Gossamer Wing 1

by Delphine Dryden

  Charlotte nodded, but her mind was already elsewhere. On Dexter, his calm and steady voice in the bowels of the rusty freighter, saving his own life simply by being himself.

  She might have discussed this with Dexter, but he had sent her a terse message to the effect that he would be remaining at the station for the duration of his work there. Charlotte took to walking the quaint streets of Honfleur and second-guessing all her own choices of the past several years until she thought she’d go mad with the knowledge that she had let a vital moment pass her by. She’d been too overwhelmed by the events of that night on the dock to simply state her mind to Dexter, and having failed to do it at once she had lost her nerve and her opportunity.

  The newspapers were diverting for a time, as they were full of the scintillating tale of the heroic agent who sacrificed everything to reveal a traitor to France. True to the promise he’d made the dying man, Dexter had convinced Murcheson and the somewhat bewildered head of French intelligence that Martin’s death could be a public relations opportunity for them both. The official story was that Coeur de Fer, really Jean-Michel Imbert, had spent seven years in deep cover to expose Dubois. He had done it, the papers claimed, for the love of France and the love of Simone Vernier, the notorious femme fatale who had died in pursuit of the truth about Dubois and his involvement in an attempt to prolong the war.

  Charlotte liked the story. Enough of it was true that she forgave the French government their hyperbole in reclaiming Coeur de Fer’s achievement for their own. Whitehall too had conspired in the story to cast Dubois in the worst possible light. He became the violent extremist they had always suspected him of being, seeking the steamrail contract only as a stepping stone to effect greater, unspecified evils against the state. Imbert had stopped him just in time to avert calamity. There were strong hints that Dubois had been seeking out mad engineers to build him a doomsday device of his own; this was treated as de facto proof of his desire for world domination and general malfeasance. Of Gendreau, the papers said nothing. The man himself had returned to St. Helena, his exile reinstated.

  Charlotte knew this whole approach was more about political convenience than anything else; the current powers wanted to discredit not only Dubois but the politicians and old government officials he’d been aligned with—the faction that had fallen from power shortly before the treaty was signed. Still, that version of events lent a romanticism to Imbert’s deeds, and perhaps because of the propaganda she found herself able to forgive him just a little for his actions toward her, Dexter and Murcheson.

  More cold comfort. Charlotte was tired of France. She no longer hated the French, but she longed to be back home, hearing the comfortably familiar accents of the Dominions. The prospect of Reginald’s big, empty house was less alluring. It had never felt like home to her. She had felt more at home with Dexter, even those last few fraught days before his abduction, than she had ever been in the house her late husband had left to her.

  She and Reginald had never shared that house, never even stood in it together. Their first time there would have been when they returned from their honeymoon, ready to start their married life together. That day had never come, and Charlotte thought she’d been suspended ever since, unable to move forward. But the only one holding her back was herself.

  I just want to go home. But how?

  * * *

  IT WAS FINISHED. The last cable had been laid and tested, the technicians thoroughly trained and vetted. They had even been favored with a live test in the form of a slight tremor from the fault along the chalk lithosome to the east, and the system had worked beautifully. The switch was triggered, the silent beam of light shot from the remote sensor back along the glass cable to the station, and the alarm had gone up, just as Dexter had envisioned. The station crew had evacuated safely, and Dexter had been hailed by one and by all.

  The next day, as Dexter made his final adjustments, Murcheson handed him a pair of tickets for a fast clipper ship departing Le Havre for New York in the morning.

  “There’s really no reason to stay any longer,” Murcheson told him. “Your work is done here, and Lady Hardison will need to report to the Agency offices in New York soon to discuss reassignment. This won’t be as comfortable as a luxury liner but it’ll get you home in half the time.”

  “What will happen to her?” Dexter still thought Murcheson might have turned a blind eye to Charlotte’s escapades if he’d wanted to. None of his arguments on her behalf seemed to carry any weight, however. Dexter suspected Lord Darmont’s hand in having her sent down from field work.

