When You Wish Upon a Duke by Charis Michaels

North idled in the distance, his impatient horse stamping and throwing its mane, while the wagon with his cousin trundled ahead. When the procession of men and cart made fifty yards, the duke spun the animal and cantered ahead. He did not look back.

Isobel watched him disappear onto the horizon, savoring the sight of him, and buying time. Three main thoughts jostled around in her head.

First, the pirates were not, in fact, the same as they had been. They were harder, leaner, more desperate. It appeared as if they’d not only starved the English merchants, but beaten them as well.

Second, she would need to win over Doucette. If he was an ally, they all became allies.

Third, the Duke of Northumberland had faith in her abilities. He would not have left her if he did not.

She was determined to prove him correct.

If Doucette had allowed it, she would have watched North until he was a tiny speck on the horizon, but the pirate captain was already dragging her around the side of the tavern.

“To the boats!” he bellowed.

The boats?Isobel felt a jolt of panic. She looked around. The pirate crew was lurching to comply. Doucette’s face was set with a sort of greedy determination; he looked as if he intended to sail to Peter Boyd’s unknown location this very night. But they couldn’t go now, not before they’d taken refreshment at the tavern. They were meant to be exhausted from rowing upriver. And thirsty. Very thirsty.

Isobel dug in her heels. “Stop, Captain, if you please!” she demanded in French. “I need food and drink.”

She employed her most upper-class French accent and used tenses consistent with an order. The pirate paused a fraction of a second.

Isobel swallowed and doubled down. “The English duke has starved me, and beaten me, and humiliated me. He and his men were crude and brutish. I’ve never been so grateful for your recovery of me.”

“There is food on the ship,” he said, moving again, dragging her along.

“I will not make the ship if I do not eat. I’ll faint. I’ll faint and have to be carried. I am strong but I require food, just like anyone.” She pulled against his hold, straining her entire body toward the tavern door.

Doucette hovered between the river and the building, his expression torn. This was the moment of truth. He’d agreed to release the Englishmen because he gained her instead. Extraneous, irritating captives for one highly prized ally. She was trying to shift his view, make him believe he’d rescued her.

“The tavern will have rúgbrauð,” she insisted. “And butter. Oh God, my kingdom for a dab of butter!”

The bread she’d named, a traditional Icelandic dark rye, was meant to prick Doucette’s nostalgia and remind him that, for a time, Isobel had been a local.

His grip loosened, and she dragged him to the door of the tavern like a child. With every step, she expected to be snapped back. Her heart raced.

When they reached the tavern door, Isobel fell against the wall, making a show of breathing in and out. The pirates gathered around, watching her with uncertainty.

Just you wait, she thought, putting on a show. Silently, she counted the men, sizing up who would be a challenge and who could be ignored.

“Only one drink,” Doucette hissed to her in French. “While you drink, you tell me what you know about Peter Boyd.”

“And about Filip Skallagrímur,” Isobel added. She’d come prepared with local gossip about the Icelandic family allied to the pirates. She would need every lie and ruse and all the flattery she could muster. It wouldn’t be enough for her to eat and drink. Doucette must drink. They all must drink as much and as long as possible.

“What about Skallagrímur?” sputtered Doucette, bending his pepper-red face to hers.

“Idle prattle, perhaps,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what I’ve heard. But sustenance first? Please!”

Doucette relented and dragged her inside, his pirate crew crowding in behind him. The tavern was dark and rustic: a dirt floor, stone walls, a few tables, and a counter. There was only one way in and out. The bar was tended by an old man in a woolly hat. There was not, in fact, bread and butter, only the local ale. Without asking for permission, Isobel switched to Icelandic and ordered a round for every pirate.

As one woman working alone, Isobel knew that motion and sound would provide distraction, her most reliable tool. Step one, never stop talking. From the moment the pirates stepped inside the dark, smoky confines of the tavern, Isobel chattered. Switching easily between French and Icelandic and other languages in between, she complained in colorful detail about being captured by the duke. She invented a reason for being in Greece and extolled the virtues of the Greek islands as potential territory for enterprising pirates. She asked how much money Peter Boyd had won in their card games and revealed that he was a prodigious cheat.

