“Well, I haven’t been a duke for long,” he said offhandedly. “Now, about Iceland—”
“Stop.” She raised a small hand. “I’m at a loss to make myself clearer:no onetravels to Iceland. It’s simply not done. If it’s your intention to waste both of our time on a lark, you’ve come on a terrible day. Dealing with my employer is both delicate and taxing. My livelihood depends on accommodating him in a hundred different ways. Mitigating your odd requests is not one of them. I cannot tell you again that there are no holidays to Iceland. Iceland is many glorious things, but it isnota holiday destination.”
“It’s no lark, Miss Tinker,” he said.
“Then what’s the meaning of—?”
“Pirates,” he said plainly. “Nordic pirates. It’s why I came, and it’s why I cannot leave until we speak.”
Her blue eyes widened. “What of Nordic pirates?”
He exhaled deeply and glanced toward the duo at the counter. He looked back at Isobel. “A band of Nordic pirates has taken capture of a contingent of English merchants.”
“Oh,” she said, a hollow sound. “How? Why?”
“We cannot say for sure. The merchants were trying to establish some unofficial arrangement for trade between the east coast of England and Iceland. They set out to speak to civic leaders in Reykjavík about importing goods, but they were taken captive by pirates instead.”
“But the merchants should have sailed to Denmark, not Iceland,” Isobel said. “Denmark controls trade in Iceland.” She reached for a pamphlet entitledTour Majestic Denmark.
“They should have,” Jason acknowledged, “but they did not. The merchants sought to circumvent the Danes and trade directly with Iceland.”
“To escape the Danish tariffs,” she guessed.
“Yes,” Jason said, his heartbeat kicking up. This young woman knew far more about Scandinavia than he’d been led to expect. But perhaps she could be of significant help to him.
“The merchants were, in essence, setting up a smuggling route,” he said. He’d never intended to reveal this much. But he’d also not expected her toknowthis much.
“They would not be the first English smugglers to Iceland,” said Miss Tinker. “England and Iceland are neighbors that have been either fighting or trading—or both—for centuries.”
“Indeed. And our government might allow the merchants to simply languish in captivity—pirates are,after all, a consequence of smuggling—but one of the captured merchants just happens to be a . . . relation of mine.” Another deep breath. “A cousin. His father, my uncle, has appealed to me for help. In doing so, I should not rattle the Minister of Trade in Denmark. In fact, none of the leadership in Iceland should be invoked. It’s a colossal cock-up and has the potential to be a diplomatic nightmare.”
“Oh,” she said again, barely blinking.
Jason continued. “The recovery of my hapless cousin and his townspeople is to be my last assignment before I retire to Syon Hall in Middlesex and assume my duties as duke.”
Jason heard himself say the words, his voice remarkably steady, his body relaxed. He was getting better at concealing the gut-rolling dread.
He forced himself to finish. “My brother’s been dead almost a year. I’ve put off my family responsibilities long enough. My resignation has already been announced, but I should like to restore my cousin before I go. He is not the... shiniest marble in the pouch, but we were close in boyhood and I’m fond of him. And anything I can do to keep England on the up-and-up with Denmark is advantageous. The relationship between our two countries is tremulous at the moment.”
Miss Tinker nodded. “They sided with France in the war.”
“Indeed they did.” Denmark’s alliances were hardly obscure, but he couldn’t name another young woman who could readily spout off the contents of Napoleon’s dance card. She surprised him nearly every time she opened her mouth. He waited to hear what she might say next.
“I . . .” began Miss Tinker, and then she paused andclosed her eyes. She looked so anguished Jason thought it could’ve beenhercousin taken by pirates.
He offered, “Not to heap you with reasons, Miss Tinker, but also there is some urgency on the part of the captured merchants. They hail, primarily, from the coastal town of Grimsby, in Lincolnshire. The lot is made up of unknowing townspeople who were, in a manner, convinced of the endeavor by an ambitious town council that misled and bullied them—my cousin included. The captured merchants, by and large, are innocent of the aspiration of smuggling and likely terrified.”
She opened her eyes, shot him a look of something like desperation, and then stared at the ceiling.
Jason went on. “One man is old and frail; still another has a sick child at home. They were only meant to be gone for a month, and now it’s been nearly three. I must go after them, but Iceland happens to be a gray void in my realm of experience. I’ve been a lot of places, Miss Tinker, but never there. However, I understand thatyou have. And I need your help.”
Now she nodded and glanced at her employer behind the counter. When she spoke, her voice was unsteady. “Look, you appear to be everything you’ve said. I’ll grant you that. And the situation you describe sounds both believable and... pressing. Butwhy me? You claim to have information on my experience in Iceland but you don’t know me—not really. Meanwhile, there are Norse scholars and North Sea adventurers and even Icelandic immigrants in England to whom you could appeal for information. I am... I am nobody. I’m also distracted and reluctant.Why me?”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “That. I needyourhelp in particular for precisely those reasons. You happen to be the very best source of information because you are obscure inidentity and, by all accounts, discreet by nature. You are a young woman who lives a quiet life in Mayfair and wants nothing to do with international diplomacy.”
“Meaning, I won’t tell anyone, and if I did, no one would listen?”
“Yes,” he said. He thought,And very, very clever.
