When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 13

  Suddenly, her eyes were wet with tears. Isobel sniffed, blinking them away, praying the duke would not see. She fidgeted, fingering the braids in her hair. She’d endeavored to wash and braid it before it was fully dry, and now the plaits stuck to her head like a cap. When she’d caught her reflection in the small mirror in her cabin, she’d barely recognized herself. Gaunt face, dull hair, grayish pallor. Had she really presumed the duke would . . . would . . . desire her? First seasickness and now crying?

  “Is the air not . . . helping tonight, Miss Tinker?” he asked gently.

  “I’m alright,” she said, clearing her throat, swiping a hand beneath her eyes.

  “I’m so very sorry that you’re ill. I wish I’d comprehended how uncomfortable you would be. No matter what you say, I could have made some precautions.”

  “There is no precaution,” she said, “save dry land. There’s never been anything for it. Have you never suffered from seasickness?”

  He shook his head. “I cannot say that I have.”

  “Oh, well, you wouldn’t understand. But what about panic from a confined, airless place?”

  “No. Not that I recall.”

  “Are you bothered by the cold?”

  “No.”

  “What about heat?”

  “No.”

  “Do you suffer from allergic reactions? To nuts, perhaps? Or goose-down bedding?”

  “No.”

  “Does saltwater sting your eyes? Do you suffer night terrors in your sleep? Are you uneasy at great heights?”

  “No, no, and I actually enjoy great heights.”

  “Right. You are invincible obviously.”

  He did not argue, and she laughed. “Is that possible, Your Grace?”

  “Well. I have a strong aversion to becoming duke. Does this count? You have so kindly pointed this out.”

  “Oh right—that. And what is the source of this aversion, do you think?”

  He looked out at the horizon and frowned. “I don’t want to talk about the bloody dukedom.”

  Isobel found herself disappointed by this answer. She’d wanted to know. She was also a little surprised. In her experience, men of rank needed to be reminded of their greatness at regular intervals, even if only by their own boasting. Northumberland wanted to ignore the dukedom rather than crow about it.

  “Do you not enjoy Middlesex?” she pressed.

  He shrugged. “Middlesex is adequate. For a time.”

  “For how long do you find Middlesex ‘adequate,’ I wonder.”

  “Twelve hours?” he speculated. “Eighteen?”

  “That long?”

  “It’s not the location of Middlesex, it’s—” He shook his head and looked away.

  Isobel was frustrated. “It’s—?” she prompted.

  He shook his head again.

  A polite woman would not press, she thought. Moreover, a woman who had no real interest or attachment to this man would not press.

  A self-preserving woman would not press.

  “It’s your family, then?” she pressed.

  Now he gave his head a violent shake. “Not that,” he insisted darkly. “Never that. I love my family. My mother and three sisters are the finest a man could hope for. I do not deserve them. And the tenants are decent, hardworking people. They—” He dug in his pocket for a coin. Instead of flipping it, he held it out, studying it from a distance. Speaking to the coin, he said bitterly, “They also deserve better than the likes of me.”

  “I don’t understand,” she proclaimed. She’d asked too much to feign polite disinterest now.

  “That makes two of us, Miss Tinker,” he said. He palmed the coin and leaned against the railing. “I don’t understand why but I dread it. And I despise myself for it. But there is no dark secret here. No hidden pain. No great sin. I am simply suffocated by the sedentary life of a country nobleman. Walking around in the footsteps of my father and brothers causes my skin to crawl and my heart to race. I feel caged behind the desk in the duke’s library. I lapse into a numb sort of trance when I ride the property. I am bored by the ledgers, apathetic about the farmland, and fall asleep when subjected to the neighbors. There are too many servants, too many portraits of dead relatives, too much sitting about, and too many doors that lead to empty rooms.”

  He turned back to the water. “If you believe these reactions to be spoiled and indulgent and petulant you would be precisely, exactly correct. My pitiful attitude is almost worse than the numbness and boredom and suffocation. Almost.”

