Gossamer Wing 1

by Delphine Dryden

  “This keeps getting better and better.”

  She laughed, Dexter’s flippant remark breaking the chill that had overtaken her. “There is a very small bright side.” She stood up and held a hand out, smiling at Dexter as he stood and laced his fingers through hers. She wondered at how easily they fit together, him so large and her so small. But there was a nearly audible click, a rightness in their joining, even when they did something as simple as holding hands. She pushed the notion down, forcing herself to focus on business.

  “Even a minuscule bright side would be welcome about now,” he said.

  “Now that he knows that we know, I suppose we can sweep the room again and destroy all the bugs.”

  “Ah, true,” he concurred. “I’ll have to devise a way to check the chandeliers. Perhaps I can use one of the cable crawlers, and a tiny grappling hook. In the meantime, where would you like to dine, my lady?”

  Anywhere you are.

  “I hadn’t given it any thought. Do you have a preference?”

  Dexter pondered. “Someplace that serves simple, comfortable food I can pronounce, and where they demonstrate a healthy respect for the importance of decadent sweets after a meal.”

  Charlotte gave a happy sigh, then had to pretend she was only talking about the dinner plans when she crooned, “Perfect.”

  Fourteen

  PARIS AND NANCY, FRANCE

  MURCHESON’S MEN WERE able to confirm Charlotte’s identification of Jacques Martin by the following afternoon, but there were still questions left unanswered about the precise nature of the relationship between Dubois, Coeur de Fer and the French intelligence agency.

  “Obviously this means you can’t risk going back to the Palais Garnier,” Dexter said, to Charlotte’s disgruntlement. “He knows we’re here, he knows you’re interested in that building. We have to assume he knows who you are, your connection to Reginald. He’ll be on the lookout.”

  “On the contrary, it means I have to get to the roof of the Opéra soon, tonight if possible,” Charlotte objected. “If Martin knows who I am, I’ve tipped our hand. We have to get to the documents before he finds his way back up there and ferrets them out for himself.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree with your husband, Lady Hardison. Now is the worst possible time to try for them. You led Martin straight to the roof. He’ll be waiting there to intercept you if you try again. If indeed the packet is still there at all, and he’s not merely concerned with deducing your role in all this,” Murcheson countered.

  “No, I can’t believe that. I also can’t believe he revealed himself in that building by chance or whim. Those papers were important enough to kill Reginald over, even years after the war had ended,” Charlotte insisted. “And apparently somebody remains interested enough to have Reginald’s widow followed on general principle. Would they still be so interested if they’d already found the weapon plans? And if they haven’t found them, that means there’s still time to prevent it. I have to get there before Martin does.”

  Dexter cleared his throat. “Charlotte, what’s the range of the Gossamer Wing?”

  Charlotte blinked at the seeming non sequitur, then did some quick calculations in her head. “If there isn’t much headwind, I can get between four and five hundred miles out of her. The fuel payload has to be small, of course. Weight is always the primary consideration, so that does limit the range. Why?”

  “It’s only a hundred seventy or eighty miles from Nancy back to Paris. An easy round trip without needing to refuel, as long as the weather holds clear.”

  “But we’re supposed to be in Paris for several more days. I don’t think we can wait that long.”

  “We could leave for Nancy tonight. We’re frivolous wealthy folk on our honeymoon, we can change our plans without warning if we like.”

  She could tell that Dexter hadn’t wanted to suggest the idea, that he’d felt compelled to do it. Out of some sense of duty to the mission, probably. But he didn’t like the notion, it was clear from the look on his face. Still, he had proposed it, and it was probably the best plan available to them. After a moment or so, she nodded.

