When You Wish Upon a Duke Page 6

  Now she did not feel hounded so much as . . . tempted.

  She began shaking her head. In a firm but wistful voice, she said, “I was so very contented just twelve hours ago. I had a pleasant job, doing work at which I excelled, with a snug flat above the shop. And without a single thought of Iceland.” She enunciated the word in the way one might say, purgatory.

  The duke sniggered. “Ah. A sentiment I understand. I had a life I loved, traveling the world, working for the Foreign Office. I’ve served in India. In the palace courts of Europe. Spain during the war.”

  Before she could stop herself, she asked, “You loved the war?”

  He was staring into the birdbath, seemingly lost in thought. He looked up but did not answer.

  “Forgive me,” she said quickly, “I presume too much. I did not mean to inqui—”

  “Well, not the death and devastation of war obviously. But the action? Absolutely. The urgency, yes. The struggle suited me. I cannot abide idleness . . . sitting behind a desk . . . waiting. I haven’t the patience for it. I lack patience in general.”

  “I can see that,” she said. “In the twelve hours since I made your acquaintance, I’ve scaled fences, thrashed about in the bushes, and tramped through alleyways. You’ve occasioned yourself in a position to ‘overhear’ not one but two conversations with my employer. If I was a poetic sort of girl, I would characterize our interactions as ‘breathless.’ ”

  “No fault in breathlessness, Miss Tinker.”

  She felt herself smile. “I am not poetic. Just to be clear.”

  This conversation has run away with itself, she thought.

  I’m very close to earning fifty pounds, she thought.

  She thought and thought, but her brain wanted only to hear more of his story.

  “What happened?” she asked quietly, raptly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “To put an end to this work that you loved?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, and she rushed to add, “Forgive me, I do not mean to—”

  “Well, my father died,” he said flatly. “After that, not five years on, my oldest brother died.”

  He paused, staring up at the stars.

  Isobel felt her eyes grow large. She’d not expected an answer so devastating or personal.

  “Oh y-yes,” she stammered. “The whole country has heard of the tragedies in your family. I was so sorry for the terrible . . . sort of, one-two punch of it all. The grief must have been . . . relentless.”

  “It is not ideal. It’s very . . . sedentary—grief. In other words, not for me. The only mental state for which I have less tolerance than idleness is grief. Much as I tried, I couldn’t loll around Middlesex, stewing in it. I was already a foreign agent when my father died, and I threw myself into my work with even greater fervor. America. The British West Indies. Spain again.

  “And then . . .” he took a deep breath, “. . . my last brother died. And suddenly there were no more Beckett brothers in line before me. I was duke. And all of that grief, and the yawning fields of Middlesex, and a lifetime of idleness, was thrust upon me. I would be a foreign agent no more. I would be none other than a festering, immovable, sheep-counting duke.”

  “Oh,” she said—because she must say something. His easy manner had slipped; there was an edge to his voice. He looked for a moment as if he might wrest the birdbath from its platform and heave it into the brush. “I’m . . . I’m so very sorry, Your Grace.”

  He let out a bitter laugh. “That is the very great irony, isn’t it? Who can be sorry for a duke? It is a rare and precious privilege, is it not? The wealth, the power, the . . .”

  “Sheep?” she provided.

  Another laugh, less bitter but very sad. “Yes, the great many sheep. Life is not a contest obviously, Miss Tinker, but given your circumstance with odious Mr. Hooke versus my circumstances as the Duke of Northumberland, you have it far worse. Your lot is more hopeless—everyone would agree.”

  “Thank you?” She fought another smile. It couldn’t be helped.

  “Your lot is so bad,” he continued, “I’m trading on your desperation to extract this Iceland information from your unwilling lips.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” Why was she smiling? Stop smiling, Isobel. Have you learned nothing at all?

  “Forgive me,” he said. “It was not my intention to add to your frustration.”

  “Yes, I have been puzzling through exactly what your intention might be.”

  With exaggerated enunciation, he added, “Woe is me, the wealthy duke with the palatial estate and all the . . . the . . .”

