When You Wish Upon a Duke by Charis Michaels

“You’re cross,” Jason guessed, holding open the door of the Turnip and Tea.

In truth, Isobel Tinker looked so much more than cross. She looked outraged, or perhaps simply enraged, but the open door gave her no choice but to step into the street.

Midday sunlight painted Hammersmith in eye-squinting brightness, and she walked only so far as a window box. She stopped next to a cascade of flowers and shaded her eyes. The high street was thinly trafficked at the moment; only a boy on a pony clomped past.

She glared at the boy and his mount. She checked a watch in her pocket. She studied the petunias in the window box. She would not look at him. Meanwhile, Jason saw only her. He’d spent the last hour watching her charm his aunt from across the dim tearoom and he’d passed the week anticipating this moment.

She’d worn a dress of apple green with a tidy straw hat several shades paler. Her gloves were a faint apricot color, and she’d pinned a small silk poppy to her lapel.

He’d told himself that she would be plainer than he remembered, less sparkling. He’d told himself that the unexpectedness of Isobel Tinker had painted his memories of her far better than she actually had been.

He’d been wrong. There was nothing less about her. She was exactly as compact and bright as he remembered.

He looked his fill, taking time to reseat his hat and propping against the windowsill. In his mind, he played a game he called “Things Not Done by an Effective Foreign Agent.”

For example, an effective foreign agent did not feel guilty about using his aunt to trick an informant into meeting in Hammersmith.

An effective foreign agent was not distracted or entranced by said informant, no matter how fetching she looked in her snug green dress.

An effective foreign agent did not waver from the goal of recruiting the informant for urgent missions, no matter how she resisted.

And finally, an effective foreign agent did not use the rescue of hapless cousins as a means to become close—in mind or body—to the informant.

He must not touch her again, no matter how much his hands itched, in this very moment, to run a finger down the slim line of her arm. As a rule, he did not touch women uninvited—in his experience, no one of any gender welcomed random groping by another person—but his impulses seemed to be hung up on a continuous loop. Stay. Lean. Touch.

Jason did not touch her. He gave his head a shake and cleared his throat. He realized that if he stood just so, he could block the sunshine from her face with his shoulder. He propped a gloved hand on the building and leaned beside her. If he could not touch her, he would shield her.

“So,” he ventured, “you’re surprised to see me?”

This elicited a look. Finally. Blue eyes stared at him as if he’d just invited her to step off a high cliff.

“You thought our business was finished?” Another guess.

Guessing her mood seemed more prudent than asking her how she really felt. Validate her anger without inviting a vivid account.

When he’d left her that night in Grosvenor Square, she’d dismissed him with a three-sentence entreaty:

Do not approach me again. Please. If you have any respect for me . . .

At the time, she hadn’t seemed cross so much as hurried and emphatic and distressed. He’d agreed because he’d wanted to put her at ease. And also, she’d darted up the steps and disappeared inside before he could speak.

And now here he was, seeking her out again, just as he’d promised not to do. He’d also spoken of her to others. Not many others, but a few. His chat with her uncle, Sir Jeffrey Starling, would be among the more difficult interviews to reveal.

But authenticating her information was allowed—nay, necessary. Everything he did was necessary for the recovery of Reggie and the avoidance of an international incident with the Danes.

He was in the right. He’d never had to remind himself of this, and the mental exercise was growing tiresome.

He tried one more time. “You enjoyed meeting my aunt?” he ventured. This she could not deny.

At last, she opened her mouth. She sucked in a little breath. Jason stared at the small, pink perfection of her lips and was immediately distracted. He’d revisited their kiss as often as he’d revisited every other fact and figure from the night in Grosvenor Square. He’d devoted his week to confirming and researching and building on the details. The kiss should have been irrelevant to all of it; instead, it felt like a beginning.

Finally, she spoke. “Is the dowager’s holiday part of the ruse?” Her voice was soft and a little weary.

“What? No, of course not. There is no ruse, Isobel—”

“I prefer ‘Miss Tinker,’ if you please,” she said lowly, glancing about them.

