When You Wish Upon a Duke by Charis Michaels

Jason and Isobel rode neck and neck, following a bright moon along the circuitous route he’d planned. The lowlands of the country offered two landscapes: open grass with no cover, or craggy rock outcroppings, impossible to navigate on a running horse. Jason led them through both, pushing the horses but making them difficult to track. When they reached the second spate of rocks, they reined in, allowing the animals to pick their way through a shallow canyon of slick basalt columns.

When the labored breathing of the horses subsided, Jason spoke. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” She sounded breathless, exhilarated.

“Did they touch you?” he asked. He hadn’t quite reached exhilaration. He was exhausted from fear.

“They took my dagger,” she said.

“They did touch you.”

She shook her head. “I flung it into a man’s shoulder and never recovered it.”

“You flung it—”

He reined around, kneeing his stallion to her. He searched her face with desperate eyes, looking for blood.

She beamed at him, tall and glorious in the moonlight. Her breath came in winded puffs; her cheeks were flushed, her hair wild. Her smile was the smile of a champion.

“Isobel,” he said, a whisper.

He was just about to reach for her—he would die if he didn’t touch her—when a gentle streak of light pulsed the dark sky. Then another, and another. A vibrant glowing curtain of light.

Jason reeled his horse around. The pirates, he thought. They’d concealed horses and now pursued them bearing bright torches.

Except the brightness was nothing like torchlight; it was too white. The horizon was obscured with distant volcanoes, barely visible in the dark. Now they stood out in inky relief against wave after wave of heavenly light.

“North,” Isobel breathed, turning her face to the sky.

“What’s happening?”

“The Norðurljós,” Isobel said, using the Icelandic term. “The northern lights. It’s a natural phenomenon of cascading spectral light. Look up. Effervescence will . . . will ignite the heavens.” She sounded reverent.

“Ignite the heavens,” he repeated, suspicious. He squinted at the light spilling downward to the earth.

“You’ve heard of this, surely,” she said. “It’s like a show of lights painted across the dome of the sky. Green, blue, pink, orange. It is breathtaking, a once-in-a-lifetime sight.”

She reined the mare around. “You must see it.”

The white light on the horizon seeped up and over the rounded cap of the night. The colorless glow gave way to a peachy hue; the peach faded to a rose pink. It was color and light at once, like a flame. But where fire was thin and jumpy, this was milky thick and low. It draped in uneven bands across every part of the sky.

Isobel dismounted and tethered the mare.

“We cannot stop,” he said, watching a ribbon of green seep through the pink.

“We can,” she countered. “Most of the pirates are in the throes of intestinal distress. The others could not possibly follow this far on foot, even if they knew which direction we fled, which they do not.

“We did it, North,” she said, turning to him. She stood beside his horse and touched his leg. Her beautiful face was lit by a veil of pink and orange light.

Without another thought, he dismounted, sliding in between Isobel and the stallion.

“Look,” she cooed, pointing to a puff of aquamarine. He blinked up, following her finger. The sky was a color he’d only seen on the scales of a fish, translucent and opaque at the same time.

“Magical,” she said, smiling.

“You’re magical,” he said, and he scooped her into his arms.

He desired her—he never stopped desiring her—but in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to confirm that she was with him, safe and unharmed. His hands moved searchingly: waist, ribs, shoulders, throat. He felt her back, her bottom—so perfectly available in the snug buckskins—the sides of her thighs. She was perfect, and whole, and strumming with life. He buried his face in her hair and breathed in, memorizing the smell of her.

He dragged his face across her neck and cheek, scraping her with his emerging beard. He felt her shiver, felt her turn her face to catch his jaw with her lips. Lust and longing roared to the surface; he was immediately hard, and he bit down on the inside of his mouth. She’d said no, she couldn’t risk—

She kissed him.

She grabbed his face with both hands and pulled him to her.

In the same moment, she leapt up, jumping into his arms. He made a wordless sound of pleasure and relief, barely managing to catch her bottom with both hands.

She wrapped her legs around his hips and hooked her boots around his back. She feasted on his mouth. They were, at once, a staggering tangle of lips and tongue, hands and breath. He widened his stance, kneading her bottom, kissing her like he was suffocating and she was air.