Meanwhile she scooted chairs across the dirt floor, stirring up dust. She kicked the bar with her boot. She swished her skirt and flipped her hair and petted the dogs sleeping by the fire.

The pirates watched her as if they’d not seen a woman in a year, a circumstance that could have well been accurate.

“Sit!” Doucette finally bellowed, ordering her away from the hearth. Isobel complied, but not before she kicked a log from the tinderbox to the base of the hearth. If it caught flame, she would have another distraction. Every move was calculated to benefit the next five minutes of survival. By her count, she’d been within pirate company for fifteen minutes. She had forty-five minutes to go at least.

When she sat, she asked to have her wrists unbound so that she could drink. Doucette reached for his knife, but she turned away and offered her wrists to a nearby pirate. While the man worked at the binding, she spoke to him in various languages. He answered her finally—he was German—and she chatted with him to distract from the fact that she’d been bound with copious rope but no actual knot. The German pirate was so beguiled by the end, she held out her hand for the loose rope as if it had been hers all along. He returned it to her and she tucked it smoothly in her belt.

“Tell me about AnaClara,” Isobel said, whirling back to Doucette.

“What? Who is AnaClara?” sneered Doucette.

Isobel spun a half-true tale about the beautiful girl with whom she “shared” Peter Boyd, the one who lured him away from Iceland and, in fact, from Isobel. With exaggerated jealousy, she painted a convincing picture of how she came to be separated from Peter and the Lost Boys.

While she talked, she fidgeted with her hair and vest. She claimed the fire was too warm, the afternoon too cold, the tavern too dark. The last thing she did before she ceased fluttering braids and feathers and skirts was tug the black pouch from inside the shirt to hang by her hip.

Doucette was frowning into his tankard. “Boyd was surrounded by all the beautiful ones,” he grumbled, “just like always.”

“But not me,” Isobel exclaimed with bitterness, throwing up her hands. As she did it, she purposefully knocked over her own tankard, sending the metal cup clattering to the ground and soaking the pirate with pungent ale.

Doucette lurched back, cursing and trying to flick drink from his coat. Isobel seized the chance. Working quickly and stealthily, she recovered the cup and tapped a good portion of the apple-seed dust into the pirate’s drink.

When the dust was back in her pouch, she affected an elaborate apology and took up two rags from the bar. She used one to dab Doucette’s coat and the other she tossed very near the fire.

Doucette shoved away her ministrations, angry about the spill. She fell back and made her way to the bar, stooping to pick up empty tankards on the way. She plunked them down and told the barman in hurried Icelandic to refill all of them.

“Another round?” she called, pretending to be a little drunk.

“We must make the ship by sundown,” Doucette called out, slurping his own drink.

“I’ve never been so grateful,” Isobel shouted, raising an empty tankard, “to sail away from this godforsaken island . . .”

The pirates shouted their agreement.

In that moment, the alcohol-soaked rag she’d dropped by the fire sparked and caught flame, shooting flames into the air and startling the dogs. The dogs yowled and scuttled away and two pirates leapt up to contain the fire.

It was the ten seconds she’d been waiting for. Moving quickly, she tapped the remaining apple-seed dust into the tankards waiting on the bar.

When she turned around, hands filled with tankards like a Bavarian barmaid, the pirates were just reclaiming their seats. She beamed and sang a little song, distributing the drugged tankards to mystified pirates.

In her head, she thought, I’ve done it.

I’ve actually done it.

They need only drink, and I need only wait.

The next half hour passed in flashes of distorted time.

She fabricated the location of Peter Boyd by recounting one of her Spanish holiday itineraries, stop by stop. The words came out quickly and she gestured like a demented uncle making finger shadows for children.

Tankards hit tabletops with a heavy clunk.

Pirates belched and slurped.

