Gossamer Wing 1

by Delphine Dryden

  Dexter nodded. “Yes, but to do it I would have had to touch him, and he’s such a slimy toad I decided it wasn’t worth it.”

  * * *

  “YOU CAN COME out of the shadows, Martin. Here, sit.”

  As Dubois swept past him, Martin stepped forward from the darkest corner of the booth, eyeing the theater warily before taking the seat Dubois indicated. In general he avoided theaters, the boxes particularly. He hated the feeling of sitting at the edge of a precipice, exposed and trapped at the same time. Anyone in the audience could lift a weapon and fire before he even noticed the threat. Anyone could slink into the box from the hallway behind and end him with a silent garrote. And then there were the fires. Theaters were deathtraps.

  “I nearly lost an agent,” Martin said without preamble. “He’d been set to watch on the roof of Murcheson’s Gennevilliers factory. He suffered severe burns and a broken leg, and barely managed to avoid being identified by his rescuers. Some warning might have been helpful.”

  Dubois shrugged. “He lived, I take it. If he hadn’t, he certainly wouldn’t have been the first peasant in history to die in service.”

  Gritting his teeth, Martin swore an oath to himself that one day Dubois would die in lingering agony.

  “This is a man in your employ. A good man.”

  “No,” Dubois contradicted him. “He is a man in your employ, and his goodness doesn’t concern me. Don’t think I’m unaware you have your own agenda, Martin. Why would you ever think I’d let your agenda interfere with mine?” When Martin remained silent, Dubois shook his head, for all the world like a father disappointed in a child who has failed to learn a simple lesson. “Jacques, Jacques. Are you still so naïve? You’re Coeur de Fer, are you not? Where is the iron, my friend? Did you learn nothing from Simone’s death? I’ll eliminate anybody who stands in my way, even a person I care for. It’s as simple as that. I know my priorities. And don’t try to claim you’re any different. You’ve done the same in your time.”

  Never a person I’ve cared for, Martin thought. But then he’d never found out a mistress of several years’ duration was a government agent gathering potentially ruinous information on him, preparing to have him exiled or shot for a traitor. Perhaps he would’ve done the same after all. He would never know. When the documents had come into his life, all else of importance had left it, including all the people he’d once cared for.

  At least I have my pouch back. Empty and ready for use. Perhaps a cobbler could recondition the leather.

  “Simone cared for me too, you know.” Dubois went on. “That was her weakness. It blinded her, and after all those years she let her guard down. Just once, but that was all I needed. She really shouldn’t have been foolish enough to fall asleep in my bed. Though the first stupidity was drinking wine I’d poured out of her sight. She made it very easy, in the end.”

  Martin didn’t need to hear it. He knew how Simone had died, knew the cretinous malignancy beside him had suffocated her in his own bed, then paid a doctor to testify that the death had been from natural causes. Simone’s downfall was legend in French intelligence.

  Dubois was right, however. She had been foolish to visit him while exhausted from her jaunt to England, and even more so to drink his wine. As foolish as Martin had been to think that his deal with Dubois could ever end well. And now that he’d lost the documents to the British—for the second and final time—the deal would never end until either Dubois or Martin was dead.

  Martin thought that considered in those terms, the choice became very clear to him. The plan of action practically sprang to mind full-formed. All he needed to do was choose a time and place to implement it.

  “She never did care for you, Dubois,” Martin said softly but firmly. “She thought you were scum, and a pig in bed.”

  He didn’t know why he’d said it. So careful, he was usually so very careful. But Dubois normally steered clear of this topic too, knowing that Simone had meant something to Martin, even if he wasn’t sure what she’d meant.

  Dubois’s tone was jovial, though. Perhaps he had finally forgotten what a danger Martin could still be when pressed. He seemed to assume the old dog had lost his fangs. “You think I didn’t know my own woman? She was a whore for me, whatever else she was.”