He opened his eyes in wild, quick blinks, catching snatches of her hair, her cheek, and the mystical, heavenly light.

“Jason,” she panted, and he growled at the sound of his given name. Finally.

“S’bell,” he panted back.

“Make love to me.”

He groaned. She would tear him apart.

“Please. Jason.”

“Isobel,” he said again, devouring her with a kiss.

“Why should we not?” she breathed, speaking to herself, or to him, or to the lights in the sky.

“Please don’t make me think,” he said.

He forced himself to raise his head and look around. While she kissed his neck, he scanned the canyon for a smooth rock or a tuft of moss . . . grass . . . anywhere to drop to one knee. She weighed nothing, but desire sapped the strength in his legs. He needed to be down, she needed to be beneath him; he needed something hard and unmoving to leverage his granite erection—

“There,” she panted, pointing to a murky hollow cloaked in steam.

“Where?”

“It’s a pool,” she said. “See the steam? It’s a heated pool. Like the river, but deeper. We can bathe. Float. Swim.”

“Now we’re swimming?” he managed.

She squirmed from his grasp and slid down his body. Catching his hand, she led him to the mystical haze hovering over the pool of fizzing water.

“This country is enchanted,” he mumbled, staring into the rising steam.

She bit off a glove and went down on one knee, testing the water. “Ahhh,” she moaned. “Heavenly.” She bit off another glove. “And the air is freezing. I’m cold, Jason—aren’t you cold?” She began tugging at the laces of her boots.

“No,” he said. He was incinerating.

By the strange green light above, he watched her remove her boots and stockings and then—in perhaps the most sensual act he’d ever witnessed—peel the buckskins from her legs. Next, she shucked the linen shirt. Within moments, she stood before him in only a thin shift and loose drawers. He stood gaping, his brain struggling to absorb her sensual beauty. She winked at him—winked!—and then dropped to sit at the edge of the pool. She sank her feet into the dark water with a sigh. Steam rose around her. She took up her hair and tied it in a loose knot on the top of her head. Her shift dissolved into damp translucence.

Jason had never been more aroused in his life.

“Remember when you first came to Everland Travel,” she asked, “and you wanted passage to Iceland?”

Remember? There was no remember, he thought, there was only now. He began jerking open the buttons of his waistcoat.

She continued. “I suggested that I did not enjoy Iceland? It wasn’t the country—obviously. It was my own reckoning here that scared me. Speaking strictly as a travel agent, I can tell you that Iceland does three things like no other place on earth: mystical landscapes, northern lights, and heated pools.” She kicked her feet in the water.

“I’ll never see anything but you . . .” he rasped, “sitting there . . . like that . . . ever again.” He shrugged from his coat and ripped off his waistcoat. His shirt, boots, and buckskins came next, tangled in a heap on the canyon floor.

There was no time for heated pools, of course. In the back of his mind, he knew this. The crew of the Feather would set sail as soon as Isobel and he convened with the captive merchants in Stokkseyri.

Tactically, it was a disaster to strip naked and swim in the middle of the night, with pirates in pursuit.

Jason didn’t care. He cared only for her.

When he’d stripped to his drawers, he dropped beside her on the lip of the pool, sinking his feet in the warm, fizzing water. Isobel reached for him at once, taking him by the shoulders, climbing into his lap. He gathered her up with a groan, kissing her deeply with his tongue, with his soul.

“In, in, in,” she urged, pulling him from the lip of the pool into the steaming water. Jason sank down, his aroused body now buzzing with gooseflesh from the effervescent water. He hiked her legs around him, carrying her, and waded in. The pool was shallow, but he moved slowly. He was losing his mind. He could step off into an abyss and he would not care. She kissed like his wildest fantasy; the thin lawn of her shift and drawers floated away from her skin. She was soft, and slick, and writhing in his arms. Above them, the heavens bloomed color.

When his knee bumped a smooth rock he pivoted, sinking to his shoulders to sit. His hands slid over her slick body of their own accord, palming her pert breasts, tracing the curve of her hip. She dug her fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp, delving down his back.

