When You Wish Upon a Duke by Charis Michaels

“Waiting for someone, Your Grace?”

Former mercenary Declan Shaw stood on the deck of the Feather smoking with the duke. Shaw watched the pale sun arc into the black waters of the North Sea, while Jason stared at a closed hatch on the brig’s foredeck.

“What?” Jason asked.

“I said,” repeated Shaw, “are you waiting for—?”

“Waiting for you to finish that sodding cheroot,” said Jason testily. “You’re like a calf on a teat. If I’d only known I could pay you in tobacco.”

The duke had assembled a small crew of trusted comrades in arms, retired soldiers, and off-duty agents to travel to Iceland as tactical support. Leading the crew was his old friend Declan Shaw.

Shaw was a retired mercenary who now lived in Somerset with his new wife and infant son. Before his unexpected foray into family life, Shaw had been a cunning warrior, the type of man for whom fighting pirates would be all in a day’s work. Jason could think of no one more qualified for this mission, and he’d paid Shaw triple to convince him to leave his young family, even for a month.

“My wife detests smoking,” Shaw said, exhaling a ribbon of smoke. “I am happy to oblige her. You? I couldn’t care less. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a cheroot.” He took another puff.

Jason checked the deck hatch again. “Precious few cheroots in prison, I presume,” the duke said.

“Precious few visitors to this deck,” Shaw replied.

Jason shot him a look but said nothing.

Declan Shaw had served time in Newgate Prison after being wrongly accused of kidnapping. Jason had been on assignment in India at the time, and his friend had been spared prison by the woman who was now his wife.

“Pity too,” rhapsodized the mercenary. “You. Alone at sunset. The icy waves, the frigid wind, the crusty film of algae and fish guts. So romantic.”

“Spare me your fantasies,” Jason said, lighting his own cheroot.

“Not my fantasy, mate. You’re the man who’s ferrying a female translator to bloody Iceland so she can have a go at pirates. Or so says the gossip. Interesting choice, if it’s true.”

“Interesting, why?” Jason bit out.

“That depends,” said Shaw, tossing the butt of his cheroot into the sea. “If the female translator is a sweaty, sour-faced woman who you intend to roll around Iceland in an ox cart. Or if she’s young and beguiling and will see Iceland riding on your lap.”

Jason was just about to tell Shaw to bugger off when the hatch behind them creaked open and a blond head popped out.

Jason’s cheroot froze halfway to his mouth. He stared at the face he hadn’t seen in three days.

Shaw snickered. “Well, there’s our answer, isn’t it? Pleasant chat, North.”

“Sod off, Shaw.” Jason pitched his cheroot overboard. “Miss Tinker?” Jason called, carefully approaching the opened hatch. “Are you—?”

“Do not, if you please,” said Isobel Tinker. Her voice was weak. She would not look at him. Her gloved hands grasped the top rung of the ladder with a death grip, and she laid her forehead on her wrist. “I need a moment.”

“Should I—?” Jason was at a loss for what to offer. The skin of her face was dull and grayish. She’d plaited her hair against her head in two short, spiky braids. Her body was smothered by a bulky teal cloak.

“A moment,” she repeated, turning her head sideways. She sucked in a gulp of air.

“Let me hand you up,” he suggested, looking around, cursing the crudeness of the brigantine. “Here, take my hand.”

“I will not.” She clung to the ladder.

“Perhaps the deck is not—”

“Resist the temptation to see some solution here, Your Grace. I need only fresh air.” She lifted her head. “And dry land.”

“Do you mean to . . .” he searched for the correct phrase, “. . . crawl out? Entirely unaided?”

“When I require assistance, you will know it. Otherwise . . .” and now she clamped her mouth shut and closed her eyes, presumably fighting a wave of discomfort, “. . . keep back.”

Jason employed considerable self-constraint and watched her ascend slowly, shakily, to the deck. She had nearly hatched herself and was reaching a trembling hand for a railing when he said, “Oh for God’s sake,” and lifted her.

He swept one hand around her waist and another on her outstretched arm and pulled her up. She reached for the railing that bordered the passage, and he draped her there, like a sheet on a line.