  “Yes, it could work. If we go to Nancy now, right away, it will throw him off. He won’t be looking for me at the Palais Garnier, and he may even follow us there to keep track of us, putting off a search of his own. If he follows us to Nancy, and I can get away to launch the Wing from there without being seen, I’d be able to return here tomorrow night and retrieve the package quite easily by simply landing on the roof. It would only be a few days to the new moon, so not too much risk of being spotted en route. The main factor would be the length of the trip, given that it’s summer and the nights are short. I couldn’t make it there and back in a single night and be sure of enough darkness for cover. I’d have to stay in Paris and return the following night.”

  Murcheson made a skeptical noise, but finally nodded. “I don’t see a better way around it, not within a reasonable time frame. Hardison needs this trip to Nancy for glass anyway. Not much of a honeymoon, as far as your cover goes, but I suppose we must treat it as an opportunity. I’ll arrange a safe place for you to hole up after you’ve retrieved the package, Lady Hardison.”

  Murcheson’s Modern Wonderworks had a sizeable factory facility on the outskirts of Paris, more than large enough to successfully hide one small agent and one air balloon.

  “There’s only one other concern,” Charlotte said, sighing sadly when the gentlemen both looked at her in curiosity. “When you grounded me, I’d hoped to avoid this, and I have to confess I was a little relieved because I hate to do it. But if I’m to be flying the Gossamer Wing at night, we’re going to need an awful lot of black dye.”

  * * *

  DEXTER STEPPED OVER a closed trunk and neatly avoided an open one to make his way into the bedroom of the suite. Although their hotel in Nancy was picturesquely housed in a Renaissance-era building, renovated stylishly with every modern convenience, the suite was not all that large. Currently, the little sitting room was more than fully occupied by a plethora of trunks, a pair of frazzled assistant modistes and his wife.

  He thought perhaps Charlotte was subsuming her irritation at the besmirchment of the Gossamer Wing in this mania for fashion. Surely nothing short of temporary insanity explained the extreme concentration, the alternating frowns and giddiness, the second language she seemed to be speaking with the two young women. They were full of words like bolero and bustlette, and the room seemed full to bursting with all the new garments and fabrics they’d brought.

  They had managed to turn what could have been a suspiciously unromantic side jaunt to Nancy into a chance for Dexter to shine as an indulgent husband. When Charlotte couldn’t make her scheduled second fitting with the modistes in Paris, he’d simply paid the modistes to come to Nancy. Charlotte had made sure there was a certain amount of public fuss about all the trouble and expense. The ruse of their extravagant honeymoon was hardly jolted at all. The clothing gave Charlotte something to do while she waited, already a full day more than she’d expected, for the Gossamer Wing to be converted for night use. The dye and paint took longer than expected to dry, it seemed, and the wet silk was far too heavy. The wait was maddening.

  “Dexter darling, don’t forget you agreed to walk with me to the Parc de la Pépinière this afternoon. I want to see the roses. And there’s supposed to be a charming pavilion.”

  He turned in the doorway, but Charlotte had already focused her attention back on the short, plum-colored brocade jacket one of the junior modistes was helping her into. Similar jackets in scarlet and midnight blue were laid out on the settee, awaiting their turns. It was a fraction of what she’d ordered, but the job could be rushed only so much. Half a dozen items or so had been produced, the rest to be delivered upon the couple’s return to Paris.

  “Of course, my sweet brioche,” he said softly, and was rewarded by a swift and adorably dimpled smile from his wife.

  His wife. Looking at her here, enga
ged in such an activity, seeing her smile, wife was suddenly all he could see. Dexter tried to regain a sense of distance, to recall the agent with whom he was meant to have only a pretense of marriage. Charlotte the professional spy, the once and future Lady Moncrieffe.

  Instead, his unhelpful mind offered up the image of Charlotte the seductress, naked in his lap with her lips still ruddy from a shockingly intimate exercise. And then, even worse in a way, he recalled the way she had looked that very morning, when he had awakened early and spent far too long watching her sleep. She had one hand curled under her cheek, and he couldn’t stop staring at her fingers—so very slender compared to his own—and the exquisite delicacy of the cheek pressed against them. Then she had opened her eyes and smiled at him, and he couldn’t even name the feeling that had nearly overwhelmed him in that moment.

