This elicited a satisfying crimson blush from Isobel.
Behind her, Declan Shaw closed his eyes and looked away, biting back a smile.
Jason cleared his throat. “To you, this sounds like ‘not planning.’ To me, the plan is, be nimble. Be efficient. We’ll not be locked into some overstudied, overprovisioned choreography. Not before we’ve even clapped eyes on the place.”
Isobel took up a fresh piece of parchment and made more indecipherable notations. Speaking to the sheet, she said, “Nimble it may be, but a ‘gradual amble’ takes time. By very definition, it’s slow and extended and, honestly, wasteful. Returning to England may be something you dread and wish to postpone, but for me it’s a priority. This is a sentiment I can only guess issharedby your cousin.”
“Fine,” he said, “here’s the plan. Hardly my style—I prefer to make friends rather than enemies—but myplanwill be to locate one of the pirates, isolate him—‘abduct him,’ if you will—and interrogate him. Assuming I can get reliable information from this method, we’ll know more within hours.”
“And just where do you plan to locate a pirate?” she asked.
“The pub.”
Isobel harrumphed. “How simple you make it seem.”
“I’ve never been to a port in the world that does not boast at least one establishment where men congregateto drink and gamble. Furthermore, never once has such a place been devoid of pirates. Trust me.”
“Alright,” she said cautiously, “if you manage to turn up a stray pirate, I will pay a call to my old friends. The Vagns.”
“Go on,” Jason said, taking up a piece of paper and pen. Now they were making progress. Old friends were far more useful than captured pirates.
“They are a family I knew during my time in Iceland,” she said unsteadily, “who have a warehouse in the small dockyard at Stokkseyri. Assuming their warm regard for me has endured, this should give us somewhere to begin. I’ll ask them about the news since I’ve gone, especially anything about missing Englishmen. At least one of the brothers should be in the warehouse office. A visit from me will be odd and unexpected, but I will have your story about the brigantine repairs and we’ll invent some addendum about why I happen to be on it.”
“So now you will have an alias,” Jason said.
Isobel looked at him like he suggested they all leap off the deck and fly to Iceland.
“Of course I will have a story. A single woman, traveling alone, cannot turn up with no justification. I can hardly say you bribed me with a building to translate your pirate attack.”
Jason glanced at Shaw, who was slowly shaking his head.
She went on. “As an English lord—in fact, simply because you are a man—you may step off a boat anywhere in the world with no excuses or explanation. You don’t even have to be cordial.”
“I am always cordial.”
“A single woman cannot turn up on foreign shores or even on the doorstep of an old friend without a litany ofreasons why her presence is proper and approved and sanctioned and allowed. Youknowthis, Your Grace; you would be a terrible spy if you did not.”
He opened his mouth to reply but she cut him off. “Perhaps what is at issue here is not that aladyrequires a backstory, but whetherIam a lady.”
“Stop,” he said, sitting up. “Call me a terrible spy if you like, but please do not make assumptions on whether I view you as...ladylike. Any oversight about our fabricated biographies can be chalked up to my personal brand of spy craft or to sheer laziness. But it’s nothing more than that, I assure you. Contrary to what you think, I don’t pass my days speculating about whether you—or anyone—isa lady.”
She was silenced by this and shifted in her seat. She glanced at her notes.
“Look, Isobel, of course you must have a backstory,” Jason said, softening. “What would you like?”
“Well,” she began, calm again, “if you pose as a writer, I can be your translator—let us keep close to the truth—and perhaps also I am painting illustrations to match your text? I am never without my watercolors, and I was known to paint even seven years ago. Beyond that, I should be cast as your, oh... niece?”
Jason made a choking sound. “Surely you are too old to be my niece.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Or perhaps you are too young to be my uncle. In any event, I must be a relative.”
Behind them, Declan Shaw asked, “May I be allowed to leav—”
“Yes,” barked Jason in the same moment Isobel said, “No.”
“I’ve got it,” said Jason. “I’ll pose as your bodyguard. Shaw here has had a lovely run with this gambit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