“You’re remarkably formed,” she whispered. “So strong.”

He kissed her hard and mimicked the motion with his hips, pulsing his erection against her. She moaned and arched her neck, pressing up.

“Please don’t make me beg,” she whispered. She reached her hand between them.

“Isobel,” he pleaded between kisses, “this is not what we discussed.”

“We discussed the real world,” she mumbled. “This is not real. This is a fantasy.”

“I assure you, this is very real,” he rasped, grinding his very real erection into her hand.

“We are alone in a cauldron,” she said. “The sky is on fire. We’ve bested pirates . . .”

She kissed her way from his mouth to his sideburn; she traced the whirl of his ear with her tongue. She whispered, “Not real.”

Jason growled and gathered her closer, but he plucked her hand away. He pumped his erection against her center, and they both moaned. He interlocked one hand with hers and brought up the other to cup the back of her head.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said.

She smiled at him. “But don’t you see? That’s the beauty of this moment. You don’t have to profess love to me. You don’t have to do anything but—”

“There is virtually nothing I do because I have to, Isobel,” he told her. “I do and say what I want; I always have.”

“Except for the dukedom,” she said.

He frowned.

She continued, speaking almost nose-to-nose. “You will assume all the responsibilities of a duke because you have to do it.”

“I didn’t mea—”

“And if you do it correctly, as you’ve told me you are determined to do, the real-world Duke of Northumberland will not have the freedom to profess love to the real-world Isobel Tinker.”

“I will,” he told her, kissing her hard.

She shook her head, and he saw tears had begun to roll down her cheeks.

“You will not,” she told him softly. “Loving a woman like me is not a part of being a proper duke. Not the type of love that I want. Legitimate love. Family love. Give-me-your-name love.”

“We will marry,” he declared. He kissed her again, and she was silent for a beat.

He’d not planned to say this, not yet—but why not? Love was not enough for her. Fine. He knew the reasons, love alone shouldn’t be enough. It wasn’t. She deserved it all.

“You deserve my name,” he told her. “You deserve to be duchess, God help you. Why you’d want this bit, I have no idea, but if you’ll do it . . .”

Isobel shoved herself back with a splash and began to tread water two feet away. She was shaking her head. The tears were falling faster now.

“Why are you crying?” he asked. He shoved from the rock and swam to her, collecting her. He kissed her ear, her jaw, her eye. “Isobel, I love you. Is this—? Why does this distress you?”

Isobel held on to his shoulders with a death grip.

Please don’t go, she thought.

Please don’t take the words away.

Please comprehend how afraid I am.

Please don’t go.

“I’m sorry,” she said, speaking to the wet skin of his neck.

“Sorry?” he demanded. “But what does that mean? There is no sorrow here. There is only joy and love and, if we’re quick and can manage some form of it, possibly sex.”

She laughed through her tears but shook her head.

“You do not feel the same,” he guessed.

Another laugh. She loved him so much she ached with it. She could heat this pool and illuminate the sky with how much she loved him.

“I do love you,” she whispered.

It deserved to be said. If nothing else.

A love this strong could not be denied or kept secret. She could say the words.

He gave her another shake. “Then what is it?”

In a burst of frustrated energy, she pushed away again. She swam to the rocks at the side of the pool. She stared up at the green swirls in the sky.

“What you’ve just . . . said—what you’ve proposed—will be so very difficult and complicated when we are back in England,” she said, speaking to the horizon. “It’s easily proclaimed here, but it will not be simple there.”

“I don’t care about simple,” he said.

“You don’t have to care about anything at all,” she said. “You are a duke. Your world is assured and provided. I, on the other hand, am a girl in a shop. I am responsible for my mother. I feel responsible for Samantha. She lives with her father but she finds purpose in the shop, and honestly, they use the small salary I pay her. I am responsible for my own very tenuous future. My aunt and uncle love me in good faith, and I would die before I disgraced them. I don’t merely care about ‘simple,’ I fight for it. I strive for simple, and straightforward, and the expected. Anything more feels like the first step to chaos and heartbreak.”