  “Sheep,” she provided. “I believe we have identified sheep among your many assets.”

  “Right,” he said on a sad exhale. “I’m sorry. It’s not a joke, I know. None of this resembles a joke.”

  “Well, don’t look to me to trivialize your struggle. In my experience, we are all too quick to dismiss or diminish the pain of others. Whether you are ‘trading on my desperation’ or simply being sympathetic, I do believe that you understand my plight. Life can be rather pleasant. Also, it can be . . . less so. Significantly. For all of us.

  “Given the choice,” she continued, “I’d rather not have my unpleasantness used as leverage against me, but perhaps that is not a choice.”

  “That remains to be seen,” the duke said speculatively. He gave the pouch of coins in his hand a little toss, rattling the money inside. “Will you take the fifty pounds?”

  Chapter Five

  In hindsight, Jason could not say why he’d revealed the details of his grief and his work and his . . . sheep.

  Informants were often more forthcoming if he gave a little of his own self to the proceedings, but that wasn’t what had happened.

  He wasn’t manipulating her; he was talking to her. He’d wanted to tell her. She would not contradict him or smother him. He’d guessed this, and it had been true.

  He was intuitive—it was what made him an excellent spy—but what was the value of intuition if he’d rambled on about himself and learned nothing about Iceland?

  Who was the excellent spy now? Isobel Tinker knew far more about him than he knew about her.

  And she hadn’t even agreed to the bribe.

  He cleared his throat and gave the pouch of money another rattle. “Your clerk told me you mean to buy the travel shop from Hooke. Is this true?”

  “Ha.” She let out a humorless laugh. “That’s unlikely now that I’m meant to marry him or get out. Anyway, fifty pounds would not be enough. But it will allow me the freedom to take some time exploring what I will do next.”

  Jason nodded, watching her. Who are you? he wondered. What of your pain has been dismissed or diminished?

  She caught him staring and said lightly, “Stay away from me, Your Grace.”

  “I’m standing ten feet from you,” he said. “I’m looking at the birdbath.”

  She’d said it like she was warding off a piece of rich chocolate cake. Or a third glass of wine. A warning to herself.

  “No. You’re telling me your life. You’re . . . looking at me.”

  “Have you noticed that you reply ‘no’ to everything I ask, whether you mean it or not?”

  “If you knew my history with men like yourself, you would understand that ‘no’ is always the correct answer.”

  “ ‘Men like myself’?” he asked.

  “Never you mind,” she said. “Let us talk about pirates. A safer topic.”

  She leaned back on her hands and looked up. She studied the night sky as if it might help form the words.

  She was so very pretty, he thought—small and purposeful and luminous.

  Let’s not, he wanted to say. Let us return to the topic of “men like you . . .”

  But of course he mustn’t. He’d come for the pirates. Which was fine.

  He would be keenly interested in anything she had to say, so long as she was talking to him, and looking the way she looked.

 
“Right, so the pirates in Iceland . . .” she began.

  The litany of details that followed—names of specific pirates and their ships, the location of glacial ice caves, Icelandic allies—came out in a long, steady stream.

  Jason had thought he would listen, soak it all in, understand her atmospheric, cultural insights—but no. It was too much to soak. She spouted detailed facts and directions, so he scrambled for his notebook.

  The details came out in low, contemplative tones, the voice of someone giving careful instructions on how to get from here to there. Jason scribbled until the graphite was a nub.

  “They’re not ‘Nordic,’ as you first mentioned,” she was saying. “They hail from all over. France. Portugal. Ireland, even. The leader is actually a Frenchman.”

  She went on. “For whatever reason, they cease their pillaging and plundering elsewhere during summers and retreat to Iceland. The glacier caves conceal their ships and allow them to train and make repairs. They are usually idle in the summers, only raiding foreign vessels to replenish provisions and stave off boredom.”

  She made expressive gestures as she spoke, her tight green gloves slicing and spinning the air in the shape of her story.