  It was becoming harder and harder for Dexter to convince himself that he was merely scratching an itch. He knew himself too well to sustain the lie, and subterfuge was not his nature. His reactions were not those of a man motivated by lust or even something as innocent as friendship.

  They were the reactions of a man falling hopelessly in love with the woman he had married.

  * * *

  SCANDALOUS THOUGH THE new fashion might be, Dexter decided he approved. Thoroughly.

  Like many of the women they had seen strolling about since arriving in France, Charlotte was now clad in black breeches that left nothing to the imagination. The little red bolero jacket, in the finest Spanish style, was cut short enough to show off her tiny waist. Her midsection was made to appear even tinier with a wide satin sash that fit snugly in front and finished with a voluminous ruffled bow covering most of her rear end, with ribbons that trailed down almost to the back of her knees. The “bustlette,” Dexter assumed. Although he thought it faintly ridiculous, he had to allow that it at least served the purpose of hiding Charlotte’s remarkable derriere from public view.

  Although her legs were more than enough to catch the eye of many a passing gentleman, he noticed. The snug black trousers disappeared into black riding boots, which were in turn gussied up with tall spatterdashes of some stiff, figured black and crimson fabric. Her hair was smoothed into a neat chignon beneath a small black top hat whose decorations of red and gold satin made it every bit as frivolous as she’d promised.

  “I’m still not quite sure about this style of clothing. Are you preparing to fight a bull or ride to the hounds?”

  Charlotte curled a hand around a lamppost and braced one booted foot at the base, swinging all the way around the pole and stopping when she faced him.

  “Don’t you like it? It’s the only thing these days.”

  “I certainly don’t dislike it,” Dexter admitted, letting his eyes wander blatantly downward to linger on her legs. “You wear it well.”

  “I hope to start a trend when we return home. Trousers have been popular for ten years or so here in Europa, even in England, but it never caught on in the Dominions aside from riding breeches. We’re too stuffy and provincial back home, I suppose. We settled for those hideous split skirts instead.” She leaned back, hanging on to the pole for balance, and looked up at the whimsically gaudy gilded crown that topped the lamp. “Oh, I do love this city. I like how they’ve thrown all these gold swirls onto anything that stands still long enough.”

  “Arabesques, I think they call them.”

  It was true, the city of Nancy was delightfully ornamented, sporting gleaming gold statuary and colorful architectural fripperies in the most unexpected places. The park, once they located it, proved no less charming.

  “It almost makes me wish I had a rose garden at Hardison House,” Dexter said as they wandered between the carefully cultivated rows of blooming shrubs. The Parc de la Pépinière had started as a nursery, and was still a noted horticultural garden. The plants were almost obscenely healthy, so verdant and lush in the early summer air that they looked too good to believe.

  “It probably wouldn’t look this magnificent if you did have one,” Charlotte pointed out. “They take years to develop properly. But it is lovely to have fresh roses. Dexter, two of those trunks weren’t clothing. They were from Murcheson. His people finished dying and painting the Gossamer Wing. He had it delivered along with the clothes.”

  Reality, cold and jarring, slapped Dexter back into the present, reminding him that he was no honeymooning lordling. He nodded stiffly and glanced around the nearly empty garden before answering. “I see.”

  “Murcheson’s message said our friend has followed us to Nancy. The hotel seems clean, however, probably because the move was so sudden. He had his team make a sweep with some of your brilliant little bug detectors. We also have two men on surveillance duty outside the hotel. They say so far it seems our man is content just to keep watch, rather than making a move on the hotel itself.”

  “Or perhaps he’s busy modifying his bugs to escape detection, before he bothers wasting any more of them.” Dexter couldn’t help but feel a moment’s smugness at having hindered Coeur de Fer at least that small amount. “So when must you go?”

  She brushed a fingertip over a bobbing pale pink rose, and then bent to smell the blossom. A peacock screamed from somewhere in the park, and Dexter had to strain to catch Charlotte’s reply.