  “Oh,” said Isobel, “I see.” Although she was not certain she did see. His pain and bitterness were real; he was clearly tortured by his future, but—

  He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, a man facing a terrible reckoning. “Perhaps it’s the thought of remaining there forever,” he said. “And ever.”

  “You needn’t remain at Syon Hall if it doesn’t suit you,” she offered. “The city is awash with noblemen who prefer their London residences.”

  The duke shook his head. “My father traveled to London for parliamentary business—no farther. My brothers traveled even less. The estate, when run properly, is demanding. The dukes of Northumberland have prided themselves on being present for the land and the tenants. It is the responsible way to manage the great bounty into which we were born. A good and worthy duke knows every family in his purview and every mile of his land. Doubtless, my father knew every bloody sheep. There is also a great foundry on the property. The mechanics of this and the safety must be monitored constantly. The whole lot is like a watched cauldron that must be kept forever at a low simmer. Never to boil over, never to go cold. Are you aware of the patience and care required to maintain a constant, relentless simmer, Miss Tinker?”

  “No,” she said, her traitorous heart bending toward him.

  “It is as unending as it is tedious. When I resign myself to it, likely I will never leave Middlesex again.”

  A thought occurred to Isobel. Perhaps she’d seen this before, and wouldn’t that be ironic. Was she being taken in by a second man who preferred skittering around the world to settling down? Before she could stop herself, she said, “You’re afraid to grow up.”

  “On the contrary,” he said flatly, “the work I’ve done for the Foreign Office has hardly been child’s play. Representing the Crown in foreign courts, keeping and trading national secrets, saving British lives—it was not the work of a boy. And I was good at it. In contrast, I’ll be rubbish at calculating the price of wool or the date of the last frost. And I’ll die if I’m forced to sit behind a desk.”

  “You will not die,” she said, a reflex, and she could tell by his bitter expression that it was the wrong thing to say. She scrambled to add, “You will have a family—a duchess and children to sustain you and give you purpose.”

  Another bitter look. Isobel puzzled over this. She could understand not wanting a provincial life of a country squire, but Northumberland did not seem like a loner or even a rakehell. It was not a stretch to envision him with a wife and children. She looked closer, watching his expression—and then it occurred to her.

  “They’ve a wife picked out for you already,” she guessed. She felt a sharp jab, like a knife digging into her side. “Your mother and sisters have already chosen someone.”

  It doesn’t matter, she told herself. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, and you knew this. You’ve known this all along.

  He shook his head. “A wife is a priority to my mother, but she knows I do not respond well to being ‘managed.’ ”

  Isobel was swamped with relief. There was no reason for it; she had no right to care. Even so. Relief. She took hold of the railing to steady herself.

  “I didn’t mean to distress you,” she said. “It’s none of my business and clearly you take your responsibility very seriously. Forgive me for prying.”

  “I am not distressed by you,” he said.

  She had distressed him, and she regretted how far she’d pushed. She scrambl
ed to turn the conversation around. “Will you . . . tell me something you relish about being a spy?” she asked.

  He looked up. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me . . . about your favorite mission.”

  “Favorite?”

  “Why not? I’ve made you say what you don’t wish. Regale me with a tale of glory.”

  “I’ve never thought of my work in these terms. My favorite jam, however, is raspberry. Undoubtedly.”

  “So very clever,” she tsked. “You know what I mean. I’d be shocked if you did not, in fact, have a favorite.”

  “Favorite . . .” he mused, looking at the sky. She followed his gaze, watching bright stars wink to life in a cloudless sky. He flipped his coin in the air and caught it. “Do you mean most successful? Most impactful? Most fun?”

  “How about the one that is the most opposite of what your life will be like as a duke.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well, that would probably be the time I escaped from a Spanish dungeon.”

