“Dexter.”
They had been practicing, the better to lend an air of genuine affection to their engagement. See, her tone of voice told him, I can say your first name with no hesitation at all, because I have taught myself to say it as part of my duty to the Crown.
“Are you feeling quite well?”
She tried to think how to explain what she was feeling, but decided against it and went with a shrug instead.
“I’m not used to being back among so many people yet, I suppose.”
“Steam car outings and salons aren’t really adequate preparation for this, it’s true,” he sympathized. “I’d much rather be in my workshop. I’ve always hated these things.”
His voice was mild, pleasant. He seemed to be enjoying himself well enough. Perhaps he was simply as good an actor as he was a dancer.
Charlotte allowed herself the luxury of a slightly longer look at her partner while he steered them around a tricky knot of fellow revelers. In the gleam of the gaslight, she could see the russet tint that softened the black of his hair and brows. Clean-shaven in the current fashion, hair neatly trimmed. The dark gold figured brocade of his waistcoat played up a golden hue she hadn’t noticed before in his complexion. The Chen influence, she supposed, recalling Dexter’s Chinese ancestry. His features were pure Hardison, however, elegant but just a bit boyish. It would have made an ideal face for a rake, had he chosen to wield it that way.
He didn’t, of course. As far as she knew, he had never dallied indiscreetly, never played the cad, never so much as publicly sullied the reputation of the local barmaid her father had informed her was the occasional companion of the Baron’s nights. The Viscount had had a man check on that sort of thing, apparently.
Dexter had given the young woman a generous settlement the day after Charlotte demonstrated her airship to him. That was before he had even spoken with the Viscount and given his official pledge of participation in the charade. He hadn’t been seen in the barmaid’s company since, her father had reported.
“It’s time,” Dexter whispered in her ear as the last few bars of the waltz drew the crowd to a halt. While the others applauded, Dexter led Charlotte quickly out to the terrace. As they descended the steps and headed for a secluded corner of the garden, she told herself that her shiver was only a result of the late April evening’s gathering chill.
He pulled her to a halt around a corner formed by a boxwood hedge and an overflowing herbaceous border. A starlit fountain surrounded by low-growing white roses greeted them with charming sound and scent. There was a bench, of course, placed advantageously for courting couples. The Vanderbilts’ townhouse was somewhat infamous for the convenience of its gardens when trysting was on the agenda.
“Shall I kneel?”
“Whatever for?” She looked back toward the house, to the relative safety of the lights and crowd, visible in twinkling glimpses through the spring foliage.
“Veracity,” he said with a shrug. She could tell he was stung.
“I apologize.”
“No, no. I didn’t mean to be flippant. I know this can’t be easy for you. I’ve never been married, much less . . . well. I shouldn’t jest.”
That hurt more, his being kind for the sake of her feelings. She couldn’t allow that. “No, you’re right. By all means, let’s get into the spirit of the thing.”
“Are you sure—”
“Quite sure, Mr. Hardison.”
“Dexter,” he reminded her.
Charlotte was glad for the night, for the cover of shadow in the secluded little lover’s nook. Dexter had been so unfailingly kind, so courteous and thoughtful, these past few weeks. Ushering her into and out of steam cars, holding her chair, opening doors and fetching her drinks. Making painfully polite conversation with her mother and her mother’s friends, always behaving as though he were eager to get back to her side.
He was the hero who had brought her out of mourning, the knight in friendly bear’s armor who had won her from her dark castle of grief with his gentle, determined charm. For a novice, Hardison seemed brilliant at the long game.
Charlotte’s mother had exclaimed with joy when Charlotte confessed to her—per the plan—that Dexter intended to propose at tonight’s ball. And she had completely mistaken the reasons behind Charlotte’s subsequent tears.
Charlotte had known Reginald for eight years, been courted by him for two of those years, and was married to him for fewer than seventy-two hours. Three nights. Theirs was a reserved but friendly courtship, and she had enjoyed his company in bed by that third night.
