“You could say,” she rhapsodized, “that you heard I had a bounty on my head and you captured me in order to gain back your cousin. Or you could say you stumbled upon me as a vagabond, picked up in a foreign port. The pirates would buy any number of stories, considering what they knew of the Lost Boys. It would be no surprise to see me washed up and in your possession. We would play it up. Put me in chains, prod me with a stick, that sort of thing. With the correct props and costumes, the pirates would see what they wanted to see.”
“Absolutelynot,” Jason declared, falling back on what he really wanted to say.
“But why not?” She threw her hands in the air.
“Because,”he said, “I do not relinquish women to known criminals. Because I do not trade human life for... for anything—”
“I’ve said it wouldnot be a real trade.”
“Also because,” he pressed, “I did not recruit you for playacting. I recruited you to translate, serve as our guide, and... and because I... I value you.” It was a weak word—value—for how he felt about her, but that was a conversation for another day.
He glanced at her. She’d sucked in a breath to counter him but now closed her mouth.
He added, “You’re mad if you think I would ever turn you over to pirates.”
He thought she would say something—hewaitedfor her to say something—but she was silent. She blinked up at him, her blue eyes wide with a mix of confusion and disbelief.
“Isobel,” he said, a plea.
She would not answer. Her expression evolved into an impatient sort of,Yes—and?
She crossed her arms over her chest.
Shetappedher tiny, booted foot.
“You told me you wanted to be treated like a lady,” he said. “You wanted to be treated with the same regard I might pay your cousin—who, by the way, I would also nottrade to pirates.”
“Andyou told me,”she countered, “that you’ve infiltrated enemy camps to extract orphans. You told me that you’ve staged jail breaks from Spanish prisons, pretending to be a captured guard. From the start, you’ve insisted that improvisation is your style, that you pull plans together based on the unlikely resources at hand. Which is precisely what I’m endeavoring to do. And yet you refuse? I’m sorry, Your Grace, but I’m beginning to think your wartime tales are a wild exaggeration.”
He laughed. He actually laughed. “If you think you can bait me by wounding my pride, Isobel, you don’t know me at all.”
“Perhaps I know you or perhaps I don’t. But one thing is certain: youdon’t know meif you don’t trust me to manage this.” Her eyes flashed.
Jason stared back, his heart pounding. He did trust her. But he also—
He could not risk her safety.
He could not risk losing her.
“If ever youwantedto know me,” she added, fresh challenge in her voice, “you would allow this. So that I might demonstrate.”
Jason leaned his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “Trading you to pirates is the key to your true self,is it?” he asked. “If I won’t go along, you’ll keep me forever at arm’s length?”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said defensively, and Jason cocked an eyebrow.
“Look,” she went on. “Wewilldo this. We’ll do it because it’s quick and clean and efficient and cheap. And when we’re finished, I’ll return to England in time to book spring holidays in my new shop. And I will celebrate my mother’s birthday. And prevent Drummond Hooke from poaching all of my clients.”
The image of her... behind a desk... planning holidays for rich women... toiling in her old life... took shape in his mind, and Jason felt a wave of something like panic.
“I cannot return to port now,” she proclaimed. She took up her case and began backing away. “Going forward, I must look like your prisoner. I’ll send a note to the Vagns asking them to not discuss my visit today with anyone.”
“You’re not commanding this mission, Isobel,” he said, but the words came out like a test. He sounded nothing like a duke or a spy.
He sounded like a man who could not tell her no.
“I want to go home,” she reminded in a singsongy voice. She was still backing away. “This is a bit of luck, North—a wonderful bit of luck. Do not squander it out of some misplaced sense of caution. Unless this is about your avoidance of the dukedom.”
“It’s not,” he called, and he meant it. It was about her.