  “They are tolerated by the locals, but only because one of the farming families, the Skallagrímurs, harbors them.”

  He repeated the family name phonetically. “Will you spell it?”

  She chuckled and rattled off the spelling. “I believe that’s correct. A niece in the family married one of the pirate leaders. This union afforded an alliance which serves both sides.”

  He asked her to explain what could be mutually beneficial among pirates and Icelandic farmers. Her answer, just as the others, was well considered, full of detail, and made perfect sense. She was like a book he’d plucked at random from a shelf. He could have learned anything or nothing at all; instead, she was a trove of information.

  “The pirates police the coasts to keep the farms’ common laborers from fishing,” Isobel was saying.

  “Prevent them from fishing?” asked Jason. “It’s an island.”

  “Quite so,” she said, “but if the commoners could make their livings as fishermen, they would not be available or willing to work the fields. So the pirates suppress any upstart fishermen. And the farmers keep the Danish Navy off the pirates. It has been my observation that, no matter where you go, the people in charge will invoke any means necessary to remain in charge.”

  “Hmm,” Jason mused. He left his bench and settled beside her. He took more notes.

  He would confirm this—about the pirates and this Skallagrímur family. He would confirm all of it. He’d also have to confirm her identity and history. She was his favorite type of informant, but too much was at stake for her to guess at these details. If she would not tell him how she’d acquired this expertise, he’d poke around until he learned it himself. The uncle who pulled so many strings to get her home, perhaps.

  He looked up. “So, if the job of the pirates is to control local fishing, why capture English merchants and hold them hostage? They are hardly local fishermen.”

  Isobel shrugged. “This, I cannot say. Ransom money? Have they made any demands?”

  “They have actually,” said Jason. “But it’s not a lot. It wouldn’t be enough, to say, retire from pirating and buy a house in the fjords.”

  Isobel chuckled. “Perhaps your cousin and his friends did not offend the pirates, but the pirates’ sponsors, the Skallagrímurs?”

  “Just to be clear, my cousin has simply gone along. He’s not clever enough to succeed as a smuggler. He was duped into joining this ill-advised endeavor. Poor Reggie, this is not the first time.”

  “So it’s not the members of your family you resent, simply the title? Or is it the sheep?”

  “I beg your pardon?” he said, looking up from his notes.

  Isobel looked startled. “Forgive me, of course we weren’t speaking of—”

  “No, I am happy to discuss my family,” he amended. “And my sheep, the dodgy little bastards.”

  “It was intrusive of me to—”

  “I am fond of my family. I’ve three sisters and a mother who are very dear to me. Various aunts and uncles. Cousins, naturally. Reggie is the son of my mother’s brother—so the nonducal side, but we were brought up in close relation with the maternal branch of the family. I spent summers at the seaside in Lincolnshire.

  “Reggie is one of those men who means well but does not . . . er, think things through. My father and two brothers lost patience for him years ago, but I’ve a history of rescuing him from scrapes. A soft spot, you might say.”

  “This is the first time you’ve rescued him from pirate captivity, I assume?” she asked.

  “Indeed. If I wasn’t so fond of him, I’d alert the Royal Navy and let them sort it out. But he is a gentle soul . . . well-meaning . . . I cannot allow him to be the source of an international incident. Not to mention whatever misery he’s enduring at the hands of the pirates. Their correspondence with my uncle is threatening but I don’t think they are cutting off body parts and feeding them to sharks. Yet.”

  “That sounds accurate,” Isobel said, thinking for a moment. “Honestly, the pirates could have simply been bored. They are, after all, pirates. It’s a dying art, and someone must uphold the traditions.”

  Jason snorted and tapped the notebook against his knee. He was just about to ask her about the size and speed of the pirates’ ship when they heard footsteps on the path in front of them.

  Jason went still and held up a hand. “Shhh.”

  Isobel curled her shoulders and pulled up the hood of her cloak.