She had loved her husband, and welcomed his affections eagerly, if shyly. But she had never felt this. Charlotte had never felt a fraction of the huge, unnamable thing that overcame her when Hardison was anywhere in the vicinity. She had never breathed Reginald in, or felt his absence like the absence of some essential element in the air whenever he left her side. During their courtship, she had never missed Reginald like a limb when he went home for the day, or even when he went off to spend several months in Europa. Perhaps because she had known him so long, she had been unable to imagine that he might not return.
Reginald had never loomed the way Hardison—Dexter—loomed over her now without even trying, in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the sheer physical magnitude of the man. Immense though he was, Charlotte couldn’t lie to herself about the real reason he seemed so terribly real, so terribly present next to her in the dark.
She wanted him. She lusted for him, even though she knew she shouldn’t.
It was new to her, such uncontrollable physical desire. And like all things she couldn’t control, she distrusted it. She distrusted herself when she felt the pull of it, and she felt guilt beyond measure for never having felt this way about her actual husband. What had she been depriving Reginald of, by not responding this way to him? How had she deprived herself? Had Reginald known what they were missing? Surely he must have, men always seemed to know those sorts of things, no matter how new they were to the whole business. Had he cared? Whether she wanted to or not, Charlotte found she cared. Now, after the fact, when it was too late by five years. She cared very much.
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t. Her marriage to Hardison was to be a sham, a ploy, she reminded herself. His interest was in the technical novelty of his mission, and hers was in regaining the plans and helping ensure the French got no further in building their dreadful weapon, as she field-tested the stealth potential of the Gossamer Wing.
Here in the romantic dark, however, Dexter leaned over her as they sat side by side on the lover’s bench . . . and it might have been real. For a moment, it seemed real.
For a moment, Charlotte decided, she might even let herself pretend.
* * *
HE’D THOUGHT HER an angel in the sunlight. Now, Dexter saw that he had been wrong.
Charlotte was a creature made for night gardens. She bloomed in the starlight and moonlight, opening like a sweetly scented white blossom under the indirect glow of the night sky. She was too subtle to need anything so blatant as sunlight in order to shine.
He wondered if she had chosen the color of the dress on purpose to tease him. Palest blue silk with an opalescent shimmer in the mesh overlay, the blue that melted into a cloudless sky, rendering her invisible on her airship. She was the opposite of invisible in the ballroom, wearing this blue. It matched her eyes, set off her hair . . . and the décolletage was inspired, more daring than a young unmarried woman was allowed. The prerogative of a young matron. Or a young widow who was finally out of mourning.
Dexter wanted to run his finger along the edge of the silk, push down the little extra rim of net that pretended at modesty to reveal another inch or so of peachy-soft skin. He scooted a few more inches away from her, lest he forget himself in the moonlight and give in to that temptation.
If he had been courting her in earnest t
he past month or so, he would have risked placing his lips just there at that moment, right on the soft rise below her clavicle. She was a widow after all, not a green girl. If he were a real suitor, he might well have dared far more than that by this time. Would she, he wondered, taste faintly of tea and lemon?
It was business, Dexter reminded himself. Charlotte had lost a husband, one she’d loved enough to want to avenge at the risk of her own life. She was no sophisticated companion to spend a night or two with and then leave after presenting a costly bauble. Nor was she an accommodating barmaid with a playfully liberal interpretation of morality and no illusions about his intentions toward her. She was a lady. And he, curse it, was a gentleman. According to the briefings he’d received from Darmont, aside from supporting Charlotte’s mission, his interest in the matter was supposed to be confined to the undersea station and the need for seismic monitoring given the frequency of earthquakes in the English Channel.
If he were really to get into the spirit of the thing, he sighed to himself, then the delectable Charlotte, Lady Moncrieffe, would probably toss him on his arse. Petite she might be, but he knew she’d been well trained for her assignment and he had little doubt she could flip him onto the ground as easily as he flipped a hot cog out of a mold.