“Forgive me, Miss Tinker.”He exhaled and started again, whispering, “My aunt has dreamt of a sojourn to Italy for an age. It was my pleasure to introduce you. Her patronage will keep you busy for the better part of a year.”

She stared at him like he was trying to sell her a house with no door.

“I merely meant to join two purposes,” he explained. “My aunt was in need of a travel agent, and I needed, urgently, to speak with you. I was mindful of not bursting in on your office again, and a simple request for another meeting seemed . . . ambitious.”

“There will be no future meetings,” she stated.

“Which is why I cultivated this errand. To bring us all together.”

“You and I have already been together,” she bit out in a whisper. She paused and a pink blush bloomed on the cream of her cheeks. He watched it spread down her throat and across her collarbone. Jason’s memories engaged, replaying the warm pleasure of their kiss.

Miss Tinker cleared her throat. She repeated, “I’ve provided all the information that I am able. I bade you, as a gentleman—”

“Yes, yes,” he cut in. “I’m a gentleman and you’ve bade me to the devil. But at the moment, I’m here on earth and working on behalf of the common good. Look, Miss Tinker, the information you provided in Grosvenor Square was, to put it mildly, a treasure trove. I was able to confirm, corroborate, or build upon nearly every nugget. When I first sought you out, my only intent was to gain a general sense of the Icelandic geographic and cultural landscape. Instead, you handed me the key players in my cousin’s capture and quite possibly their purpose. It’s been a very fruitful week, to say the least. I cannot say when I’ve had a more helpful informant.” He paused, waiting for some reaction. Flattery never hurt, and in this case, it was also true.

“I’m happy to hear it,” she said, not at all flattered. “But now you’ll repay my usefulness by—”

“I need more,” Jason said, emphasizing every word. He’d not lured her to Hammersmith to beat around the bush.

“More what?”

“I need you to join me on my voyage to Iceland to recover my cousin and the other captured Englishmen.”

There was a long, airless pause. From somewhere nearby, a chirping bird began a cheerful trill. The birdsong, so normal and abiding, served only to mock the highly irregular and improbable thing he was asking her to do.

“No,” she said, a statement more than a denial.

Jason celebrated inside his head but kept his face very calm. He doubled down.

“You couldn’t know this about me, Miss Tinker, but I’m known in my work for seeking unconventional solutions from unlikely sources.”

“No,” she said. Again, the word was floated more than tossed down.

“Protocol and procedure?” he went on. “These have always been afterthoughts. As a strategist, my plans are known as ‘unorthodox.’ ”

“No,” she repeated.

“And then the success we all enjoy is as far-reaching as it was inevitable. A great surprise to everyone but my closest allies.”

“No, no, no.”

“Which is why,” he rushed to finish, “you may be surprised at the very outrageousness of this plan.”

“Surprise is only one of several very strong reactions to this plan, Your Grace.”

“It could work,” he said. “It will work. It is brilliant and resourceful and kismet.”

“Absolutely not. Out of the question.” She spun on her heel and stomped up the street in the direction of London.

Jason swore and went after her. “Hear me out,” he said, catching her in two strides.

“Go away, Your Grace,” she said. She would not look at him. “Go away, go away, go away.”

He pressed on. “You would serve as a guide, a translator—a sort of cultural attaché. Based on what I confirmed this week, you know exactly how to get mein and my cousinout as quickly and as quietly as possible.”

She kept walking and he swore again. He was literally chasing her down the street.

He tried again. “Will you hear why I need you? Or what I’m prepared to offer in exchange?”

“No.”

Now he was cross. “You will,” he informed her. “Because lives are at stake and the government of England could benefit from your usefulness. It is decent and honorable to—”

“Do not say it,” she cut him off. She came to a stop before an empty storefront and whirled around.

“Do not suggest I lack decency or honor when I know the War Office or the Home Office or Whitehall could provision you with unlimited resources if you require them. I am merely one woman, alone. I’m fighting to keep my livelihood. I deplore Iceland for reasons too personal to share. And I also suffer from wretched seasickness; as such, I’ve sworn off ocean voyages. So do not expect me to politely ask how I might help. Don’t tell me that I am your only hope—and I have no wish to go—because I don’t believe you.”

“Fair points, one and all,” he said, which was certainly true. “But I’ve an answer.”