He stepped back.

“Thank you,” she said, speaking to the deck.

He made a dismissive sound. “Miss Tinker, but this cannot be—”

She held up a hand, silencing him.

Jason complied. He’d been unprepared for how miserable she would be. The woolen cape concealed an Isobel-shaped body that, already diminutive, appeared to be shrinking. Her head was uncovered, and the wind plucked at her braids, whipping blond tendrils across her cheeks. She looked wretched.

“You look wretched,” he said.

“I am wretched.”

“I’m so sorry you’re afflicted by ocean travel in this way,” he said. “If I’d known—”

“If you’d known,” she said, raising her head, “you would have bribed me, just the same. And I would have consented, also the same. You want . . .” a tired pause, “. . . whatever it is you want, and I want the new building.”

With no warning, they were lashed with a cold wind, an icy spray of seawater pricking their skin. She raised her face into the gale and blinked, opening her eyes. She stood straighter.

“It’s less than a fortnight. I will survive.” She made a limp, dismissive motion.

“Are you always this stoic?”

“I am, in fact,” she said. “Lucky you.”

“I supposed I recognized this from the first. I would never have recruited you if you’d seemed . . . fragile.”

“Lucky me,” she mumbled, and he laughed.

But now she was on the move, her sights apparently set on the stern railing. Holding her hands out for balance, moving slowly, she began to shuffle around masts and coiled rigging to the quarter deck.

“Oy!” Jason said, and darted after her. He captured her arm, tucking it beneath his own. She did not pull away. The boat rocked and she nudged inward, allowing him to steady her. She was noticeably slighter than she’d been the last time he’d touched her. Her body beneath the cloak felt less substantial than heavy wool itself. He found her hand, small and limp, and clasped it. Again, she did not pull away.

“Are you able to take food?” he asked. “And water? Broth?”

“I’ve no wish to discuss food,” she said. “Or my condition. Trust that I am miserable but it can be borne. I’ve done it many times.”

“Right,” he said. “Stoic silence.” He guided her to the railing.

He’d wanted to ask her about what to expect when they made landfall, but obviously she was in no condition to discuss strategy.

“I wish to talk about my uncle,” she said. “Sir Jeffrey Starling.”

Jason glanced at her once, looked away, and then again. But perhaps her condition did not preclude all talk.

Another cold gust whipped across the deck, spraying them with icy water. Isobel gasped and Jason stepped up, meaning to shield her with his body.

“No.” She leaned around him, eyes closed, straining to feel the fresh air on her face. “I need it.”

Jason stood down, watching as she turned her face to the wind, eyes closed, relief loosening the tension in her expression.

He was still staring when she opened her eyes. She blinked, surprised by his attention.

“I’d put my uncle out of my mind,” she said, turning away. “Distracted by the whirlwind of preparations. But now, on this brig, in the very rare moments when I have not been indisposed, my mind has returned again and again to my aunt and uncle.”

Jason nodded. It had been a small subterfuge to approach her uncle, just like it had been a small subterfuge to invoke his aunt to entice her to Hammersmith. She would naturally be resentful of both.

“What would you like to know?” he asked.

“How long did you speak to him?”

“Oh . . . an hour? I called on him at home, so there was tea. The conversation came to more than Iceland. We’re in the acquaintance of many of the same people.”

“Of course you are,” she said, shrugging deeper into her cloak. She did not seem angry or betrayed, more like . . . resigned.

“When we spoke of you,” he said, “Sir Jeffrey’s priority was discretion on your behalf. He was careful to answer only direct questions. He was effusive in praise. He referred to you as a beloved niece. He said you were like a sister to his daughters.”

She smiled at this, her first nonmiserable look. She stared into the white foam of the churning waves.

After a long moment, she said, “My aunt and uncle took me in when I was at a very low and desperate point in my life. We were barely acquainted; I’d not lived in England for nearly a decade, and I’d hardly known them before. But when I wrote to them, my uncle did not hesitate. He arranged my passage and they welcomed me into their home. They nurtured me in every possible way—love certainly. But they also outfitted me with a new wardrobe. They saw that I enjoyed watercolors and built a studio in their attic. When they holidayed at the seaside, they included me. I was part of the family in every way. I lived with them for . . . for years. They questioned nothing about my past. They were so very kind.”

