He threw the epithet out and waited for a response.
“But it’s the Makesmith Baron who would make such a convenient husband for my daughter. You would need to use your title, foster the notion that you’re a typical blithe aristocrat. Play the baron to Charlotte’s baroness.”
They both knew the truth of that. What other single man could fulfill all the necessary roles for this particular political ploy? Who else had the technical expertise to advise the Agency’s engineers and work on the dirigible if necessary, the conveniently public disinterest in politics and the perfect credentials of gentility to marry the widow of a baronet, daughter to the eminently respectable Viscount Darmont?
Serendipity.
And Matthew, upon his return from delivering the “funny hat,” had waxed rather lyrical regarding the physical charms of the widow Moncrieffe. He had met her a few times before, he said, but had clearly been too callow a youth at the time to appreciate the qualities of such a subtle blossom. He was no longer too callow, apparently. Dexter supposed the woman took after her mother, after all.
“Pocket Venus,” Matthew had extolled. “Chilly as a winter day, and black isn’t her color, but still. Fire under all that ice, you know? You forget she’s tiny while you’re talking to her, then all of a sudden it strikes you that you could break her in two if you weren’t careful. Although . . .”
“Although?” Dexter had tried to pretend he wasn’t interested in Pence’s prurient gossip. He’d remained bent over his workbench, pencil in hand, sketching a design that wouldn’t leave his mind’s eye.
“She wouldn’t break, I suspect. There’s steel there.” Hardly the thing to say in compliment to a delicate lady. But he said it with admiration.
Dexter hadn’t risen to the bait. He hadn’t asked for more detail about the potential charms of the interesting widow with her inexplicable need for esoteric devices. For camouflaged devices.
Now that he knew the reason for the camouflage, he had more difficulty concealing his desire to learn more, and to meet her face-to-face at last. She was intriguing, this Lady Moncrieffe, with her mourning turned to espionage and her father who was willing to pander her to him on a temporary basis if necessary. Not that her father seemed happy with the idea.
“Did you mean for her to be the inducement, sir?” Dexter asked him. He was politely horrified by the very notion, and mortified to have to ask, but he thought it best to have it out in the open either way. “I would have taken this on for Crown and country. Even if nothing comes of it, you can depend on my discretion. Title or no, I think my reputation and my family’s honor are insurance enough of that.”
“I meant for her to continue her safe, sedate work decoding documents for the Agency. Before that, I meant for her to marry my protégé Reginald and induce him into an early retirement from the field,” the Viscount said gruffly, not meeting the younger man’s eyes. “I also meant to have a grandchild or two to dandle on my knee by this time. Instead I have a daughter who rarely smiles, who wears black all the time and looks terrible in it and who wants to turn her work into some sort of clandestine suttee. If I could forbid her to work for the Agency, or even persuade her to give up this profession and look for a new husband in earnest, to build a happier life for herself, I would. As I can’t, I will do my best to further her interests in the path she has chosen.”
He smiled a resigned sort of smile, and Dexter saw the clean, aristocratic lines of his profile pulled into prominence for a moment. “I can’t keep her safe. She’s a grown woman, and I can hardly tell her not to do what I’ve admittedly done dozens of times. Not the marriage part, of course, I’ve only done that once, but the mission itself. This work is addictive, I warn you. Few escape it once they’ve begun.”
“I’ll take my chances on that, I suppose.”
“The primary mission is Charlotte’s, fetching this blueprint or whatsis that our man in Le Havre thinks may still be secreted somewhere in Paris. He’d like to rule it out, at least. I think it’s a fool’s errand and there’s no chance the damn thing is still there after so many years. But we also need your expertise, Hardison. Badly. I think I can guarantee that once you learn what your part of the project is about—assuming you agree to the terms the Agency sets, of course—you will be so eager to work on it that the rest will fade into insignificance. It’s the type of thing a man like you would never be able to resist. One day, it could make you very, very famous indeed.”
“That part doesn’t interest me,” Dexter rushed to assure him.
“It is true nevertheless. The project is its own inducement, and if Murcheson is wrong and the French do have those documents, success only becomes more critical. There are other ways you could help too, unique tasks you could undertake that I think you would enjoy immensely once you set your hands to them. You won’t get such an opportunity sitting at home. Charlotte is . . . a condition of the arrangement. You would be the perfect cover for one another. And as far as I’m concerned, that means her best chance of survival is with you.”
Three
UPPER NEW YORK DOMINION
EASY ENOUGH TO listen to a man discuss a proposed undertaking. It was an abstraction, a fancy, being asked to provide assistance to the Crown in its clandestine efforts to conduct espionage on the French despite the recent peace treaty between the two nations. The offer of Darmont’s daughter’s hand in marriage—however temporary—only lent an additional air of surrealism to the Viscount’s words.
It was another thing entirely to stand in a beautifully appointed solarium in the Upper New York Dominion, awaiting the arrival of a woman to whom he might become a sham spouse for a few months or even longer. Not to mention the woman who had fascinated him on paper for years.