“Yes, and the answer is, ‘How right you are, Miss Tinker. I’ll leave off plaguing you.’ ”

He laughed. “Actually—no.” But how adorable you are, he thought.

He could hardly say that. He cleared his throat.

“Look,” he began again, “if I’m being completely honest, my efforts on this mission are not entirely under the, er, jurisdiction of the Foreign Office. That is, it’s not an official undertaking. I won’t be operating under . . . sanctioned authority.”

“What does that mean?” She sounded skeptical.

“I’m sufficiently high in rank—or I was before I retired—but even I’m subject to a chain of command. When I explained the pirate capture and the attempted illegal trade to my commanding officer, he was . . . not convinced. I told him these men from Lincolnshire could die and England could face a diplomatic quarrel with Denmark, but he wouldn’t budge.

“He didn’t block me from going so much as reminded me that I’m meant to be retired.” Here Jason made a grimace. “That I’m . . . no longer in play.”

“Stop,” she pleaded. “Not an appeal for sympathy. On top of everything else.”

He laughed, a bitter, ragged sound. “I don’t want your sympathy, Isobel; what I want is to be a foreign agent. That’s been taken from me. Fine. So be it. I also want to recover my cousin. This is in reach. If handled with care and delicacy and the resources at hand.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You plan to strike out on your own?”

He let out a disgusted harrumph. “Was I forbidden to embark on the mission? No, I was not forbidden. Do they know I intend to give it a go? Yes, they do. But will I be working on behalf of the British government when I enact the recovery? Not . . . entirely.

“Of course, if things go badly . . . if the pirates begin to kill the merchants or Denmark learns of their attempt to smuggle with Iceland . . . the Foreign Office would be invoked. They’d send reinforcements, official diplomacy would commence. My goal, with the consent—although not the support—of my former employer is to keep ahead of that.

“My goal,” he finished, “is in and out, and no one knows. My method is to recruit outsiders—which means you—and make as little fuss as possible. The Foreign Office is overburdened with larger concerns. I’m . . . I’m managing this on my own.”

By the time Jason had said all of it, he was sweating. He snatched off his hat and ran a finger through his hair. He raised his eyebrows.

Miss Tinker studied his face, saying neither yes nor no. Also, she did not say, How brave and noble you are, or How very full of rubbish you have been.

But she did begin to slowly shake her head.

“What?” he asked.

“You.” Her head was still shaking. “It’s as if your very person has been carefully assembled from all the cast-off parts of my former . . . former . . . poor judgment.”

Now it was his turn to ask. “What?”

“It’s a test, clearly,” she said, speaking to herself. “A challenge to all I’ve accomplished.”

Again, “What?”

And then he did the thing that he’d wanted to do since he’d watched her descend from the cab. He reached out and touched her. A gentle but firm gloved hand encircling the bare skin of her arm. She’d left her shawl on her chair, and the sleeves of her summer dress did not reach her gloves. Her arm was firm and warm and strumming with energy.

She looked first at his hand on her arm and then up at him. “I do not think we should touch.”

He explained, “I’m making a very important point.”

“You’re touching my arm.”

“Will you hear what I have to say?” he asked, dropping his hand. “There’s more.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she took off her hat, jerking at the ribbons like she was fashioning a hasty noose. The pins came next. When the hat was unfettered, she pulled it from her head and fanned herself with it.

Jason paused, giving her time.

They stood before an iron fence that separated the walkway from the empty shop. He leaned against the corner post. He crossed his arms over his chest and propped a boot on the bottom rung. He studied her, now free of the tidy straw hat. She’d styled her hair in another large poof of a yellow bun, high on the top of her head. Upswept tendrils broke ranks and feathered her neck.

“Do not gaze at me,” she remarked.

“Oh right,” he said, looking away. “No given names. No touching. No gazing. But may I—?”

“Fine,” she exclaimed. “Out with it. Tell me the rest. All the exciting, noble, unsanctioned bits. Why not?”

Jason nodded and dug for a coin in his pocket. He flipped it, and hopefulness made the same flip in his chest. Her resistance seemed to have more to do with an internal battle and very little to do with him. He remained calm. He kept his body lax and his voice even. He explained how he’d verified the information she’d given him, how he’d come to realize that she would be his ideal translator and guide.