Now she leaned back, holding the railing with both hands, arms straight. She stared at the spot where the sky unrolled behind the sea.

Jason was transfixed. Of all the things he needed to learn from her—about the pirates and the locals and the Icelandic terrain—this was what he’d actually longed for. Her life. She spoke calmly but her voice was steeped in gravity. She was warming to the topic. Familiar impatience crept up the backs of his arms, tickling his shoulders and neck. His fingers twitched.

And then? he wanted to prompt.

Tell me. Tell me who you truly are.

But of course she should not be rushed. He took a coin from his pocket and rubbed the ridged insignia between his fingers. After two beats, he flipped it in the air.

Casually, he asked, “Sir Jeffrey is . . . your mother’s brother?”

She chuckled and shook her head. “Sir Jeffrey is no blood relation to me at all. I am his wife’s niece. My aunt Bonnie. She was my father’s sister.”

“But Bonnie Starling is sister to the late Earl of Cranford,” said Jason.

She turned her head and raised an eyebrow, an expression of And so she is.

“Your father was the Earl of Cranford?” Jason nearly shouted. “But your mother—”

And now he trailed off. He gave the coin another flip.

Ah. So that’s it.

Isobel turned away, staring again at the sunset.

Jason’s brain churned like the waves. So Isobel Tinker’s mother, renowned stage actress Georgiana Tinker, had had an affair with the Earl of Cranford. Isobel was the earl’s illegitimate daughter.

Jason hadn’t asked about Isobel’s parentage because it hadn’t seemed relevant. Her mother was an actress—this he knew. Isobel provided for her own living. She’d mentioned no brothers or guardian. The specifics of a father hadn’t come up.

“But were you acquainted with your father, the earl?” Jason asked. “Before he died?”

“I was,” she said simply. “When I was young. We saw him quite a lot until . . . well, until we didn’t. My mother and he had a falling-out. Not long after, she and I left England. She packed up the two of us and we sailed for France.”

“During wartime?” Jason asked the question, but his brain was hung up on the fact that she was the daughter of one of the wealthiest and most revered aristocrats in England. And she toiled away in a Mayfair travel shop.

Isobel was shaking her head. “It was ’99? So the war had not begun, but we remained in Europe, even after the fighting started. Officers and parliaments need a night out, don’t they? My mother lent her considerable talents to stages all over Europe. She was highly sought after and never wanted for work. It was . . . it was an irregular youth, to say the least, but it prepared me for the work I do at Everland Travel.”

“You never had a desire to perform?” he asked. He didn’t see Isobel as an actress; she was too sensible. It took too much effort to get her talking.

“Acting is my mother’s calling,” she said. “Before I went to live with my aunt and uncle, I’d given very little thought to my future whatsoever. Even when I was a guest of the Starlings—even when I knew I couldn’t remain with them forever—I’d not thought of my future. I was too occupied recovering from my past. Lack of planning is yet another reckless oversight of my youth.”

Why not plan to marry?Jason’s first thought. But then he remembered Drummond Hooke and his doomsday proposal. Who was she meant to marry? Her speech and manners were impeccable, and she was educated and well traveled. No common man—say, the butcher’s son or a sailor or miner—would suit her. Meanwhile a gentleman would . . .

He glanced at her, and her expression said, And now we can all acknowledge that I am a bastard daughter of an earl.

Jason frowned, indignant and frustrated on her behalf, but also frustrated with himself. It was thoughtless of him to compel her to spell it out.

“What?” she asked.

“Planning for one’s future,” he mused, the first, most innocuous thing that popped into his brain. “I, myself, have not managed this for shite.”

She narrowed her eyes. “One does not simply wake up and find himself working for the Foreign Office, Your Grace.”

“One does,” he countered. “Or rather, I did. For better or for worse. And then I became duke almost the same way. Although more relatives had to die for the second bit.”

Jason picked up his hat and reseated it over his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to talk about himself, and especially not the bloody dukedom, but he could have embarrassed her by raising the topic of her parentage. He’d say anything to salvage the conversation.

