The baron and baroness were among the first wave of former clients—two dozen in all—who had transferred their patronage to her new shop, Tinker’s Travel. Now a second wave had begun, families who had originally remained with Everland Travel but experienced terrible service or abject confusion since Isobel’s departure.
“I always knew you were the brains of the operation,” the baron had said. “I’d wager Drummond Hooke cannot find the island of Malta on a map.”
Isobel had thanked the baron for entrusting his wife’s journey to Tinker’s Travel and sealed the deal by introducing her own watercolor renderings of the island. She said nothing about the shop on Lumley Street except that it might take some months for Mr. Hooke to set things to rights.
The truth was, Isobel had no idea how DrummondHooke would carry on without her. She’d had no time to travel to Shropshire to inform him of her resignation in person and had written a letter instead.
“Just to be perfectly clear,” she had written, “it was your proposal that drove me to this, Mr. Hooke. When my job became contingent on marriage to you, I was left with no other choice. Please consider this letter to be notice of my immediate resignation.”
Had it been unfair to give him so little notice? To not walk him through how he might carry on without her? Perhaps. His parents had been lovely to her; was there some debt she could pay to them through their terrible son?
But she’d endeavored to explain the business to him years ago, and he’d shown no interest. It had been like teaching a squirrel to count. Since then, he’d been a constant source of condescension and a fledgling letch.
In response to her letter, Hooke had scrawled out an angry note that seethed with legal doom and slander. She had expected this, but the language and threats had unnerved her. She had new locks installed on the doors and, through an old Lost Boys connection, hired a man from London to serve as her “groundskeeper.” This man tended her new building and garden with casual lack of interest but kept a keen eye out for Drummond Hooke and would render the man quietly ineffective if he dared turn up to cause a stir.
Ultimately, Hooke hadn’t shown his face in Hammersmith. And no subsequent letter followed. Old neighbors on Lumley Street told Isobel that Hooke had reported to his shop with a scrum of office-y looking gentlemen in tow. They had clattered around the shop at odd hours, but there had been very little client traffic.Now Hooke had not been seen for days and an ever-decreasing number of office clerks wafted in and out.
Isobel had gradually allowed worry over Drummond Hooke to ebb away. Partly because she was so very busy those first weeks, and partly because she thought she was about to become... well, a duchess. And what threat could Drummond Hooke be when this happened?
When.
If.
Only in her dreams.
What a fool she’d been.
The duke, in fact, had not come.
Not for the first week, or the second, or the third.
Now she’d been back in England for a month. Every day, another puff of hope rose from her chest, stripping off a layer of her heart.
The misery was worse than the seasickness. It was worse than anxiety over the new shop or the fear of Hooke’s retribution. It was far worse than anything she’d ever felt for Peter Boyd.
Her only consolation was that she had been correct about the imposed silence. They’d absolutely done the right thing by keeping their... their “betrothal” (had it been an actual betrothal, all things considered?) a secret.
He’d needed the unencumbered time to do whatever a reluctant new duke did to assume the title. His absence meant, in hindsight, that the gaps in their station were too great to allow for what had seemed possible in Iceland.
It was cold, bitter comfort to acknowledge it, and a hundred times she wished she’d put herself and her heart first when his family met the brigantine on the docks.
What if she’d lingered? What if she’d attached herself to the duke’s side and forced him to introduce her? What if she’d walked up, bold as brass, and introduced herself?
Instead, she’d touched Jason’s arm, given him a wink, and slipped away, allowing him to greet his family and step into his new life without the surprise introduction of a heretofore unknown woman from the ship. At the time, she’d been unchaperoned, pale and wan from seasickness, and unable to properly wash her hair for a fortnight. It hadn’t been the time to meet his family, nor had it been what they’d agreed. And so she’d gone, and he’d been swallowed up by his family, and checking in with the Foreign Office, and...
And his new life as the Duke of Northumberland.
They hadn’t even said a proper good-bye. She’d been so very ill on the return voyage, far worse than when they’d embarked. And the ship was crawling with the recovered merchants, including Jason’s very demanding cousin.
The Englishmen had shared a collective fascination with “the girl traded to the pirates.” Jason minimized the ordeal by describing her as a colleague whom he’d easily recovered within moments of their cart rolling away.
It was always going to be a bizarre story, but Jason assured Isobel that the injuries and trauma of the merchants would overshadow their memory of her in ropes being thrust into the possession of the pirates. Isobel did her part by staying out of sight, and, in particular, she was careful never to be seen in the company of the duke.
Jason looked in on her often, but she always sent him away. If they were ultimately meant to be together, thelast thing she needed was his cousin reporting to relatives that they’d fraternized on the ship.
Not that any of that mattered now, as clearly they werenotmeant to be together.
The worst part was, she missed him. Terribly, achingly, unrelentingly.