  Martin permitted himself a smile as he turned to the dismissive Dubois, letting his imagination run for a second or two. There was a beauty in the extremity of death, sometimes, a poetic quality to the last expression on a victim’s face as the breath left the body. Martin suspected even Dubois might display that sort of beauty at the very end. “Believe what you will.”

  “You’re tiresome this evening, Martin, and the second act is beginning soon. Go find a whore of your own or something, leave me to my amusement. Your little errand boy will heal in time, and Murcheson needed to be hit hard. I’m only disappointed the bastard wasn’t there as I’d hoped. Still, there’s time. Other plans are already afoot.” He frowned, tenting his fingers over his ample midsection. “This very evening, in fact. Perhaps they are going a little awry, but I think the outcome might be just as useful in the end.”

  Dubois’s plans, Martin thought, usually did go awry. But his own would not.

  * * *

  THE DRIVE FROM the Opéra to the Ritz was a short one, even in traffic. But they had barely turned onto the Rue de la Paix when Dexter leaned forward, tapping the glass that separated the driver and passenger sections of the steam car.

  “Do you hear that?”

  The driver slid the window panel open and spared a glance back before returning his eyes to the busy street ahead. “Sir?”

  “The boiler. Do you hear it? The pitch is wrong, and it sounds . . . dull.”

  “Sir? I don’t hear anything different than usual. Shall I pull over? We’re only a few blocks from the hotel.”

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked, looking on her way toward being irritated.

  “I’m not sure,” Dexter admitted. “But I’m familiar with this model of engine and it just sounds off.”

  She frowned at him for a moment then leaned forward, clasping the frame of the communicating window with one hand for balance while she addressed the driver. “Let’s pull over, just to be on the safe side.”

  Dexter apologized to the driver and to Charlotte, but he was relieved when the car rattled to a halt at the nearest stretch of empty curb.

  “It’s probably nothing,” he said to Charlotte as he handed her down and led her to stand under the awning of the closest storefront. “But I’d like to have a look. Come over here and wait with Lady Hardison, if you would,” he instructed the driver, who nodded and shut the engine off before he leaped down, swinging the door closed behind him.

  His foot touched the pavement just as a whoof of pressure and superheated steam blew the bonnet from the car. The explosion swept the driver straight into Dexter and Charlotte as the sound ripped the night apart. Dexter threw himself between Charlotte and the steam car, but the unfortunate driver floundered into the gray stone wall of the nearest storefront. One half of the bonnet flew straight into the large display window next to them, and as his ears stopped ringing from the blast, Dexter heard a brassy alarm bell jangling from inside the store.

  “Charlotte!” He rolled off her, patting her frantically all over. “Are you all right? Darling, are you hurt?”

  “I’ve been better,” she admitted. “Dear god, you’re heavy. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I think.”

  Charlotte was already crawling past him to get to the driver, who seemed to have knocked himself unconscious when he was flung face-first into the wall. He’d crumpled to a heap below the shattered display window, but as they watched he groaned and pushed himself to a seated position.

  Then he saw the remains of the car and began cursing in French that Dexter didn’t understand and Charlotte pretended not to understand. Dexter saw the shock on her face as she looked from the driver to the car, which was burning white-hot. A scrap
e high on Charlotte’s cheekbone started to bleed, one drop seeping out and finding its way down her cheek. Her elaborate coiffure listed to one side, the ribbons and pins yanked out of place by the fall; the hair was starting to slide free one soft, golden curl at a time. She was beautiful, and she was simply the thing he held most precious in life. It suddenly all seemed very clear to him.

  “You saved us all.” Charlotte returned her attention to Dexter, running her hands down his chest, reassuring herself he was unhurt. “If you hadn’t heard that something was wrong—”

  “I love you.”

  She blinked, hesitated, then stared into his eyes intently as though she were searching for the truth written on his soul. A long moment, saturated with potential, passed between them before she spoke again.

  “Your pupils are equal, it doesn’t seem to be a concussion. We should have a doctor examine your head, just the same.”