  “No,” she marveled.

  “Yes.” He flipped the coin and caught it.

  “And how did you manage this?”

  “Timing, I suppose. Observation. Some convincing French, an academic pursuit that I resented until the moment the words came out of my mouth.”

  “That is the most insufficient answer I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Unacceptable and you know it. After you’ve spent weeks pumping me for every detail of my entire life.”

  “I’m not sure ‘pumping you’ is an accurate description of what I’ve done, although . . .” He raised an eyebrow.

  Isobel swallowed. “Tell me what happened. I am a sick woman.”

  “If I tell you, can we talk about this mission?”

  “Yes. But I was always going to tell you what I can.”

  “Doling it out when we need it, are you? I can respect that.”

  “Has anyone ever suggested that you are too—”

  “Handsome? Cunning? Strong?”

  “I was going to say ‘cavalier.’ ” There was laughter in her voice. It was becoming more and more difficult to hide it.

  “If that is what you think, perhaps a different story would better represent how very rigid and exacting I am.”

  “No, no—Spanish dungeon,” she insisted. “Out with it.”

  “Alright, escape from the dungeon. So, this would be Spain. Again.”

  He glanced at her and she nodded.

  “It was 1811,” he added. “You would have been a child.”

  “I would have been one and twenty,” she corrected. Before she could stop herself, she asked, “And how old were you?”

  “Well, older than one and twenty obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Probably—seven and twenty? I was already working for the Foreign Office by this time. I’d been reassigned to Spain to spy on a wealthy merchant who was believed to be secretly provisioning French troops with food and weapons.

  “In my role as foreign agent, my duty was to the mission. I wasn’t in the Peninsula to be a solider. But I’d followed a lead to Ciudad Rodrigo and was quartering with British troops because one of the officers was a friend from school. When a skirmish broke out—the conflict that would come to be known as the Battle of Albuera—I was . . . at the right place at the right time.”

  “Meaning you joined the fray?”

  “Ah, that is one way to put it. The end result was, I was ultimately captured as a prisoner of war and locked in a seventeenth-century dungeon with about fifty other British troops.”

  “No,” she whispered, captivated. She turned to face him, leaning an elbow on the railing.

  He nodded. “Putrid, crumbling Spanish dungeons are a rung above dying on the battlefield, but only barely. The torch smoke alone nearly killed us. There was no water or food. Even the vermin were sick, and the catacombs were crawling with rats. None of us would survive captivity if we did not escape.”

  “And you . . .” she guessed, “trained the rats to steal the keys to your cell?”

  “No. I lay in wait for the lone, sleepy guard to look in on us in the middle of the night. Then I knocked him unconscious with a rock.”

  “Of course you did. And then you stole the keys?”

  He shook his head. “No, the man was not in possession of the keys. There was only one set, and these remained well above dungeon level. So we undressed the guard through the bars of the cell. I then put on his uniform, and we dragged him to the farthest corner.”

  “But he was still on the outside of your cell?”

  “Everything was done through the cell bars. I told each prisoner to remove a nonregimental article of clothing—something dirty and forgettable, like a sock—and we arranged them over him in a heap. When we had obscured his body and I was wearing his uniform, we lay in wait.

  “Eventually they sent a second guard to determine what had become of the first. I was ready, and before his eyes adjusted to the gloom, I pretended to be the first guard, now captured by the prisoners. I shouted for help, claiming I’d been overpowered and locked in the cell with the British soldiers. I ranted in hysterical French; I shrank away from the raucous mob of prisoners in the cell, all of whom clambered to tear me limb from limb. In panicked diatribe, I ordered the second guard to fetch the keys and release me at once.”

  “But how could this work?” she laughed. “Did the second guard not recognize you? Did it not occur to him that locked prisoners have no way to pull a guard inside their cell?”