The house itself had surprised him already. He was expecting something as solid, staid, respectable as his own stately residence. A manor house in the traditional style, or perhaps even a small Italianate palace. Not this frosted layer cake of a folly, with so many details on its façade he wasn’t sure which to smirk at first. The interior was at least more subdued, if still somewhat more frivolous than expected. The solarium itself, with glass walls and ceiling panels bordered in intricate wrought-iron scrollwork frames, was the view from the inside of the wedding cake.
“Mister Hardison.”
Lady Moncrieffe didn’t match her house.
Not her voice, which was surprisingly low and sweet. Nor her severe, high-necked black jacket and jabot, or the tailored fawn breeches and high boots that suggested she’d recently come in from a ride.
And not her face, which was anything but a folly. She was quietly beautiful despite the unflattering black; the stark color served only to heighten the impact of her fair skin and hair. Skin like a white peach, Dexter noted with an instant, inappropriate desire to touch her cheek and see if it was as soft as it looked. Hair like a sweep of pale gold silk. And eyes . . .
Eyes that were icy blue, and staring him down rather coldly as he tried not to gape like a fish at the wholly unexpected vision before him.
“Lady Moncrieffe.” He gave a short bow from the waist, to which she only nodded in return.
“And now, at least, we have established that we know one another’s names.”
He glanced back up, startled, to see a hint of humor flash behind her chilly mien. Only a moment, wry and sharp, gone before it could be pinned down. He thought he spied a dimple, but it vanished before he could be quite sure. Dexter had imagined that dimple, that spark of humor, so many times he felt a shock of recognition.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve enjoyed our correspondence these past few years. It should have occurred to me to make your acquaintance in person much sooner.” Dexter clamped his mouth shut before he could say anything more. He feared he might blurt something all too revealing about his reaction to the lady’s stunning looks, or that hint of something-or-other he could still feel from his head to his toes and points between. Particularly points between. He didn’t
have to know her well to grasp that it would be a mistake to mention any of that at this point. He shouldn’t even be thinking any of that.
“I always look forward to your letters. And your marvelous creations, naturally. Would you care to sit down, Mr. Hardison?”
He took the seat she indicated, hoping the delicate gilded chair didn’t creak or simply give way under his weight. It held. Apparently, it was stronger than it looked. He tried to think of something to say, anything at all, but words failed him. Nothing in his life had prepared him for a scene in which he came to discuss an arranged marriage with a beautiful woman for the purpose of enabling them both to commit acts of international espionage.
“Your father visited me yesterday,” he finally began. “He seemed slightly less uncomfortable than I believe us both to be at the moment.”
She lifted an eyebrow at him as she sank gracefully into the chair opposite him. “He’s cagey, I know that much. He wouldn’t have wanted you to think him uncomfortable. Whether he was or not. He can’t have been elated.”
“I daresay not.”
“I’ve ordered us some tea. Unless you’d prefer something stronger?”
“Bit too early in the day for anything stronger for me, but I thank you. Tea will suffice.”
“What did he tell you? I don’t mean about the specifics of the mission, I’m sure he told you only enough about that to get your curiosity raging. What did he tell you about this part of the arrangement, Mr. Hardison? About me?”
A stray cloud crossed the sun’s path, filtering the light in the solarium down to a wintry gray. Without the sunbeams glancing around her head Lady Moncrieffe looked much more human, much less like an angel fallen to earth for the purpose of mourning. Her face, stripped of its poetic overlay for the moment, was all business. And her manner was very reminiscent of her father. On her, it was strikingly attractive. Dexter thought that on her, nearly anything would be strikingly attractive. Why hadn’t he ever tried to meet her in person before?
“I asked him what your particular motivations were, and he told me I would have to ask you. Said I should ask you about your late husband, if I may be so blunt.”
“Father’s melodramatic at times. My late husband was killed by a French agent five years ago. Poisoned. The spy had been posing as a steward on the riverboat we were traveling on down to New Orleans. It was our honeymoon, Mr. Hardison,” she explained. “We had been married for three days.”
What on earth did one say to that?
“Why?”
“His guard was down. He was off duty, distracted. No doubt still a bit exhausted from the events of the wedding weekend. It was the perfect time, really.”
“No, but why—”
“My husband was also with the Agency, Mr. Hardison. He was in Paris shortly before the Treaty of Calais was signed. Reginald recovered some information from a French agent, and he was attempting to get the intelligence back to his superiors. After the contretemps with the agent Reginald fled but managed to hide the packet, planning to return to the location later and retrieve it. Then the treaty was signed and our agents were officially recalled from France.
“Apparently the French thought Reginald had taken the information with him, or knew what it was at least, and they finally tracked him down. Or perhaps,” she said as a footman entered the room with a laden tea tray, “this particular agent simply wanted retribution. That’s always seemed more likely to me, as so much time had passed and they must have assumed Reginald had long since relayed the intelligence to Whitehall.”
Espionage, retribution, death . . . and tea. Never let it be said that the American Dominions had strayed too far from their English roots. Dexter noted that the lady poured with the same exquisite manner as any blueblood in London.
