“Really?”
“Really.”
“Why not?”
“Because I do notbelieve youwhen you say you wish to travel there.” In her head, she thought,Because I was utterly destroyed in Iceland, and the memory of it is too painful to bear.
“Well,” he sighed, shrugging giant shoulders, “it’s where I’m going.”
“Then you’ll have to find some other travel agent, because it is out of my realm of expertise.”
“But the file—”
“Do not mention ‘the file,’ or the Foreign Office, or your identity as an alleged duke again,” she said.
He blinked at her. His handsome face was creased with innocent confusion.
Isobel narrowed her eyes and planted her fingertips on the desktop, leaning toward him. “I’m sorry that I cannot help you. You’ll need to find someone else. As I’ve said, I have a very important meeting. Now...”
A deep breath.
“...I’m afraid I must ask you to—”
She was cut off by the arrival of Mr. Drummond Hooke sailing through the door.
Chapter Two
Jason was confused.
Jason was confused, and irritated, and extremely pressed for time, and no one in the hallowed halls of Everland Travel seemed to care.
Miss Isobel Tinker had gone from dismissing him and dodging him and moved to simply ignoring him.
Sheignoredhim.
Even before he’d become the Duke of Northumberland, Jason “North” Beckett was not accustomed to being ignored. Or dismissed. And certainly not dodged, not by a woman.
“If you’ll excuse me, sir,” she’d said, evading him smoothly when the little bell on her door jingled. “My meeting. It’s happening. Now. I’m afraid we’ll need to postpone your...”
She’d stopped talking, seemingly at a loss about what she might do for him.
At a loss, after he’d clearly said, “Please sell me passage to Iceland,” at least five times. It was almost as if she knew what he really wanted was not a holiday package at all. It was almost as if she knew what he really needed was aguideinside Iceland.
Jason looked again at the man who’d breezed through the door. He stood in the center of the agency’s smalllobby and turned a slow, deliberate circle, assessing the room. He was of medium height, thin, with a patchy beard. Small eyes, like a subterranean creature prone to burrow. A mole? He wore the ostentatious greatcoat and voluminous cravat of someone far older, a country squire on his first trip to London. He carried a gold-tipped walking stick and teetered on high-heeled boots. And he looked at Miss Tinker like a puppeteer looks at his favorite marionette.
Miss Tinker, in turn, greeted the man with the bracing smile one reserved for pushy vicars.
Jason tried to remember if she’d flashed that smile at him. He’d tailed her for three days. She’d demonstrated polite cordiality to neighbors and crisp helpfulness to strangers, but she did not waft about with a freewheeling grin. In the alley, her pervading expressions had ranged from irritation to impatience. There had been no smiling.
The alley had been a turning point. Jason had realized that his file was all wrong; the profile of Isobel Tinker bore little resemblance to the Isobel Tinker of life.
Generally speaking, diminutive women did not interest him, but Isobel Tinker was very pretty. Although not sweet-pretty or fancy-pretty; more unpredictable-pretty, exciting-pretty. Like a baby snake. Or a lit fuse.
There was something about her that reminded him of a demonstration he’d seen in a chemist’s lab at Oxford: a luminous burst of electrical current flickering inside a tiny glass orb. Shestrummed. Her bearing suggested coiled energy. He was afraid to look away for fear of missing the explosion.
Ducking into the alley had been, quite literally, the act of “looking away.” He’d hoped to learn more aboutthe shop; instead, she’d materialized behind him. She’d been direct and articulate, calling him out for the dark-alley marauder he’d been.
And she was so bright.Big blue eyes, swinging umbrella, pale hair in a bobbing bun on the top of her head.