She heard splashing. He swam up behind her. She could feel him floating, an inch from her back.

She swallowed hard and continued. “For me to accept your declaration of love? To trust it? To guard my heart? This is a colossal leap of faith that threatens everything that has sustained me since returning to England. And it terrifies me. I want to believe it—I’m crying because I want to believe it so much. But, Jason?”

“Yes?”

She shook her head, unable to finish.

He pressed himself against her back, caging her on either side with his arms. He kissed her neck, setting off an upward stream of fizzy shimmers inside her.

“Can you not admit,” she whispered, closing her eyes, “that the excitement of this mission, the spectacle of this sky, the remoteness of this country, of our very wet, very tingly proximity in this pool . . . all of this worked together to make your declarations seem probable? Of course you professed love amid all of this.”

“I will not admit that,” he said simply, kissing her jaw. “I’ve lived my life on the road, Isobel. I’ve experienced wild, remote, beautiful things in every corner of the planet. For me, real life is remote—it’s seeing different things, it’s spent in the field, on a mission. This is—”

“But that will all change at Syon Hall,” she insisted, spinning around.

He scooped her up. She met his next kiss but then pulled back. “You cannot fathom the pressures and expectations of being duke, Jason—truly, you cannot. You’ve guessed enough to put it off, you’ve dodged and dreaded it, but I fear the reality will be far worse. Learning you are not permitted to marry a girl like me will be only the beginning of your new life.”

“I will do what I want when it comes to who I marry, damn it,” he said. “I am the bloody duke, after all.”

“Did your brothers?” she challenged.

“My brothers did not marry. My oldest brother, August, did not care for women and my middle brother, James, was too overwhelmed with the duties thrust upon him when he inherited.” He made a bitter sound. “Until August died, James’s only vision of the future had been his violin. And then suddenly he was duke, and there was no time for women. He fell ill within three years and was then too sick to consider them. Poor James,” he sighed. “God love him.”

“And this proves my point,” she said. “Two men who would have pursued their own bliss if the dukedom hadn’t disallowed it. Your older brother could have presented himself to the world as a confirmed bachelor, with no illusion of eventually marrying. Your next brother could have filled his short life with music instead of . . . estate management. You will discover the same—”

“Make no mistake, sweetheart,” Jason cut in. “August told us all very early on that another Beckett male would be responsible for begetting the heir; he would never marry. And James could have courted any number of potential duchesses, but he didn’t. I actually learned how not to do it from him.

“But I assure you,” he finished, “there is no officer of protocol at Syon Hall. Has my mother made my eventual marriage a priority? Yes. But she knows better than to coerce me or manage who I choose. She wants me to be happy. We’ve had so much tragedy, so many funerals. She understands what truly matters.”

For this, Isobel had no answer. She stared at his wet hair and face, just inches from her own.

He reached up to trace a finger around her mouth. “You make me happy,” he said. “You make me more than simply ‘happy.’ You . . . you give me the will to go on.”

“I’m the balm that allows you to tolerate the dukedom,” she guessed, being deliberately obtuse. “If you were doing as you liked, still working as a foreign agent, you would have never settled for me.”

“If I was still working for the Foreign Office,” he said softly, pulling her face to his, “I would marry you, then I would recruit you, and we would travel the world, preventing wars and routing slavers and fighting pirates.”

Again, Isobel’s eyes filled with tears, and she collapsed against him. With slick hands, she felt her way around his chest, savoring each muscle. She wanted to be as close as possible; she wanted to dig to his heart and swipe it, to hold it, to protect it.

“Is that a yes?” he asked, speaking into her hair.

A trail of shimmers revolved in her stomach. She floated in the hot pool and in the green heavens and in love with him. A tiny sliver of hope could just be made out on the horizon of her life. She allowed herself to reach out and jab at it, testing its durability and staying power.

“What was the question?” she asked, speaking to his chest.

He laughed, tickling her ribs with provocative fingers. “Do you love me?” he stated.

She paused in the act of kissing his nipple. She nodded.

He tickled her again, his fingers playful and sensual at the same time. His erection bobbed at the junction of her legs, a delicious, throbbing hardness.

