When You Wish Upon a Duke by Charis Michaels

“I don’t understand,” Samantha said to Isobel two days later. “Why cultivate new clients if we’re being forced to leave Everland Travel?”

The two women were assembling a folio with pamphlets and maps for a morning meeting with a dowager countess.

Isobel, employing equal parts don’t-think-about-it and pretend-it-won’t-happen, was carrying out her duties at Everland Travel as if she was not on the brink of expulsion. It had been two days, and she hadn’t yet been sacked.

Yes, Drummond Hooke held the ax of termination over her head, and yes, she’d allowed a very wild, very overwhelming fragment of her old self to streak through her current life, but otherwise, nothing had changed. Yet.

“Life goes on,” Isobel told Samantha now, mimicking the sage wisdom of someone who was not wild or overwhelmed. “We do not have the luxury of burning bridges. What if we find work in another travel agency? If this is a possibility, we’ll want well-served clients to migrate with us.”

“But this woman is not even a client.” Samantha gestured to the crisp folio of itineraries and watercolor images of Italy.

“Yes, but she will be,” said Isobel, tucking the folio into her satchel. Isobel excelled at winning new clients, especially old women.

This particular old woman, a dowager countess called Lady Harriet Braselton, had sent a card by messenger to request a private audience. The dowager had passed the spring and summer nursing a fractured ankle and wished to celebrate her restored health with an Italian holiday. She had questions about destinations and restricted mobility. She would be accompanied by her goddaughter and travel with a small staff. Her wish list was long and expensive, a talisman of Isobel’s most lucrative type of client.

“Things should be slow while I’m out,” Isobel told Samantha, tucking the folio in a satchel. “Sir Jamison must deliver payment today or his wife’s holiday will be canceled with no refunds on the money already paid. And there are the Austria bookings to post . . .”

“I’ll do it,” sighed Samantha, slumping behind the counter, “but I won’t understand why I’m doing it.”

“Until Mr. Hooke evicts us, it is business as usual,” Isobel repeated for the hundredth time. “There is always the chance he’ll forget his misguided proposal and allow us to carry on.”

“He won’t,” called Samantha as Isobel hurried out the door.

Samantha was correct, of course. He would not forget. After Isobel’s rejection of him, Drummond Hooke announced he would remain in London for the foreseeable future. He did not mention their row or his proposal. He dropped in and out of the office instead, interjecting his disruptive presence into the business of the day and lavishing Isobel with what she assumed were meant to be the trappings of courtship. He bore droopy flowers, soft chocolates, and invitations to dine. Worst of all, he made awkward attempts at playful affection, pats and nudges and bumps and grazes that made her jump.

As long as Hooke kept quiet on the topic of marriage versus termination, Isobel would too. She accepted the flowers as an office-wide gift; she offered the chocolates to boys in the street. She refused all invitations and skittered away from his bony fingers. Until he actually sacked her, she would abide him. They would ooze along: Hooke believing that he was somehow winning her favor and Isobel planning for the day he would give up and send her packing.

Which he would do. He was not accustomed to being told no, especially by someone he believed to be beneath him. Entitled men did not expend effort on lesser women for long.

Until that time, she would not sabotage her work of the last five years just because he couldn’t see beyond the end of his prick, and that meant cultivating new clients like Lady Braselton.

Her meeting with the dowager was set for a tearoom in Hammersmith, and she hailed a hackney cab for the journey west. Isobel routinely met in the homes of her clients to go over holiday itineraries or to introduce a travel porter to the family. First interviews, however, were sometimes convened in public establishments such as tearooms or the dining rooms of coaching inns. It was a very good sign, Isobel thought, when a lady requested an introduction in a public place instead of the security of her own parlor. It demonstrated an intrepidness and a versatility that would serve her well on her holiday. And also the dowager’s estate was too deep in Middlesex for Isobel to travel in a day. Hammersmith was mid-distance for them both. Best of all, the remote meeting meant several blessed hours out of the office and away from Mr. Hooke.

Worst of all? The journey meant time to ruminate over her newest, most ruinous distraction.

The Duke of Northumberland.

And the kiss.

And why it happened.

And what it meant.

Although how foolish to speculate on what it meant. She knew what it meant.

To him, it meant nothing—one of a million kisses.

To Isobel, it meant that she’d not actually become the staid and respectable lady she’d worked so very hard to become. She’d merely been acting the part these last seven years.

Isobel Tinker was as wild and provocative and hopeless as she’d been the day she left Iceland.

The cab lurched into the crush of vehicles in Oxford Street. Shops and offices blurred outside her window and she replayed the Grosvenor Square encounter in her mind. Perhaps her favorite moment was him scooping her up: his strong arms lifting her as if she’d weighed nothing. His body had been so very large where hers was small, so hard where hers was soft.

And his fervor, of course. He kissed with an urgency that matched her own. She’d kissed him passionately, and he’d not backed down.

