.

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Why not?”

“Because I do not believe you when you say you wish to travel there.” In her head, she thought, Because I was utterly destroyed in Iceland, and the memory of it is too painful to bear.

“Well,” he sighed, shrugging giant shoulders, “it’s where I’m going.”

“Then you’ll have to find some other travel agent, because it is out of my realm of expertise.”

“But the file—”

“Do not mention ‘the file,’ or the Foreign Office, or your identity as an alleged duke again,” she said.

He blinked at her. His handsome face was creased with innocent confusion.

Isobel narrowed her eyes and planted her fingertips on the desktop, leaning toward him. “I’m sorry that I cannot help you. You’ll need to find someone else. As I’ve said, I have a very important meeting. Now . . .”

A deep breath.

“. . . I’m afraid I must ask you to—”

She was cut off by the arrival of Mr. Drummond Hooke sailing through the door.