“You’re waiting for me to ask?” she said.

“Hmm?” He flipped the coin again.

“How does one awaken in the Foreign Service?” she prompted.

“Oh, that.” He caught the coin and said, “It’s a boring story, really.”

“Do I detect a deep aversion to the notion of boredom,Northumberland?”

“Ah, I do not manage well with idleness,” he remarked, “if that’s what you mean.”

“And that is why you dread being duke?”

“That is why I dread being idle. Which is the very embodiment of being duke. So yes, that is why. Well, that is one reason.”

The words came out more bitterly than he intended. Surely now they were even. He’d spelled out her dubious parentage in ungentlemanly detail, and she’d identified his gnawing impatience. Now they could move on.

“Tell me how you were recruited,” she said.

Or perhaps they would not move on.

He tossed the coin again and let out a sigh. He glanced at her. She was so pretty, even wind-whipped and seasick and huddled in a cloak. It was her eyes. Curious, alight with intelligence. They were the opposite of idle, and he need only glance at her to feel the opposite of bored.

“Fine,” he sighed. “It was Spain. The Royal Army. I was captain at the time. My company was part of a regiment facing down French troops near Salamanca. We were in a stalemate because the French had positioned themselves around a working orphanage, and my colonel refused to engage with children in jeopardy.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she proclaimed, instantly enthralled. Jason felt a surge of gratification at her rapt attention but tried to ignore it. He’d been a soldier and spy too long to bask in the admiration of a pretty girl.

“We were correct to stand down obviously,” he said. “But after three days and nights of crouching in a sodden field, I was losing my mind.”

“The idleness,” Isobel surmised.

Jason shrugged. “I took it upon myself to, er, approach the French colonel and ask him to kindly distance himself from the children so we could have a proper fight or move on. I made this request without asking my own command. Oh and I recruited nuns from a nearby church as sort of . . . humanitarian shields to wade into the enemy camp with me.”

She laughed. “I can only imagine the nuns’ resistance to a handsome officer enlisting them to protect orphans.”

“The holy sisters? Very cooperative. Every soldier should enjoy such courageous comrades in arms. The nuns and I snuck into the camp at dawn. It wasn’t an infiltration so much as a very stealthy and unexpected social call.”

“No one endeavored to shoot you? You weren’t taken captive?”

“I’ve a way with people,” Jason commented, flicking his coin.

“I’ve seen your way,” she said.

You’ve seen nothing yet, he thought, but he said, “I began talking, an aide translated, the sisters joined in, chanting prayers. We overwhelmed the man, honestly. He’d not yet had coffee.”

“But what did you propose?”

Jason took off his hat, scratched his head, and then reseated it. “We suggested it was ‘unsporting’ to employ orphans as a strategic cover, and surely this was not what Napoleon intended. We proposed the nuns be allowed to evacuate the children.”

“And he agreed,” guessed Isobel.

Jason shrugged. “The conversation never progressed so far. I’d positioned my company at the farthest corner of what would have been the field of battle and instructed them to ever so slightly antagonize any French soldiers within earshot. A skirmish ensued, confusion and panic began to seize the camp. The officers became suspicious, and the colonel’s attention was divided. He ordered me taken prisoner but I’d manage to, er, vanish—”

“Of course you did.”

“The nuns sprang into action, wielding their crosses aloft and ferrying the children to safety.”

“You left the nuns to evacuate the children on their own?”

“Well, perhaps vanish is too strong of a word for what I’d done.” He flipped the coin again, very high, so high they both tipped their heads to watch it rise and fall.

“The next bit,” he ventured, “is almost too boring to relate.” Another coin flip.

“Oh yes, heroics are ever so boring. But can you tell me how this led to the Foreign Office?”

“When the dust settled—we won the ensuing battle by the way—I was approached by our colonel, and then our general, and then Whitehall came calling.” Another flip. “And there you have it. I began the day as a captain and awakened . . . oh, about a month later . . . as a foreign agent.”

“There is more to it,” she guessed.