  Jason listened again. The footsteps grew closer. He leaned behind her on the bench, trying to see through the vegetation. Clouds obscured the moon, draping the path in shadows. He eased lower still. The clouds slid eastward and—

  “It’s the night watchman,” he whispered.

  “Oh God. That will be Matthews.” Her voice was tremulous, barely audible. “I cannot be seen. Matthews is a neighborhood friend. He goes out of his way to be generous and thoughtful. I cannot—He mustn’t see me. My respectability depends on me not being discovered in dark parks with strange men.”

  She shrank deeper into her cloak and slid to the darkest end of the bench.

  The footsteps grew closer. The watchman whistled a tune and then stopped. Jason heard the strike of a match. The smell of burning tobacco filled the air.

  The footsteps and whistling resumed.

  Isobel spoke just below a whisper. “I must hide, or run, or . . . hide. I cannot—”

  “No, no, no,” Jason breathed slowly. “Do not move. Movement will only draw his eye.”

  From outside the alcove, a nervous voice called out, “Who’s there?”

  Jason swore in his head. Isobel made a barely audible sound of distress, a heart-wrenching half whine, half hiss.

  Another curse. Jason whispered to her, “Would you allow me to pretend to kiss you?”

  Isobel Tinker stared at him from deep within her hood.

  “It’s an old trick,” he whispered, “but it can work if you keep your face averted.” He held his breath, waiting for her answer. He hadn’t lied; it was an old trick, reliable too. It also happened to be his most fervent wish at the moment.

  Still, she could say no. She could slap him. She could call for the watchman and claim abduction. He put his odds at fifty-fifty.

  Do it, she mouthed. Hurry. Do it, do it, do it.

  Right, Jason thought. He bit the notebook and pencil in his mouth to free his hand and reached for her.

  In one, cloak-fluttering movement, he scooped up Isobel Tinker and plunked her into his lap. She settled on his thighs in a puff of green skirts and emerald cloak. She weighed almost nothing. She stared over the notebook into his face, her blue eyes huge.

  He removed the notebook from his mouth and whispered, “Sorry.” He settled his hands on her waist.

  “I say, who’s there
?” the night watchman called again.

  Isobel’s eyes bored into his.

  Jason mouthed, We needn’t really—

  She kissed him.

  One moment she was staring at him as if he’d grown horns, the next her mouth was on his.

  It was not the faux effort he’d meant to offer. It was her head tilted just so, her mouth fitting perfectly against his, partly open; it was her tongue swiping once, twice, against his bottom lip. And just like that, he was plunged into a pool of sensation. The smell of her enveloped him, warm and herbal; the feel of her slight body, teetering on his thighs; her soft lips, firm and insistent.

  Jason’s consciousness departed the leafy square and he floated somewhere above them. Music swelled in his head and lights popped behind his eyes.

  There were kisses, he thought vaguely, and then there was this.

  Isobel Tinker, he realized, knew how to kiss. And she kissed exceptionally well. There was no shyness, no coquettishness, no ploy for him to draw her out. She fastened her lips to his and feasted.

  He had the random thought that Drummond Hooke would be completely out of his depth with this woman. Jason himself, kissing her as if his life depended upon it, strove to keep up. It was exhilarating and sensual and all-consuming. It was quite possibly the best kiss of his life, and he’d enjoyed some rather exceptional kisses.

  Only by some miracle did he remember the bloody night watchman. Blinking his eyes, he squinted into the distance. The watchman stood at the mouth of the alcove, lifting a creaking lantern.

  Jason closed her in his arms, scooping her closer. He slid a hand up her spine to cup the back of her head. With the slightest pressure, not breaking the kiss, he tucked her face against his cheek. She allowed it, sliding her knees on either side of him, fitting herself astride. She gripped his biceps as if she might be ripped from his arms.

  His body responded, a reaction that would be impossible to miss, and Jason swore in his head and pulled his face away, sucking in air.

  To the watchman he called, “Give us a minute?” His voice was gruff. He coughed. Isobel tensed, veritably vibrating beneath his touch. He held her tight against him.