“Will you marry me,” he went on, “and become the Duchess of Northumberland?”

She paused again. The shimmers had crystalized into tiny, sharp pinpoints of hope. She was so very torn. The shimmers of hope could swirl again or slice her to ribbons.

Hecould slice her to ribbons.

Jason went still, waiting for an answer.

When she said nothing, he swore, disentangled himself, and splashed away.

She stared after him, suddenly cold despite the fizzing heat. She treaded water, watching him. His handsome face was shrouded in steam and backlit by green swirls in the sky.

“Answer me,” he demanded.

He grabbed her ankle beneath the water and pulled her to him. She let out a whimper and allowed herself to glide. When she floated against him, she wrapped her legs about his haunches and looped her arms around his neck. He ground against her and she sighed in pleasure.

“An answer, if you please,” he growled in her ear.

“Yes,” she finally said breathlessly. “Yes, I will do it. If you do not change your mind. If your family will allow it. If society will allow it and it will not decrease your influence or the stature of the dukedom. I will do it.”

She finished on a sob, and he kissed her, swallowing up the sound.

Isobel’s conscious mind floated away, and she allowed herself to simply sink into the kiss and into him. Sensations built, throbbing between them, and when she could no longer bear the pressure, she reached between them and grabbed his erection.

He jerked and caught her hand, holding her there, moaning into her mouth.

She stroked him but was impatient. She began to shimmy from her wet drawers.

“Not this way,” he whispered against her ear. “We cannot remain here all night. I want to do it properly.”

“But . . . but . . .” she insisted, kissing him, “there are so many ways to properly do it. Quickly can be properly.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “I’ll not get you with child until you are my wife, S’bell. You deserve this much.”

She made a noise of frustration, she kicked her feet, but in her head and in her heart, she fell a little more in love.

“So how do you want it instead,” he growled, kissing her. He was tall enough to touch the bottom of the pool, and he walked to the side, carrying her.

“I beg your pardon?” she managed.

“You will see stars before we leave here, Isobel, even if I don’t.” He moved his own hand to her center, and she gasped at the contact.

“I see more than stars,” she panted, blinking at the hanging green light in the sky.

“No,” he teased, tracing kisses down her throat, and then lower, to her breasts. “Not that way. Close your eyes.”

Isobel complied, and the duke feasted on her body with hands and mouth, sending her to a place that she’d never been. When she reached climax, she was consumed by the shimmers that had teased her from the first day he came to her. She was a woman-shaped pile of shimmering love and light, floating against him. She opened her eyes and saw every shade of green and blue and indigo glittering above her. She saw her future in a hazy glow of warm, soft light. She wanted to turn away, to not risk burning her eyes, but she allowed herself to take it all in, to bask, to absorb it.

When, finally, her sense returned, she realized she was kissing him—he was such a good kisser—and she reached into the water for his body, but he gently pulled her hand away.

“There’s no time,” he said. “The wagon will have made it to the brig by now. You and I cannot be long after. The pirates may not find us here, but they can row downriver to their ship and pursue us in the harbor. We must put as much distance between ourselves and Iceland as possible.”

He gave her a final kiss and then shoved from the pool, water sluicing down his glorious body.

Isobel nodded dumbly, reaching up. He pulled, sliding her from the pool to balance beside him.

She glanced down. His drawers were strained by his hard, demanding length. She put one hand on his chest and reached for him with the other. “Jason . . .” she began.

He made a hissing noise and doubled over, grabbing her hand at the wrist.

“I’m endeavoring to do the correct thing here, Isobel,” he rasped. “Do not make it impossible. You will owe me, and I will expect a great many things from that debt, but let us not dash this mission in the eleventh hour.”

She slid her hand away, and he gave a full-body shudder. He swore and cleared his throat.

He turned away. “Get dressed?” he suggested, shucking his wet drawers and wrestling into his dry clothes. Isobel did the same, shivering now without the hot water.

“It’s cold,” she said.

“Take my coat.” He dropped his greatcoat over her shirt and buckskins.

“What will your friend Declan Shaw and the captives think when I return wearing your coat?” she asked. “Oh, and how is your cousin? The merchants looked wretched.”