“Perhaps a bit. The point is, I joined the army because life in Middlesex was tedious—maddening, really—and because the military is a natural path for the third son of a duke. I gave it no more thought than that. I joined the Foreign Service because someone asked me; also with very little thought. And someone asked me because they felt my rashness could be harnessed for the greater good.”

She laughed again and he allowed himself to bask in the glow of it. He’d hardly been gunning for a laugh, but when had he ever discouraged the delight of a pretty girl? He’d been in the business of delighting girls for longer than he’d been in the business of rash behavior.

“And that, Miss Tinker, is how the leopard got his spots,” he concluded, snatching the coin from the air. “Perhaps we both fly by the seat of our pants. Or we have done. At one time or the other.”

Her laughter died down and her expression turned speculative. “Perhaps,” she said. “I . . . I actually fell into working as a travel agent after I’d given up on flying. It was during my time at the Starlings’.”

“Is that so?” Jason’s heart thudded heavily. It was one thing to impress her, but this was what he really wanted to hear. He flipped his coin and waited.

She nodded. “But it was not overnight. Or even in a month.”

Jason nodded and said nothing. He would wait—he could wait. Admittedly, Isobel Tinker made waiting less painful. With Isobel Tinker, it was exciting even to wait.

“The Starlings,” she explained, “have four very charming but very demanding daughters—my cousins.”

“Oh yes, I saw two or three of them when I called.”

She nodded and smiled wistfully. “They are dear girls. And they were a balm to me when I came to live with them. It would be impossible to overstate how rattled and . . . and miserable I was when I joined their household. Most respectable families would have worried about my influence on young, impressionable girls, but Sir Jeffrey and Aunt Bonnie did not restrict my relationship with any of them. To the girls I was exotic, and grown up, and I’m sure I had a vague sort of . . . ‘fallenness’ to them. But my aunt seated me among them at dinner every night.”

Fallenness?What the devil did that mean? Nothing pleasant obviously. Also, nothing consistent with what Jason knew of her. The Isobel Tinker he knew seemed regimented and resilient, not fallen.

She went on. “When I’d lived in the Starlings’ London townhome for half a year, their oldest daughter, Jane, was invited to accompany an elderly aunt on a holiday to Paris. Jane was . . . oh, sixteen at the time? Barely out in society. Her parents would not allow her to go, but Jane refused to accept their decision. She begged and begged. For weeks, it was all we heard, unrelenting.

“Finally, simply to validate her, I asked Jane to show me the details of this forbidden holiday so I could, perhaps, explain why her parents—who were generally rather progressive and open-minded—wouldn’t agree. I’d spent several summers in Paris and had traveled through France many times.

“Well, her parents had been correct to disallow it. I was appalled when I read the proposed itinerary. The hotels were located in dodgy parts of the city; the schedule and tours were illogical. The porter who was meant to look after them and their belongings had no references or experience. Someone’s brother-in-law would collect them in a wagon in La Havre and deposit them at a coaching inn outside Paris. It would have been a debacle. When I began to explain all the reasons why, Jane begged me to suggest how I might restyle the holiday in such a way that her parents would allow it.

“At first, I said no. I was so incredibly indebted to my aunt and uncle I could not undermine their attempts to keep Jane at home. But the girl was relentless, and finally I drew up a brief Paris itinerary—how I would see the city if I was a young woman in France for the first time, a journey I had actually taken when I was about her age. I’d kept my journals and old letters and used them as references. With little effort, I outlined hotels where she might safely lodge, museums and cathedrals that they might see if they were in the company of a knowledgeable, trusted porter, and the modes of transport they might hire. It was meant only to be an aspirational, ‘in theory’ sort of plan.

“But when I showed it to Jane, she whisked it away—first to the elderly aunt and then to her parents, begging them to reconsider the journey. She said they would travel exactly as I had described it. By some very great miracle, Uncle Jeffrey said . . . ‘Probably.’

“And that was the very first holiday ever commissioned,” she finished. She took a deep breath of cold sea air.

“So you sorted it all and squired the girl around Paris?” Jason asked.

Isobel shook her head violently. “Oh no. I’d vowed not to leave England again, and I meant it. You—well, the promise of your building—has been my only motivation to leave England in seven years.