  “I think they have some decoding for her to do,” Murcheson replied. “The same sort of thing she was doing before. She’s quite good at it.”

  Dexter nodded. “I’m sure she is.”

  I just don’t know that she ever liked it much, he thought. It had been an interest she shared with Reginald. They had often worked together, she’d mentioned, but she’d begun pressing for field work shortly after his death. She liked to do things. Fly dirigibles and test her nerve in subs and dance around lampposts while wearing trousers. Charlotte strode around Paris and cased opera houses, braved wild cows and shopped like a demon even in provincial French villages.

  It broke his heart to think of her withering away in a dusty office, nose pressed to a stack of encrypted pages. Never flying again.

  Dexter knew he should be racing for the hotel to let Charlotte know about the tickets so she could pack. He wasn’t sure why he was dragging his feet.

  Letdown, probably. He wanted to be home again—his head was full of ideas for when he got back to his workshop—but he felt like he still had things left to do in France.

  The marriage ends when the mission ends. Dexter put his tools away in their cases and the cases into the trunks, his hands moving automatically as his mind poked and prodded at the dilemma.

  She’d sent him a message at the station, asking after his health, reminding him that he was welcome at the hotel if he needed to sleep. Dexter had stayed away, even as he’d cursed himself for doing it. He avoided her because he didn’t want to discuss the end of things, didn’t want to do or say something and realize, “this is the last time.”

  The same wish for avoidance spurred Dexter’s irritation when he opened the door to his berth on the fast clipper only to discover the tiny space crowded with Charlotte’s trunks in addition to his own. Unlike the cruise ship, the clipper featured Spartan accommodations even in first class. With all the luggage, there was barely enough room to walk from the hatch to the bunk.

  Blast.

  He wondered if he’d be able to find a steward and sort out the mess before the ship embarked. The citrusy scent of Charlotte’s perfume already wafted about the cabin, and Dexter was damned if he’d spend the next several days steeping in that fragrance. It was already hard enough to forget their last time together—the night of the steam car explosion in Paris—without having a constant olfactory reminder of the woman to whom he would shortly no longer be married.

  Damn. Damn!

  “Damn!” he repeated aloud.

  “Language, sweetiekins.”

  * * *

  DEXTER SIGHED AS he turned around to face her. “Your bags were put in my berth by mistake. I was just going to find a steward to move them. Which cabin are you in?”

  Charlotte steadied herself against the force of his glare. She saw this flash of honest irritation as an improvement over not seeing him at all. Avoiding her hadn’t seemed like him at all. Anything was better than Dexter not being himself.

  “I’m in this one.”

  “You’re in—no, this is mine. Oh, never mind. Let’s both go. The bursar can sort it out.”

  “No. There’s nothing to sort out. We’re both in this one.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  She pressed forward, forcing him to back up, and closed the hatch behind her. “You’ve been avoiding me for days. This will give us a chance to talk.”

  With no room to maneuver,
Dexter gave up and sat on the bunk. “You arranged this? On purpose?”

  “You sound horrified. That’s not entirely flattering.” She threw her hat atop the nearest trunk and pulled her gloves off in relief. It was another unusually warm day in Le Havre, and Charlotte was eager for the ship to cast off so she could enjoy the cool ocean breeze.

  Her reticule still hung on her wrist, and before she set it aside she pulled Murcheson’s curio box from it, presenting it to Dexter atop her palm. He took it and turned it around in his fingers, not saying anything.

  Charlotte swallowed nervously, unsure how to proceed.

  Best to just jump in, start talking and something will come to me, she decided at last. “I’m no good at those things, and you are. Will you show me how to open it?”

  Dexter raised his eyebrows. “Just like that? You’re through trying?”

  “It’s not my strength,” she shrugged. “I don’t really care about how it’s done, I just like the result. Show me, please?”