Finally, he said, “I haven’t yet decided how I will approach the mission. I could negotiate with the pirates for the life of my cousin and his comrades. I could simply pay the ransom. Or I could steal away the lot of them under the cover of darkness. However I do it, I must be quick, efficient, and leave no diplomatic trace. I could devote another month to planning and research and anticipating all the things that could go wrong. Or I can simply enlist you as my translator and guide—and leave next week.”

He snatched the coin from the air. “That is why I need you.”

“What if I’ve already said everything there is to know about—”

“I spoke to your uncle, Miss Tinker,” he said. “I know about your time in Iceland.”

She went still, her hat frozen midarc. If possible, her blue eyes grew wider. She looked as if he’d held up a stolen broach.

“Isobel?” he said carefully.

“My uncle will not have told you everything,” she said finally. “Please be aware.”

“No,” Jason said, “I don’t suppose he did.”

“I don’t want to know actually,” she said, but she sounded anguished. She replaced the hat on her head, jabbing the pins and tying the ribbons.

“Your uncle said,” Jason recited calmly, “that your youth was spent traveling Europe in service to your mother’s career.”

“Ah yes,” she said, “my mother.”

“It goes without saying, I suppose, that I learned she was the actress—”

“Renowned actress,” Isobel amended. “Of international acclaim.”

It was the first time he’d heard her boast of anything but her own competence as a travel agent. She was proud of her unconventional mother. As well she should be. Good for her.

“Quite so,” he agreed. “Georgiana Tinker. I, myself, am a fan. I had the good fortune to catch her Lady Macbeth in Copenhagen. It was ’09, I believe. Transformative.”

She would not look at him. She closed her eyes. He was treated again to her profile. Full swoop of lashes, pert nose, plush lips, defiant chin.

He went on. “Your uncle described your girlhood and youth as unorthodox, but he passed no judgment.”

“No,” she said, “he would not. He is a decent man.”

“He said that by the time you reached Iceland, you’d outgrown it all.”

She laughed, a sharp, jagged sound. It left a cut on Jason’s heart.

“We talked about the number of months you were in Iceland,” he recalled. “The estate on which you lived. On the topic of your return to England—‘outgrown’ was all he said.”

Sir Jeffrey Starling’s lack of elaboration meant there was far more to the story, but Jason didn’t require the full story. He did want to know, but it wasn’t necessary for this mission.

“I sought out your uncle only to verify your time in Iceland. You are an unlikely source of intelligence, Miss Tinker, but you offered so very much of it. It was too valuable not to confirm.”

She seemed not to hear. She turned to face the fence, gripping it with both hands. She looked ready to rip out an iron slat and stab him with it.

“All this for a ‘mission’ that you now say is more like a personal errand,” she said.

“It is not uncommon,” he said, “for officers of rank to . . . act of their own volition for the common good. In the field.”

“But you are not in the field. You are in Hammersmith.”

“I am in the world,” he gritted out, “and I am a capable agent, and when I see injustice, I am obliged to set it to rights. I’m not staked behind a bloody desk in Middlesex—at least not yet.”

This came out with more rancor than he intended. It had pained him even to travel to Hammersmith today. The placid, agrarian tediousness of every part of Middlesex caused him to twitch and pace and scan the green horizon for a hidden door out.

Soon, he’d be back here to stay.

Soon, there would be no way out, and he’d twitch and pace and run mad with the stifling sameness of it.

But not today.

Today, he’d come for her and—lovely surprise—it hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected. She was resistant to reason and stubborn to a fault but she kept things interesting.

Now she watched him with open curiosity. He pressed the advantage.

“Will you indulge me a moment more? Let me make my offer? Learn what you’ll receive in return?”

“Oh yes. Another fifty pounds.” She stared at the empty storefront behind the gate.

“No, in fact. Not money. Something far more useful, I hope.”

“What is more useful than money?” A bitter laugh.

“Property,” he said.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she turned her head.