“I spent weeks researching,” she explained, “writing letters, making reservations, calling around London to old friends from the Continent. I planned every mile of the holiday from the moment the family carriage dropped them in Portsmouth until it collected them at the same spot a month later. I talked an old friend into traveling with them. We styled her as a ‘travel porter’—a sort of guide and chaperone, which is an amenity all of my holidays include to this day. They followed my itinerary, employed the travel porter’s savviness and ability to improvise, and used the old aunt’s money. I remained in London. In fact, I think I passed the entire month in my bedroom, pacing back and forth, praying for their safe return.”

Jason was transfixed. “And did they?”

Isobel smiled at the horizon. “They did, thank God. And they had the time of their lives. Jane could speak of nothing else. For weeks. Soon her sisters and friends wanted their own Paris holidays. After that, they wanted to see Rome. Hamburg. My life as a travel agent was born. Eventually, demand grew beyond what I could sustain. I was working from a tiny desk in my bedroom at the Starlings’. My uncle connected me with the Hookes and their Everland Travel shop—this was when Mr. and Mrs. Hooke were still alive. I was hired on and given this lovely purpose in life. And a way to support myself. By then, I was ready. Mostly healed and eager to be on my own. Since then, I’ve launched old women, young women, friends, sisters, generations of females, on adventures throughout Europe.”

“Remarkable,” he whispered, and he meant it. “But you’ve no wish to travel yourself?” He flicked the coin into the air and caught it.

Isobel was silent for a moment, staring at the damp leather of her gloves. Finally, she shook her head. It was hardly a proclamation, but she appeared very earnest. She looked as if she wanted very much for it to be true. She looked as if she needed it to be true.

She said, “I’ve traveled. Now I want only to stay back. To be safe. To . . .” she shook her head, “. . . keep out of trouble.”

“Does this mission qualify as trouble in your view, Miss Tinker?” he asked, his voice just above the sound of the waves.

She laughed without humor. “Of course it is trouble. Pirates. Smugglers. Dashing foreign agents.”

“But we are doing good work, you and I. Noble and honorable work. Someone has to sort out this situation before lives are lost or—”

“Yes, yes,” she cut in, “before England is at war with Iceland.” She cocked her head and gave him a look. “Highly unlikely, don’t you think?”

He opened his mouth to challenge her, but she forged ahead. “Look, it may be good work, but it’s hardly ‘honorable’ for an unmarried woman to travel alone with a—with you.”

She looked away. Jason longed to catch her chin and turn her face back.

“You would not have asked,” she swallowed, “a respectable lady to drop everything and serve as your translator on this journey.”

“Not translator,” he said softly. “Attaché. And I don’t see it as dishonorable. Not in the slightest.”

“Come now. Sailing away with you would ruin my reputation, if I had a reputation to ruin.” She looked up at him. “But I don’t, do I? And we both know it.”

“I’ve given no thought to your reputation, Miss Tinker,” he said. The words were out before he’d examined them for the truth.

Had he thought of it?

“My parents were never married,” she stated. “I spent my youth mostly unsupervised, flouncing around Europe with other unsupervised girls and truly laddish boys. The result of this was exactly what one might expect, and I survived only by the skin of my teeth. And because of my uncle and aunt.

“Which,” she finished, “brings me back to the reason I asked about Sir Jeffrey. Their compassion may well have saved my life, and I promised myself to repay their kindness by being the most well-behaved, respectable niece in Britain. To be a source of pride and goodwill and no disgrace.”

“Your uncle is so proud,” Jason said. “It’s very clear.”

“My uncle would not consider sailing to Iceland in your company to tangle with pirates to be a source of pride, Your Grace. And neither do I.”

“Ah . . .” he said.

“I’ll not lie about it to them, of course,” she said. “Obviously they will learn of the new building and my relocation to Hammersmith. But I would rather . . . mention it in hindsight. Months from now. If and when we all return unscathed.”

Now she turned her back to the ocean and flopped against the railing. She looked to him. “My point is, I absolutely must return from all of this business entirely unscathed.”