  Dexter turned the ornate little cube over once more and pointed to an inlaid starburst pattern on one face. “You see this? The circle around the star? Look here, there’s a seam.”

  Charlotte bent to scrutinize the wooden box, tracing a fingertip where he indicated. She couldn’t see it but she could feel it, an indentation slightly greater than that of the inlay itself.

  “You take two fingers and press, then twist,” Dexter demonstrated, “and it opens.”

  The curio box fanned out into its star-like pattern on his hand; he started the music and handed the box over to Charlotte.

  It seemed so easy now that she knew the trick. “I wasn’t even close,” she admitted, “I never would have thought to try that. Have you worked out some secret spy use for it yet?”

  “No. I like it just as it is.”

  They listened to the Mozart for a few measures, then Dexter cupped a hand over the box and closed it up again to silence it, setting it aside on the railed shelf over the bunk.

  “So this is our last hurrah?”

  Charlotte ignored his question and asked one of her own. “Do you know what I think I’ll do when we get back home?” She continued once Dexter had shaken his head. “I think I’m going to quit the Agency and try my hand at being a dauntless society matron who embraces charitable causes and spends a great deal of time and effort cultivating roses that win awards in local flower shows.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m tired, is the thing. Tired of pretending to be one thing and secretly being another. Tired of never knowing where people stand on anything. All this pretense, it’s exhausting after a while. I don’t know how my mother’s managed it all these years.”

  Dexter was starting to eye her as if she’d sprouted a horn in her forehead or an extra nose, but Charlotte pressed forward, though even she wasn’t quite sure where she was headed.

  “My mother has pretended all her life not to know what my father’s profession is. And he’s always pretended to be a silly stuffed shirt peer who simply travels a great deal. It’s ridiculous. She knows, why pretend? I’ve never understood it.

  “Even Reginald, telling me he hated sport when in reality he was apparently a gifted lemur. I mean acrobat. He even lied about being good at cricket, all because he thought that was what I wanted in a man. Because I didn’t like those things.”

  Dexter coughed into his hand. “Reginald was a lemur?”

  “No, no. He just . . . I praised him for his mind, but I would have loved the rest too. I would have even cheered him on. I could have been that wife to him, that wife who tolerates a lot of talk about googlies and innings. But I never had the chance, because he never showed me all of who he was.”

  “All right. I agree, that does sound silly. I’m still not clear on why your bags are here.”

  He shifted his weight forward as if to stand, and Charlotte panicked. She put a hand on each of his shoulders and pressed back, tipping herself halfway into his lap in the effort to keep him from leaving.

  “I’m doing a terrible job of explaining,” she said. Then she kissed him, leaning into it until, like a switch flipping on, he started kissing her back.

  Kissing felt right, kissing made sense, and when Dexter pulled her down to the bed and rolled her under him that made even more sense. Touching him again was like a cool drink of water after a long, hot day; it restored some parched part of her spirit.

  “You always show people all of who you are,” Charlotte said when they came up for air and lay panting, staring at one another. “Except this past week, you’ve been avoiding me and I haven’t known what you were thinking, and I’ve hated it.”

  “You said you didn’t want to talk about what happened when we got home,” he reminded her. “I couldn’t face you when that was all I wanted to talk about.”

  “I was wrong,” Charlotte admitted. “I was stupid. I want the other Dexter back, the one who fixes my ears, and cares whether I come back when I’m expected, and holds me in the dark and makes me want to feel things for the first time in years.” Saying it aloud took a weight from her heart.

  He grinned and brushed his lips against hers. “It really was also that I was just so busy. The whole team was. It was quite an undertaking, getting the whole system installed in such a short time. I’ll probably have to return within the next year or so to make adjustments and take some readings. Particularly if I want to duplicate it elsewhere.”

  “I’ll try harder to remember the name. Hardison’s Multi-hypercordal Photophosphorescent—no, I’ve got it wrong again, I can tell by the look on your face.”