Someone sang a little sea chantey in Italian.

She spoke about Peter and his prized collection of stolen timepieces.

She described how Peter would, without a doubt, come for her. Doucette need only dangle her like bait, she said. The pirate captain listened but said nothing. Time seemed to stop.

She was just about to begin with local gossip when an old pirate across the room stood up, made a gagging sound, and then collapsed on the floor.

“Oh dear,” said Isobel, leaping up.

She put her hand on the hilt of the dagger. Her speeding heart raced so fast she couldn’t distinguish the beats.

One minute later, another pirate made gurgling sounds and staggered to the slop bucket in the corner.

A minute after that, another slumped against his table. Another doubled over.

Isobel spun around to check Doucette, and he was leaning back in his chair, his head facing the ceiling, eyes closed and mouth open.

That was her cue. She slid the dagger from inside her vest and backed herself against the bar. Whispering a warning to the barkeep, she inched a wide circle around the room, keeping her back to the wall. She kept the knife drawn but at her side. All around her, the room became a morass of collapsing, gasping pirates.

Five steps from the door, she bolted, charging past an unaffected pirate. Isobel saw him in time to fake left but darted right.

His reflexes were good, and he caught her by the arm. Isobel tried to break free but his hold was punishing. He reached for her neck with his other hand. Lashing out, Isobel transferred the dagger to her free hand and buried the blade in his bicep. He shouted in pain and released her. She scampered away, but a second pirate stepped up to block the door.

“No, you don’t,” he said in English accented with an Irish lilt.

“Move,” she demanded.

He swiped for her with a meaty hand, and she leapt, barely evading him. He kept coming and she scrambled back. She tripped over the body of a pirate and fell.

The pirate on the ground was ill, but not too ill to reach for her ankle. She kicked him with the heel of her boot and he rolled in pain.

Meanwhile, the Irish pirate was still coming, his eyes locked on her dagger. He was large and seemingly unaffected by the poison; it would take no effort for him to overpower her. She had time to scramble to her feet or throw the dagger but not to do both.

Without hesitation, Isobel flung the dagger in the direction of his shoulder. The blade sliced through the air and caught him at the top of the arm. He roared in pain, struggling to pull out the knife. Isobel leapt up and darted to the door, overturning chairs and scattering tankards as she went.

When she reached the door, she flung it open without stopping to see who was in pursuit. The sky outside was a gray-lavender. Dusk fell, bringing with it a foggy sort of vapor. She darted into the mist and slammed the door behind her. Shoving her shoulder against the door, she unlooped the rope at her belt and bound the door handle to an iron torch claw on the wall. It was a feeble obstacle, but it would buy her time.

She was giving the rope a final tug when she felt the door shudder with the weight of a pirate on the other side. Isobel yanked the knot once more and bolted.

The plan had been to follow the river in the direction of the sea. It would be the route the pirates would take back to their ship, and the very last direction they would expect a fleeing woman to run. She ran low, darting from bolder to bolder, keeping fifty yards from the water in case they managed to gain their boats.

For five minutes, she ran full out, falling twice, recovering, running again. The air was cold and acrid, and she drank it in. She loosened the vest and then stripped it off. The belt and fabric skirt came next. Only the buckskin, the linen shirt, and her boots remained.

Her lungs had just begun to protest when she saw him—North, thundering over the next rise on his horse, pulling a spirited mare on a lead behind him. Isobel said a silent prayer and stepped away from the rock to wave a hand.

North galloped up, yanking on his rein. Isobel glanced at him in the dim light, a look of triumph and relief and love, and then held up her hands to the dancing mare. North tightened the lead and she got close enough to put a foot in the stirrup. She calmed the horse with a caress to her neck and soothing words. When North dropped the lead, the animal spun, but Isobel was already vaulting into the saddle.

“There’s no time,” was all she said.

She dug the heel of her boot into the flank of the horse and the animal sprang into a gallop.

North did the same and they sprinted into the cold, indigo Icelandic night.