He kept his voice light. “It’s not in London, I’m afraid, but here. In Hammersmith. Not prohibitively far, as your journey in the hackney hopefully demonstrated. It’s another reason I wished you to meet with Aunt Harriet at her beloved Turnip and Tea. My London buildings do not really lend themselves to travel agencies—those are flats and warehouses mostly. But the Northumberland dukedom owns most of Hammersmith, or so I’m told, and that includes this high street.”

He went on. “You could choose this very building, for example.” He nodded to the storefront before them. “If it doesn’t suit, there are others scattered throughout town.”

He watched her. She tore her gaze away and looked at the empty building as if she had not noticed it before.

Jason gave her time to study it.

“If you will help me, Miss Tinker,” he said softly, “if you will travel to Iceland and assist me in recovering my cousin without incident, I will set you up in your own office, and you may have a travel agency on your very own terms. You may employ Samantha and whomever else you like. You may lure away all of your devoted clients, my aunt among them, and be free of Mr. Drummond Hooke. You may do as you please.”

He swung the creaky gate wide and stepped through it. He could feel her watching him as he mounted the steps. His heartbeat began to pound.

This was, of course, the thing he’d wanted to say from the moment she’d appeared in front of the tearoom.

He’d wanted to give her a building, even if she wouldn’t help him.

Surely this was one benefit of being duke? Bestowing his copious properties on whomever he chose.

He reached for the doorknob. It was locked, of course, but he’d had his brother’s steward—his steward, he reminded himself miserably—furnish him with keys to all the buildings up and down Queen Street. He unlocked the door and pushed it open.

“What say you?” he asked, gesturing to the dim interior. Anticipation welled like a shaken bottle of champagne. She was on the cusp. Her expression had gone from frustration to disbelief to—dare he say?—hope. He bit back a smile, watching as she looked over the building with wild, searching eyes.

“You would simply give me a building?” she confirmed. She clutched the fence plats as if she might bend them into hooks.

“Well, the leasehold, if that’s amenable. Choose a building with a storefront on the ground floor and a flat above for your dwelling. Or use both floors for your work and take a cottage around the corner. You’d have to say good-bye to city life, I’m afraid. And your clients will be forced to leave London to call on you. But perhaps you can convince them their journey to the Continent begins in Hammersmith.”

“But why?” she rasped.

“I’ve told you. I need your help.” I want you, I want you, I want you, he thought, and he realized this was his purest reason why.

“But it cannot mean so very much as all this. It cannot.” She released the fence and took two tentative steps inside the gate.

“What is the value of a favorite cousin?” he mused philosophically. “His life in peril?”

“You would have found another way,” she said.

“What is the value of keeping England out of a dispute with Denmark?” he speculated.

“But a whole building?”

“What is the value of my finally settling in as duke?” This question held less drama and more obligation. A question just as much for himself. “The sooner I return, the sooner I can install myself in Syon Hall. Do my duty. No more ‘derring-do’ as my aunt terms it.”

The words were painful to say, and he wondered how he’d stumbled upon an informant for whom the price of cooperation was his own painful admissions.

Luckily (and oddly, now that he considered it), he didn’t seem to mind the admissions. He found himself wanting to admit to the world if she was willing to listen.

He finished with, “I do not want the dukedom, but I’ve put it off long enough. My mother and sisters need me. The estate and tenants need me. I cannot devote another year to, er, saving the world. Or even to saving Reggie.”

She stared at him. She began, “I—”

She stopped.

She appeared to run out of excuses.

She started again, “I promised myself I would never go back.” She spoke to herself more than him.

And now it was his turn to resist, to be stalwart and not give in to her appeal for mercy.

“The building is yours,” he said, the most he could give her under the circumstances. “Plus local tradesmen for whatever modifications you might require to set up shop.”

She took three quick breaths. She shoved away from the fence. She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands at her sides—she was the figure of someone wringing consent from their very soul. She exhaled and opened her eyes. She blinked.

Jason said nothing, waiting and watching.

“Fine,” she called. Her voice held a new steeliness. She clipped up the steps and sailed through the door. Her green skirts swished against his boot as she went.

“You win,” she called from the darkness within. “Show me every building. If one of them is suitable, I’ll do it. I’ll make the trade.”