She’d reviewed every second of the kiss countless times and could not find fault with any of it—save her own brazen indulgence. But that went without saying. The kiss had been near perfect.

Now the cab trundled past Hyde Park. Isobel studied the fine ladies in open carriages, enjoying the summer sun from beneath frothy parasols. Men in top hats were mounted on docile horses, trotting beside the ladies or cantering between the vehicles.

Isobel had promenaded in parks, once upon a time—not in London, of course, but in the grand parks of Paris and the piazzas of Rome. She had taken care with her dresses and carefully chosen her seats in open carriages. She had laughed and schemed and bade the driver to circle back with the hope of catching someone’s eye.

No longer, she thought. I’m all grown up now, and I work. Real, actual work.

With luck, I will continue to work.

Her work this week, however, had been diluted with the entirely useless and futile task of snooping.

She’d searched old newspapers for articles about the Duke of Northumberland.

She’d located a copy of Debrett’s Peerage and looked up his family.

In a particularly low moment, she’d hired a cab and rode past his opulent London townhome.

She was a foolish, foolish girl who’d clearly had learned nothing at all.

But Northumberland had simply been so—

Well, adorable was not the correct word.

Puppies were adorable. Five-year-old boys in tiny, grown-man suits were adorable. There was nothing fluffy or tiny about the duke. He was an adult male, older than her by more than five years. He projected an attitude of certainty about himself and the world and the future. He filtered through the dark London streets with confident stealth, an operator. It was clear why men had followed him in battle—she followed him without question and she prided herself on questioning everything done by any man.

His interview of her had been so intuitive and skilled it felt more like a very important conversation than an interrogation. He’d asked all the correct questions and she’d sung like a little yellow bird. How could she not, when subjected to his easy charm?

He portrayed himself like the friendly older brother of a beloved classmate, his trustworthiness guaranteed by association. The longer they spoke, the more she felt herself trust. But he was no one’s brother, no one that she ever knew, and she had absolutely no reason to trust him.

One striking problem was that he was so very handsome. No matter how he sat or leaned or stalked, no matter how the moonlight struck him, Isobel gobbled up the sight. He was tall enough to see over the shrubs and so broad shouldered he blocked the moon. His hair was sandy brown-blond, mussed but not unkempt. His eyes held a sweetness but also . . . heat. He was dressed finely but without stiff formality. His attractiveness was so very obvious and known and enjoyed, it felt dangerous. She knew about dangerous levels of attractiveness; she’d learned this the hard way. And yet—

And yet she almost clipped the picture of his face from the newspaper. Like a schoolgirl.

She permitted herself all of this silliness only because she knew.

Girls who worked in travel shops served no purpose for a duke except as, well, as travel agents. On the very, very rare occasions, perhaps they served as informants.

She also knew that girls whose mothers were actresses could potentially serve a wholly different purpose for dukes—and she’d very nearly performed this service on the park bench—but Northumberland was a gentleman and he would not seek her out for another go. He would not gossip. She would never see him again.

She knew.

Safe in this knowledge, she allowed herself freedom from regret. Oh, she was mortified and shocked at her behavior, but she did not regret the kiss so much as worry over her lingering response to it. Her fixation. Her daydreams—good Lord, her actual dreams.

What bothered her the most was coming to terms with her longing. She’d wanted the charming duke—yes, but what she really wanted was more. More of him, and more of life in general.

Being staid and respectable was a challenge, and she might be terrible at it or she might eventually manage it. What she would not manage was the want.

Dark gardens with handsome men were exhilarating. She’d forgotten how much. And she longed for it.

She’d been deceiving herself all along.

The cab continued west, picking up speed as the London traffic thinned to the occasional wagon and men on horseback. The stacked houses and shops of town gave way to tidy cottages or clusters of outlying shops. Isobel checked her timepiece. It was not far to Hammersmith, but she mustn’t make the dowager wait. Nor should she turn up distracted and flushed by memories of the duke.

She thumbed through her folios, seeing very little, until the cab reached Queen Street in Hammersmith. The driver located the tearoom, a charming stone shop with petunia-burst window boxes and a cheerful awning. Isobel paid the fare and then some, imploring him to return for her in two hours. She smoothed her dress and straightened her hat. She screwed a smile onto her face and hurried inside.

The dowager was easily identified in the dim interior, the only fabulously dressed middle-aged woman. She was flanked by a lady’s maid snoozing at the table behind her and a footman hovering nearby. She presided over a window table laid heavily with a full tea.

“Lady Harriet Braselton?” Isobel asked, bobbing a shallow curtsy.

“Yes, indeed,” enthused the dowager, “and you are Miss Tinker?”

“The very one,” said Isobel, bobbing again and reaching out her hand.