  She stood up gracefully, all at once, backing away from the heat of the burning steam car and brushing herself off as if her satin opera gloves were any sort of use against the devastation the explosion had wrought. The skirt of her gown was torn, and splinters of glass sparkled on her cloak.

  “Mr. Murcheson’s steam car has blown out the window of Cartier’s,” she remarked, nodding toward the broken display pane. “I wonder who pays for the damage in cases like this?”

  The subject, it seemed, was officially changed.

  Dexter rose more slowly, making a few passes over his clothing with his hands then giving it all up as a loss. Sirens were already nearing, and the gathering crowd pressed closer as the fire began to die down. The seats of the ill-fated vehicle didn’t burn nearly as hot as the engine had.

  Looking behind him, Dexter offered a hand to the still-muttering driver, who took it and wobbled to his feet.

  “What caused it, monsieur?” he asked Dexter, as if by predicting the explosion, his passenger had proved himself an oracle of the first order.

  “That remains to be seen,” Dexter said, though he had his suspicions. To Charlotte, he murmured, “There’s nothing wrong with my head.”

  He felt irritated, cross with himself and Charlotte, and he knew that was a ridiculous emotional response to having just had a steam car explode and nearly kill three people. Later, he expected, he would need a great deal of liquor and suffer many nightmares before he was rid of the trauma. For the moment, though, it simply hadn’t hit him yet. It was all too unreal. His mind was apparently only capable of dealing with one minor detail at a time, and it had chosen to concern itself with Charlotte’s less-than-ideal reaction to his unplanned declaration.

  Dexter felt nominally better when Charlotte tipped her head back to study his face, lifting a hand to brush the hair back from his forehead and whispering, “I know there’s nothing wrong with your head, my delicious slice of coconut cream pie.”

  “That one needs work,” he said automatically, feeling a glimmer of giddy happiness even less appropriate to the situation than being irked.

  “It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment,” she replied, nestling into the crook of his arm as the first wave of police arrived on the scene.

  Eighteen

  PARIS, FRANCE

  “NO. IT’S ABSOLUTELY out of the question!” Dexter insisted.

  Charlotte clenched her fists, wanting to strike out at something and vibrating with the effort to restrain herself. How dare he?

  “Out of the question for whom, precisely?”

  “This has gone well beyond any reasonable expectation of danger you might have encountered flying about in a balloon.” Dexter’s face had turned fierce and hard. Charlotte thought his jaw looked as tightly bunched as her fists, and made a mental note not to punch him there if she decided she simply couldn’t hold herself back. She’d be more likely to hurt her hand than his face.

  “You do realize it was a spy balloon? And that I was using it to gather vital documents and conduct covert surveillance on potentially deadly enemies? I understood you were aware of all that.”

  Dexter dug his fingers through his hair, gripping it so tightly Charlotte was surprised he didn’t pull out two handfuls. “Charlotte, be reasonable!”

  “I am being reasonable,” she said, forcing herself to calm down. The situation called for education, not rage. “I’m being a very reasonable agent of the Crown, still on an assignment. That’s why we’re here. Besides, stowing me at the embassy for safekeeping would be pointless. We’re not in any more danger today than we were yesterday, Dexter. We weren’t the targets.”

  “I’m sorry? We nearly got blown to bits.”

  “In Murcheson’s steam car. A steam car nobody expected us to be in,” she reminded him.

  “It would have been easy for somebody to—”

  “No. The driver was only away from the vehicle for fifteen minutes during the middle of the first act. He left it to pick up some tobacco for Mr. Murcheson, as he’d been instructed to do, and when he returned he didn’t notice anything amiss. Whatever was done to the steam car was done very quickly while he was gone. Well before Murcheson volunteered his car to take us back here. That implies advance planning. So unless you suspect Murcheson or his driver of plotting our demise . . .”

  Dexter shook his head and sat on the end of the bed with a grunt. “Damn. I feel like I’ve been run over by a tractor.”

  “Me too. You should try a warm bath. I left some Epsom salts for you.”