“No sugar, no milk,” he said, not waiting for the offer. He suspected she cared little for empty pleasantries, despite her manners. “So it’s your turn for vengeance now?”
She sipped at her tea, and his eyes were drawn to the perfect bow-shaped curve of her upper lip. Surprisingly full, those lips. She probably frowned in her mirror every morning, to see how pink and lush they were. So out of keeping with her somber garb, like a sweetheart bouquet bobbing atop a mourner’s hat.
Having evidently approved the tea, Lady Moncrieffe placed the cup down carefully on its saucer before returning both to the table between them. “I was very fond of my husband, sir. But as I said, my father has a penchant for melodrama. I am in the Agency as he is, and I wish to do my duty for the Crown. I didn’t trust the French before the treaty, and I do not trust them now. I have some rather special abilities that may allow me to be of service in France as Reginald once was, and I confess I hope this mission brings me some sense of completion. But one cannot avenge a death, not really. One can only try to honor the memory of the dead by furthering their life’s work to the best of one’s ability.”
“I think most people have a less . . . pronounced sense of duty, madam.”
“I don’t think it vain to say that I am not most people, Mr. Hardison.”
She wouldn’t think it vain, no. She would think it the simple truth, and he couldn’t argue with it.
“Perhaps if I explain some of the details of my mission,” she added, “you’ll understand better. None of the other agents can do what I can. I’m not being egotistical, merely pragmatic. It’s the weight, you see.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The weight, Mr. Hardison. I weigh easily a third less than the next smallest agent in the Agency. So I am the only one who can take the Gossamer Wing to the necessary altitude to ensure covert surveillance. Because of this, I may also be the only one who can retrieve the item the Agency is looking for, without being spotted doing so. The Agency also needs information on a particular man, an industrialist and military contractor with good security measures. Rumors are he’s looking to revive research on creating the same sort of weapon the British threatened to use, the one that ended the war. We must find out if those rumors are accurate, and whether he’s secured plans to make such a device. The Agency can’t get anyone close enough to him through conventional methods so they’ve decided to attempt an aerial mission as a last resort. France hasn’t really embraced air travel yet, so neither the government agents nor any interested private parties are likely to be on the alert for dirigibles. We’ve tried with several other agents, but with anyone heavier the engine must work too hard. It’s noisier then, you see. Useless for spying. But the Gossamer Wing is nearly silent for me.”
“I see. And the Gossamer Wing would be?”
* * *
“MY AIRSHIP, THE Gossamer Wing.” She gestured with shy pride to the pile of closed trunks standing just inside the open door of the stable. Across the central corridor, a long dappled gray nose peered out at them with placid curiosity. The scents of well-tended horses and leather mingled with the earthier aroma of any stable, and sunlight danced through motes of dust around the unassuming trunks.
At last, feeling compelled to say something, Dexter nodded at the nearest of the three cases. “Impressive.”
With a snort no lady should consider issuing, his companion hauled the case onto its side and flipped the latches open. “Here, help me with this, it’ll go more quickly with two.”
He helped Charlotte spread a lightweight tarpaulin on the dusty ground of the stable yard, then arrange a silk-covered blue pad and a confusing array of white leather straps. Beside this, from another case, came a rig he thought he recognized as a miniature version of a typical dirigible motor—but a version that looked more suited for a sugar egg than for any practical use. It was all frosted glass, enamel and silver, and so beautiful it took him a moment to see the sheer genius of the thing.
Camouflage. Of course. Once the propeller was in motion, and with the rigging obscured by the pale sky-blue silk below it—kept carefully clean by the tarpaulin until it was safely in the air—the whole thing would be nearly invisible. Even the pedestrian little gas ca
nister had a tidy silk and leather wrapper to disguise it from eyes below. The slightly pearly sheen to it all would bounce back enough light to minimize the appearance of a shadow on the underside of the rigging.
The pièce de résistance was the blimp itself, and Dexter couldn’t help a gasp of delight as he helped Lady Moncrieffe free it from the last of the trunks.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. I knew there was a dirigible involved, of course, but I simply never imagined something like this. Is this . . . wood? Leather?” He felt at the seams and joints, the fragile-seeming skeleton he could feel within the opal-blue silk casing. Even his knowledgeable fingers had trouble identifying the light, sturdy substance that gave the thing structure and some shape before it was filled with gas or hot air.
“You’re no ladies’ man, are you, Mr. Hardison?”
She was staring him down, as cool as ever, but he somehow got the impression she was trying very hard not to laugh.
“A gentleman would never tell, madam.”
“A gentleman wouldn’t have to if he could identify corset boning when he runs his hands all over it.”
“Ah!”
“Ah, indeed.”
“That’s brilliant!”
The whole thing was brilliant.
It was also clearly made for her, and her alone. He could see enough to know the little engine would be temperamental if overloaded, too noisy for its task, not nearly efficient enough on gas, and liable to run too hot for safety. Hence the necessity for strict weight limits on her helmet, as there must be on every garment she wore while piloting the tiny jewel of a craft.
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