  “Tonight.”

  * * *

  CHARLOTTE WOULDN’T HAVE cared if Coeur de Fer had bugged every nook and cranny in the hotel suite. From the moment she’d read Murcheson’s terse, coded missive, she had barely been able to think of anything but that evening and being alone with Dexter.

  This was her mission, it was the sort of assignment she had trained for, planned for, even looked forward to in some ways. Night or day, the Gossamer Wing was designed for just such an occasion, and it had been entrusted to Charlotte only on the understanding that she could use it to go where other agents couldn’t. What’s more, she was getting an unexpected second chance to prove her usefulness with the craft, after her early disappointment at being spotted over Le Havre. She couldn’t ignore the sense of rightness, of long-sought completion that followed when she thought of finishing this mission Reginald started all those years ago—not to mention preventing another war.

  But now the idea that she might not survive plagued her as it never had. She hadn’t considered herself suicidal before, but neither had she felt very strongly that she had anything to return to after completing her tasks in France. No matter what she’d told Dexter, she couldn’t deny that on some level she had come to France to avenge Reginald. Vengeance was cold enough in the contemplation; once it was hers, she’d long acknowledged in her heart of hearts, she would have very little left to live for, no warmth to counter that icy satisfaction. A house that would never feel like her home. A profession that had already served its purpose. And an eternity of never quite trusting people to be what they seemed, because that capacity had been trained out of her.

  Except. Except. Charlotte poked at her half-eaten dinner with a fork, and tried not to let Dexter catch her staring. She was hungry, but not for food and not even precisely for sex. Something else, something she couldn’t or wouldn’t define to herself in words, drove her that evening. Something about Dexter, who might be a temporary spy but who was otherwise, as far as she could tell, exactly what he seemed. She yearned for that, for something honest and wholehearted.

  Tonight, she would have it. And if it turned out to be the last time, at least she would die with a fond memory.

  Dexter met her eyes over the centerpiece, and the corners of his mouth and eyes tensed. Not quite a smile, not quite anything. But suddenly his attention was engaged, and Charlotte felt as naked as if he had stripped her down there in the middle of the hotel’s elegantly appointed dining room. Resisting the temptation to look away until her blush subsided, she took action. She speared a piece of lamb and brought it to her mouth, removing it from the fork carefully and delicately with her teeth before licking a stray drop of sauce from her lip.

 
; The muscles in Dexter’s jaw flexed, and his eyes darkened perceptibly. Charlotte smiled as he gestured impatiently to the waiter without ever looking away from her.

  A very fond memory.

  * * *

  THE DRESS CHARLOTTE had changed into for dinner was a delicate green. Dexter supposed the color had a special name, like celadon or jade, but mostly he just thought of it as in the way.

  Charlotte had barely cleared the doorway of their suite before he was on her, propelling her forward into the room as he kicked blindly behind him to shut the door. She fetched up against the fat, rolled arm of the sofa and turned her head to stare at him over her shoulder.

  “Dexter, what are you—”

  “If you’re going to look at me that way in public places, you’re going to have to put up with the consequences.”

  He yanked her skirts up, bundling petticoats and all in his hands, and tossed them forward over her head. Her startled giggle was all the encouragement he needed to continue exactly as he’d begun. But if he’d needed more, he would have received it from the sight of her bedrawered backside, tipped up so invitingly as she bent over farther to rest her weight on the furniture.

  “I was innocently eating my dinner,” she insisted, though the muffling layers of silk and muslin were not enough to hide the coy, teasing note in her voice. Dexter reached under her to tug at the bow of the drawstring holding her drawers up, feeling a surge of more than triumph when the ribbon gave way.

  “There was nothing innocent about the way you were eating your dinner, you wicked little quince tartlet.” He yanked the loosened drawers down to Charlotte’s ankles and drew his hands up the backs of her exposed thighs as he straightened up again.