  “That won’t help my ears to stop ringing, I suppose?”

  “Only time will help that, I’m afraid.”

  She bent over and untwisted the rough huckaback towel from her hair, letting the damp strands fall where they would as she stood back up. Dexter was watching her with nothing like the keen interest she had come to expect, and the change upset Charlotte more than she cared to admit.

  “I want you to be safe,” he said gently. “I won’t apologize for it anymore.”

  “I understand that. I do. It’s just that . . . well, who do you think you are?” It took Charlotte a second to register the hurt on Dexter’s face, and realize how she’d phrased herself. “No, no, I don’t mean it like that. I meant . . . in all this. What’s your role in all this, as you see it? Who do you think you are?”

  She watched him think it through, discarding the first answer he bit back, deciding how to phrase it in some more acceptable way than “your husband.” Finally he shook his head, unable or unwilling to put any other words to it.

  Charlotte approached him, speaking as gently as she could. The impulse to lash out had been replaced by an aching compassion; she could see Dexter was suffering, and she hated to know she was the cause of it. He’d said he loved her. She couldn’t allow him to keep thinking along those lines. “You came here to do a job. I came here to do a job. The rest . . . is compelling, I grant you, but it doesn’t mean I can forget the mission, even if I’ve accomplished my main task. I’ve tried more than once to make that clear, though I know I haven’t done very well at following my own terms. I’ve let you muddy the waters, and I’ve muddied them myself. Still, the fact remains, I don’t report to you,” she concluded, “I report to Murcheson. To Whitehall.”

  Dexter reached out to coax her closer, then leaned his cheek against her stomach, hands resting on her hips for a moment before sliding around to clasp her waist. After a moment, unable to help herself, she started stroking his hair. The soft, straight strands fell through her fingers in a soothing flow, an interesting contrast to the prickle of whiskers she could feel through the linen of her night rail.

  “This is why they advise against this sort of entanglement, I’m sure,” she murmured.

  Dexter chuckled, the vibration and the heat of his breath warming her skin. “They never like any of the really enjoyable things. I don’t know why we all keep listening to them, anyway.”

  “We didn’t listen, and look where we are.”

  “I can think of worse places to be.” He gave her a squeeze. “Charlotte, whe
n all this is over, I—”

  “Don’t,” she warned him, tapping him on the head sharply a few times with one fingertip before she resumed carding his hair in slow, smooth sweeps. “Don’t.”

  * * *

  THE FLASK OF brandy was empty by lunchtime, and the bottle too. Martin tipped one then the other into his glass, idly watching the last lonely drops creep down the side of the tumbler to pool in the bottom. Most of it evaporated on the way back to the rim when he tried to eke a final swig from the dregs.

  Empty, empty, empty. The flask. The bottle. The disgusting leather pouch. Martin tried to make himself throw it away, but he couldn’t do it. He’d had it for years, that little pouch. He couldn’t even remember its original purpose now, but he had used it to stow loose papers as a schoolboy. He’d strung a rope under the flap and slung it over his shoulder when he worked as a bicycle courier for a few short, miserable months in his sixteenth year.

  Years later he still had it, and it had been the first thing to hand when he thought to run to Simone’s office at the agency after learning of her death. Before anybody else thought to do it. An instinct he had thanked the heavens for at the time, and cursed shortly thereafter and ever since.

  “You are a metaphor for my entire life,” he said, raising the empty glass to the pouch. It sat on his table silently, refusing to respond to his toast. “A promising start. Then one wrong turn and the next seven years wasted. Unable to serve any useful purpose, stuck in the dark to molder and rot. By the time you’re free once more, it’s far too late for you. You contain no secrets, have no more power, no more teeth with which to bite. Empty and hideous. You’re fit only to discard.”

  You’re boring a leather pouch with drunken philosophy, imbecile. Martin transferred the tumbler to his right hand, pulling a lever near his wrist. His more-than-fingers began to tighten, squeezing inexorably closer until, with a pop, the glass shattered, sending shards to the ground.