  He shook his head. “The guard staff were a hastily convened mix of Italians and Frenchmen. I’d been careful to obscure my face and pretended to fight off fellow prisoners as I ranted. And all those years of detested French lessons served me remarkably well. It’s amazing what you can pull off with a faux prison riot percolating behind you. The second guard didn’t consider the implausibility of it. He allowed the shock and fear to carry him away. He rushed to get the keys and returned with reinforcements, but we were ready. There were more than fifty of us, and the moment they unlocked the door to recover me, we overpowered them.

  “Our motivation to escape was greater than their will to fight us to the death. We dispatched them, but we did it very quietly. This allowed us to creep up, to surround and subdue other guards along the way.

  “When, finally, we reached the outside, I led the men to a cache of provisions that I’d discovered in pursuit of the merchant traitor. We ate and drank and stole as much as we could, and then we set fire to the rest.”

  “Oh lovely,” she said, smiling at him. “An escape and sabotage. All in one night.”

  “It was a rather efficient use of our time, considering we started the evening as prisoners. They were brave lads.” He paused for a moment, smiling a small, sad smile. “They carried out my plan to the letter. The ruse was one half prison uprising, the other half stealth. And we lived to tell the tale. There’s a man on this mission, Declan Shaw, who was with me that night. Intuitive fighter, deuced good friend.”

  He shook his head, turning again to the sea. The fading light had transformed the ocean from blue-gray to black.

  Isobel studied his profile. Before tonight, he’d not indulged in philosophical musings, and he never stared into the distance. Staring and distances were endeavors too still for Jason Beckett, Duke of Northumberland—too still by half.

  And he was usually very direct. Isobel valued directness, but the quiet musing allowed her to consider him in a new light. The pile of shimmers in the pit of her stomach popped and fluttered.

  “I’m not certain I can give farming or forging steel its due,” he said. “I’m not sure I can be serious about anything if there is not some life-or-death stake to it.”

  “You can,” Isobel heard herself say. She should not care about his future. He was one of the richest, most fortified men in England. She should not care.

  He made a dismissive sound.

  “Look at me,” she said, her words out before she’d consider
ed them. “I never thought I would find myself sailing from England, not ever. Now I’m embarking on a journey that makes me ill, returning to a country that harbors the most heartbreaking memories, and facing off with pirates. But here I am, doing it, out of necessity.

  “You can do things that you cannot imagine,” she said. “And if you don’t like it, you can . . . determine a new way to manage it. You will have choices, Your Grace, when you are duke. Management of the farms and the foundry can be hired out. People will work for you if you wish to delegate.”

  He was shaking his head. “This was never the way of my father or brothers. There are expectations. My mother has been through so much—to lose a husband and two sons? I cannot be derelict, or absent, or manage the estate halfway. And I cannot lead prisoner-of-war uprisings in Middlesex. For everything, there is a season, I suppose.” His voice was grim and tired and resigned.

  “Do not reject it before you’ve even begun,” Isobel said lowly, reaching out. She wanted to spread her hand on his chest but she redirected to his arm. A friendly pat. A squeeze. Her fingers held on.

  “Rejecting it is not a choice. And I refuse to complain. I am fortunate.”

  “It’s obvious that you feel so very fortunate indeed.”

  She patted him again. A double pat. Pat pat.

  The arm beneath his coat was as hard as the railing, and it had a lovely little swell where the wool stretched over the muscle.

  She gave it another pat. A very short little rub. Back and forth, a gesture of comfort.

  Once more, back and forth.

  Touching his arm was totally acceptable, she thought. She touched it like she might touch a very good book, as if she’d just read the last page, and gently closed the cover, and now she was . . . patting it. In fact—

  She bit off her glove and returned her hand, rubbing the rough wool of his sleeve.

  A squeeze. Such a good . . .

  Man.

  Not a book, she lectured herself, a man.

  He’s a man. And I don’t care about his tortured view of retirement. And I will stop touching him. And I do not want him to touch me.