She paused. Jason realized it was his turn to speak. “Don’t give it a second thought,” he said, flicking his coin.

She laughed.

“No, really,” he went on. “I’ve convened the very best in hired muscle, and I, myself, am very handy in a fight. You needn’t worr—”

“I do not mean physically imperiled, Northumberland. I can take care of myself when it comes to pirates.”

“So you mean . . .”

“I mean,” she said, “I’ve a job and a reputation and a surrogate family. They all depend on how I conduct myself. And with whom. In Mayfair, my conduct was easy to maintain. On a brig, cutting across the North Sea with you, the challenge is greater. My aunt and uncle will be well aware of this. Any person who understands the notion of ‘unchaperoned travel’ will be aware of this. That is what I mean by unscathed.”

“Do you feel . . . unsafe, Miss Tinker?” Jason asked, tossing the coin. It was a stupid question, but he meant to buy himself time. Of course he’d not thought of this.

“It makes no difference whether I feel safe, as you well know,” she said. “What care have people for my safety when they can speculate about my purity instead. My clients value my respectability. My character and choices must be above reproach. My aunt and uncle want me safe, of course, but they also want a life for me with no closed doors. I want this life.”

Jason was nodding his head. “I understand how maidenly virtue works. I simply hadn’t focused on it.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. No one expects a bachelor duke to be virtuous.”

“Well, I don’t expect you to be virtuous.” The truth, he realized.

She laughed. “No, you wouldn’t expect that either.”

No, no, no, he thought. “What I mean is—”

“You don’t have to explain. You would never have approached my cousin Jane for this mission, even though Jane is intrepid and eager for adventure. And why? Because she is the daughter of an MP and the granddaughter of an earl. She’s unmarried and she lives at home with her parents. This ‘mission’ would be unheard of for her, as well it should be.

“But me?” she went on. “A girl in a shop? With ‘a file’ in the Foreign Office and no known father? You didn’t hesitate; in fact, you hounded me—”

“I didn’t hound—”

“You lured me to Hammersmith under false pretenses and then bribed me with property.”

“Also there was no lure—”

“Make no mistake,” she cut in again. “I don’t say this to accuse you. I know which way the wind blows for girls like me. This is merely a reminder. There are many ways to be ‘scathed.’ And just because I am an actress’s daughter who works for a living, I shouldn’t be—”

“Stop,” exclaimed Jason.

“. . . shouldn’t be—"

He pulled off his hat and pressed it against her face, obscuring her from the forehead to chin.

“Pause,” he said. “Please.”

Isobel, her face now covered by his hat, raised a gloved hand and pressed the hat halfway down with two gloved fingers. Her blue eyes peeked out over the brim.

“A small benefit of being duke is the privilege of finishing a sentence,” he said. “On rare occasion. Or so I’ve been told.”

He pulled the hat away and she interjected with, “What I meant to say—”

He extended the hat again, covering her lips. Again, only her eyes were revealed. Unless he was mistaken, they twinkled with amusement.

“Miss Tinker,” he began. “I do not see you as the daughter of an actress or a girl in a shop. I see you as a resource. From the beginning, your noted qualities were independence, intelligence, and a sort of . . . oh, let’s just call it ‘lack of fuss.’ ”

If he also saw pretty, exciting, and incendiary, he elected not to mention these. Yet.

He continued. “Call me selfish, but your reputation or impressionable sensibilities, whatever they may be, did not figure in. If Cousin Jane Starling had a history in Iceland, spoke the language, and had knowledge of the miscreants who now hold my cousin hostage, I would have recruited her instead—and it would not have mattered about her father or grandfather. Any of my superiors will readily attest that I’ve never had patience for what is ‘appropriate.’ It is one of the many qualities that made me an effective spy and will, no doubt, make me a terrible duke.

“As for your respectability, I offered to provide a companion or maid—I urged you to include your girl, Samantha Smee, for this journey. You refused. Fine, I don’t care, one fewer person with whom to bother. But please don’t accuse me of targeting you because you somehow view yourself as . . . as an easy mark. If you must know, all women are easy marks for me, and I don’t distinguish. I would never split hairs over how pure they may or may not be. But also, I’m no predator. Make no mistake. Women come to me.”