“Reggie? He’s fine. Hungry and defeated, but he will survive. There are other captives in far worse condition. The pirates were brutal. It nearly killed me to leave you with them.”

“You should have seen me,” she sighed, rubbing the flank of her horse. “I was a spinning top. Once I danced them into the tavern, I was home free.”

Jason shook his head and smiled, a wordless show of admiration. He vaulted into the saddle and Isobel smiled too, admiring his muscled grace.

Mounting the mare, she followed Jason up an embankment out of the canyon, shrugging into the warm, musk-smelling confines of his coat.

“Jason?” she called.

“S’bell,” he answered. Her stomach flipped.

“I . . . I have a request.”

“I’ve already said there isn’t time, love.”

She bit back a smile. “I would like you to keep our . . . our—”

She couldn’t say it.

“Are the words you seek wild, passionate love?” he asked.

“I was going to say betrothal.” She reined her horse beside him. In her mind, she repeated the sentence.

“But is that what actually happened?” she asked. “Are we betrothed?” Her heart pounded.

“What happened was the most illicit, wettest betrothal of all time,” he said. “With the greatest lack of jewelry or paperwork. I apologize, but I am not sorry. I’ll correct the jewelry and the filings when we reach London. But yes, if you can abide it, that was the Jason Beckett version of a betrothal.”

Isobel felt herself nod. Hearing the words again made her breathless. She looked at the blue-green lights hanging in the sky. The aurora borealis looked dull compared to their love and their impending marriage. That was the supernatural phenomenon. That was the miracle.

“Right,” she said, kicking her horse into a cantor. “My request, then, is that we . . . we not discuss it with anyone? Not yet?”

“What?” He kneed his horse forward.

“It’s just—when we see your cousin, or when we make landfall in London. If we could simply . . . keep it . . . kind of like a secret? For a time?”

“Why?” he ground out. His anger was clear.

“Well, because I want you to settle into your role as duke without . . . without having to explain your relationship with me. Without having to accommodate me and show me about and introduce me. Without the burden of a fiancée.”

“You believe that when I am immersed in the so-called real world I will reconsider my offer. You believe,” he clipped, “that I’ll discover what a poor fit you may be, and keeping it secret allows me to disentangle?”

It was exactly what she believed, but she had no wish to quarrel with him. The night had been too perfect.

“The transition from spy to duke,” she explained, “will involve stewards, and advisers, and weeks of reading and property tours. You will be inundated with family. Your life will be turned upside down for a time. Please indulge me in this: go home. Get settled. Make some accounting for your reticence all these months. And then, if everything goes smoothly, we will announce it.”

He exhaled. He was frustrated, unhappy.

“No matter how reasonable your family,” she said, “they will be alarmed by the presence of a—of me. If we sweep in from foreign shores after this wild adventure—after having worked so very closely together—I’ll not only seem like the most unexpected bride of the decade, I’ll look calculating and . . . and seductress-y as well. It will look like I enchanted you while we sailed about the Atlantic Ocean, rescuing cousins.”

“But that is what you’ve done,” he teased.

“In contrast,” she pressed, “if we allow some time to pass, if I have time to settle in as well and establish my new travel agency, I’ll have a better idea how I’ll operate it while also serving as your duchess—”

“Syon Hall is just miles from Hammersmith,” he cut in.

She cleared her throat. “If I settle in, and you settle in, and time passes, then you may introduce me to your family. They’ll meet me simply as a translator who advised you on this mission. There’ll be no need to mention that I’m the girl who introduced you to . . . to—”

“Bathing in a heated pool?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“But when will I know that you’re ready?” he asked. “When can I introduce you?”

Isobel shrugged. “It’s impossible to put a date on it, isn’t it? Until we are home and we see what life will be like for us both?”

“Impossible,” he repeated bitterly. “Is it really ‘impossible’?”

“You will know when you’re ready,” she said.

He swore and kicked his horse into a gallop.

“Or perhaps,” he called, his voice hard, “I will wait for you to come. And you’ll be the one to know when you’re ready.”

Before she could answer, he darted ahead, leading the way across the grassy plain.