Lady Harriet gushed her gratitude for the remote meeting, complimented Isobel’s green dress, and thankfully forwent all the usual comments about her youth and gender. She invited Isobel to sit and began to pour tea, maintaining a steady stream of pleasant chatter. Isobel liked her immediately.

After they’d praised the tearoom (the dowager’s family owned the entire block, she said), the distance from London (Isobel would surely be home in time for supper), and the condition of her ladyship’s ankle (only a concern when it rained), Isobel pulled the watercolor prints from her satchel and began to spin a tale of Italian adventure, casting Lady Harriet as the protagonist.

The spry, open-minded dowager was transfixed, poring over the watercolors, making breathless sounds of excitement and clapping her hands in delight. In only a half hour’s time, Isobel had sold the woman on a six-week holiday from Rome to Venice, invoking every luxury. She was just jotting down the woman’s details, preferred dates of travel, and scheduling their next meeting when Lady Harriett dropped her teacup in the saucer with a clatter.

“Oh, but I’d nearly forgotten,” exclaimed the lady. “It was my excitement over the journey. But I do have a second purpose here today. He’s the very reason I sought you out. My dear nephew. He knew of my desire to travel and wrote to me at Meadowlane to insist I contact you straightaway. But you must speak to him—my nephew, Jason . . . Ah, yes, here he is . . .”

Isobel’s hand froze over the parchment.

She’d been only half listening, but her ears went red at the mention of the name “Jason.”

She knew of only one Jason.

Of course she did not think of him as “Jason.” Her many misguided speculations and remembrances styled him simply as “Northumberland,” but she knew his given name. She knew most things about him, considering the wasted hours she spent poring over all available accounts.

Isobel blinked at the notes, seeing only a blur. She bit down on the end of her pen. Finally, she looked up, trying to school her face into passive curiosity.

“I beg your pardon, my lady?”

“My nephew urged me to seek you out. My own son would force me to holiday in Scotland every summer and be done with it. Such a tyrant, my son. The world is so very small to him, and he’s so protective. But my nephew respects my adventurer’s spirit—ah, but here he is. Jason, darling!”

Isobel watched in disbelief as the dowager beamed at an unseen figure behind her, beckoning him with the happy twirl of a bracelet-tinkling wrist. The dowager’s footman straightened to attention and the drowsing lady’s maid scrambled to her feet.

Not him,Isobel chanted in her head. Not him. Not him.

It is not Jason Beckett, the Duke of Northumberland.

It is Jason Anybody Else, someone I’ve never met or kissed with wild abandon.

“Hello, my lady,” rumbled a friendly male voice from behind her—an achingly familiar voice. Unmistakable. The voice she heard in her dreams.

Isobel slowly closed her eyes. She counted the racing beats of her heart. She drew a shaky breath.

When I open my eyes, she thought, this will not be—

“Oh, but Miss Tinker is everything you promised,” sang the dowager. “Ah, just look at her, so very deep in thought. Planning my journey already.”

Isobel was given no choice but to open her eyes. “Forgive me, my lady,” she said, locking eyes with the dowager.

She would not look at him. She would not look at him.

She would not look.

“I was trying to recall—”

“How do you do, Miss Tinker?” said Nephew Jason, now a large, looming blur in Isobel’s periphery. He was solid and opaque and unmoving. She could feel the warmth of his body. She could smell him.

With very great effort, Isobel tore her eyes from the dowager’s and glanced up at him. “How do you do?” she rasped, a reflex.

It was him, of course, and her reaction to the sight of him was like the crack of a rifle, loud and reverberating. A shattering of the calm. His beautiful face was relaxed and curious and a little amused. His masculine body towered above the dainty tea service. Isobel felt shot—not taking the bullet, but propelled from the barrel of the gun.

Him.

“I trust you’re taking good care of my aunt,” he said. “You’ll not find a traveler more eager to see the world, I daresay. This journey has been many years in the making.”

“So true,” bemoaned the dowager, reaching again for Isobel’s watercolor illustrations. “You know me too well, darling, and that is why you are my favorite nephew.”

“Indeed,” Jason agreed. He was staring at Isobel’s face. Isobel knew she should look away—she should attend the dowager, she should take a sip of tea, she should look anywhere else—but she gaped up at the duke as if she’d never before seen a human male.

He went on, not looking away. “Would you mind, my lady, if I spoke to Miss Tinker alone for just a moment? You’ll remember I said her office sometimes arranges travel for my work.”

“Such dangerous derring-do,” tsked the dowager, waving them away. “Of course my son will have no qualms about a holiday planned by the same office that looks after your important missions, darling . . .”

“Leave the earl to me,” assured the duke lightly, stepping behind Isobel’s chair and pulling it from the table. Isobel was given no choice but to rise. “I’ll make certain that you get your Roman holiday.” He gestured to the staff.

To Isobel he said, “Can I impose on you to join me outside, Miss Tinker? There is something of grave importance I should like to discuss.”