Now she laughed, as he’d hoped she would.

He shot her a grin and shoved his hat back on his head. “Release yourself,” he finished, “from worry about being ‘scathed’—not by our proximity or this mission. If anything inappropriate happens, it will be by your hand.”

He leaned his hip against the rail. “But thank you for reviewing the reasons you are to be held suspect in this area. One can only hope there is more dubious behavior to discover. I’m beginning to feel it is my virtue we should be worried about. Not yours.”

She was shaking her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

He was a little ridiculous, but Jason wouldn’t be accused of preying on her or her alleged murky reputation. What care had he for anyone’s reputation? None.

“No one bothers with the virtue of a handsome bachelor duke,” she informed him. “You’re expected to be indiscreet—which is why I raised the topic in the first place.”

“Handsome, am I?” he asked. “Seems to be the second time you’ve mentioned this. Perhaps the seduction has already begun. Compliments are a known enticement. I can feel myself softening to you already.”

She let out a frustrated gasp. “If I intended to entice you, Your Grace, the last thing you would feel was soft.”

Jason laughed, a loud, delighted bark into the wind. Isobel smiled too. He saw her moment of triumph before her face tightened with indignation.

“But we’ve already kissed,” she said. She exhaled in defeat. “You kissed me.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Did I?”

“You know this.” Her pale cheeks were turning red.

“Yes, I suppose I did. But it was done in service to this delicate reputation of yours. To evade the night watchman. If I’d been recruiting your cousin Jane, I would have kissed her too.”

Isobel seemed to think about this, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. Perhaps she didn’t fancy him kissing her cousin Jane Starling.

Not that it mattered. Jason saw only her. In his mind’s eye. In his memory. In his dreams. Now. He hadn’t lied when he said he wasn’t a predator. But that did not mean he did not want.

He watched Isobel shake her head in the manner of someone dislodging a bad thought. The motion loosened her cloak, and the heavy wool fell open. Her neck and collarbone were bare. She tapped two gloved fingers at the base of her throat.

Jason tried not to look, failed miserably, and watched her fingertips. What did she wear beneath the cloak? How much weight had she lost to seasickness?

He felt sweat on the back of his neck. The late-summer air was just above freezing and it was colder still in the wind, and he was sweating. Jason didn’t sweat because of women—not on the deck of a freezing brig or anywhere else for that matter.

He was just about to tell her again not to worry, but a wave rocked the brig, tipping the vessel nearly forty-five degrees. Rigging clanged and swung, wood creaked. With no warning, Jason and Isobel were pitched sideways. He lashed out his right arm to catch the railing just as Isobel lost her footing. He caught her at the waist with his left hand and dragged her against him.

“Careful,” he shouted over the sound of crashing waves. “I have you. Hold on.”

She froze against him for a long, sideways moment. The brig rode the swell of a wave. Jason held to the railing with one hand and to Isobel with the other. At the highest point, the angle of the deck was nearly put to rights. The ship seemed to hover in the mist. Then it dropped, slamming downward with bone-cracking force.

Isobel let out a little moan, breathing against his chest. Jason cinched his arm around her and she burrowed deeper, wrapping her arms around him and nosing inside the open flap of his coat.

“I have you,” he repeated into her hair, straining to hold on to the rail.

She made a nodding motion against his chest and mumbled something indistinguishable.

“What?” he shouted.

She plied her head off of his chest and peeked up. “My cabin,” she said, her voice cracking. “I need my cabin.”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I’ll take you. Will you allow me?”

She nodded again and ducked her head against him, pressing so tightly he almost lost his footing. He shifted, finding a more secure hold, and began the careful, unsteady journey from quarter deck to forecastle hatch.

Isobel tripped along with him, shifting a little with every step, making their progress easier. She fitted her tiny body more securely to the hollows and dips of his. With every step, she burrowed closer.

It occurred to him that dragging her across the slippery deck of a bobbing ship felt like the most correct, natural thing in the world. A small, bright spark flashed in his chest, the flick of flint against stone. A beckoning. He put one boot in front of the other, following the spark.