  Dexter bit his lip, then said the name again for her. “Multi-hyalchordate Phototransphorinating Seismograph.”

  “I do know the seismograph part,” she assured him. “If I can ever get that far.”

  “You won’t need to. The men have already given it another name, and I suspect that’s the one that will stick.” He sounded resigned, but not too upset about it.

  “What do they call it?”

  Dexter sighed. “The Glass Octopus.” She snickered before she could help it, and he shook his head with a mock frown. “For shame, Charlotte. If people could only be bothered to remember their Greek and Latin roots . . .”

  “You are like a balm to my soul,” she murmured at him, stroking a hand up his cheek then feathering her fingers through his forelock. Dexter closed his eyes for a moment, leaning into the caress. Free from his gaze, Charlotte felt brave enough to take her final leap.

  “I love you,” she whispered, “and I want to keep being your wife. I want to go home with you and clutter up your bedroom with negligees and dancing slippers and frivolous hats.”

  Dexter opened his eyes and Charlotte quickly pressed two fingers over his lips before he could interrupt. Then she closed her eyes, because the look on his face was too much to take without bursting into tears, and if she did that she’d never finish.

  “I want to plant an outrageous rose garden, since you said you didn’t have one. With benches for trysting. I also want to have your children, but no more than three at the most. I want you to make me a new dirigible, in pretty colors, because I want people to see it this time, I intend to start a new craze for them. I want to do something useful, but not this anymore. Not being a spy. I’m not sure what, exactly. And as a shorter-term goal, I’d like to spend the trip home in this bunk with you, making love day and night until the crew becomes concerned for our safety and we’re both sore in places we didn’t know existed.”

  She punctuated the end of her speech with a huff of air, expelling the rest of her nervous energy, then dared a peek up at Dexter. He was propped on his elbows, looking down at her, blinking in amazement.

  She blinked back at him. The silence grew until she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Well?” she risked.

  “I prefer to keep my bedroom tidy,” Dexter said solemnly. Charlotte’s heart soared.

  “The frivolous hats are not negotiable,” she insisted, ig
noring the break in her tear-stricken voice. “I shall require them if I’m to be a fashionable young matron.”

  “Oh. Then perhaps I could design a special revolving hat stand. Or better still,” he posited, warming to the idea, “outfit an entire room as a wardrobe, with cranks and levers to move the shelves about, and—”

  “Dexter.”

  “I love you, Charlotte.”

  “I love you,” she said again. “What a lucky thing we happened to marry one another.”

  Kissing ensued, but after a few seconds Dexter lifted his head and nuzzled the tip of her nose with his own, looking delighted.

  “Mrs. Hardison.”

  Charlotte grinned. “Lady Hardison, if you please.”

  “Good heavens. I’ve created a baroness.”

  “You have indeed. Now whatever shall you do with her?”

  Charlotte hardly needed to ask. She already knew Dexter had a limitless supply of ideas.

  READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT STEAM AND SEDUCTION NOVEL FROM DELPHINE DRYDEN

  SCARLET DEVICES

  COMING SOON FROM BERKLEY SENSATION

  THE OLD MEN sitting in the front row presented Eliza Hardison with a uniform front of disapproval as she took her place at the lectern. She was accustomed to this, and told herself she didn’t care. Every time, she told herself this. One day she might come to believe it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said firmly, then paused as if to wait for the smattering of polite applause that had greeted each previous speaker.

  From out on the street, noises drifted in to fill the silence. A rumbling steam lorry, the honk of a horn. Somewhere in the back rows, a man cleared his throat.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the Society, thank you for this opportunity. Today I present for the first time my recent findings on the underpinnings of certain tenacious mythologies in the lower-class working culture, and the very real limiting effects those mythologies can have on behavior and the perception of available alternatives, with a final consideration of who might benefit from—”