So he remained where he was, as far as possible from her on the tiny bench, feeling as though the weighty matter between them might shove him straight off his perch at any moment.
At that moment the universe, in its capricious whimsy, decided to intervene.
A gaggle of three chattering maidens and one married pseudo-chaperone came prancing along the path, and among their number was a young lady who had done everything in her power to gain the newly socially inclined Baron Hardison’s attention that month. Never mind that the man was clearly attached to Lady Moncrieffe, and that rumor had them nearly engaged already. Either the girl herself or her mother was dead set on catching the elusive Baron’s eye. There were not so many single, eligible young men this season that any of them could shake this sort of pursuit, except by engagement or marriage. Even a few broken engagements had been engineered as the Season neared its closing month and the young ladies grew more desperate. It was nearly May already; by June it would be too hot, and too late by far, to find husbands for all the wilting flowers.
The tittering group drew abreast of them with a fresh spate of murmurs, giggles and apologies when the trysting pair was spied. Then, bowing and glancing over their shoulders as they drifted away, the girls launched into an analysis that was not entirely as sotto voce as propriety demanded.
The phrases “On the outs,” “So promising for you, Meggie,” and “Ooh, could have driven a steam car between them” were not quite as hard for Dexter to hear as “. . . bit long in the tooth too, don’t you think?”
Their voices echoed down the path until they were out of sight and the night’s stillness settled again. Finally risking a glance over at Charlotte, Dexter saw that she had covered her face with one kid-gloved hand. Her shoulders were shaking gently and he rushed to clasp her free hand, to reassure her, to offer a handkerchief for her tears.
“You’re never. Not in the least,” he insisted in a furious whisper.
“Wh-what?” She lowered her hand at last and he saw she was not crying. She was laughing so hard her face was turning visibly red even in the moonlight.
“You’re not long in the tooth,” he explained, unsure what to make of her reaction.
“Steam car,” she offered, waving a hand at the expanse of bench between them, then dissolved into another spate of helpless giggles.
He resisted manfully only a second or two, then joined her and laughed until his sides hurt, until the almost painful fit of mirth ebbed enough for them to speak again.
“Oh, lord. Was I ever that young and stupid?” she mused aloud, finally accepting the handkerchief from Dexter and dabbing her eyes with it.
“I doubt you were ever that desperate. So her name’s Meggie. I kept forgetting . . .”
“You’re no spring chicken either, you know. You’re older than I am by a good five years.”
“True. I’m practically doddering at thirty-two. Oh, heaven spare us, they’re on their way back if I hear correctly.”
“Give me the ring, we’ll slip back inside before they spot us again.”
“It’s no good,” he hissed, glimpsing the little group of walkers on the path directly opposite the bench from the fountain. In another few seconds they would see them again; sooner, if the faux lovebirds stood up and tried to abandon the bench. “I’m afraid there’s only one thing for it.”
“Indisputable proof of our affection?”
“If you’re game.”
“For Crown and country, Mr. Hardison?” Her smile was arch, but not at all unwilling. Dexter’s stomach did a jig as he closed the distance between them and scooped her closer with an arm around her waist. No time for finesse. A moment before the gigglers rounded the fountain, he captured Charlotte’s cheek in his other hand.
“Close your eyes and think of England,” he whispered as he lowered his mouth to hers, and he caught another chuckle trying to escape from her parted lips.
Then there was heat, and breath, and the unparalleled thrill of feeling Charlotte begin to tremble as he swept his tongue deep inside her mouth. He was scarcely aware of the girlish giggles transforming to shocked squeals across the pathway, the horrified scuttling away of dainty maiden feet, as his hand dragged itself down of its own accord to tug at filmy net and expose more down-soft bosom, to cup that softness through its layer of confining silk and tease his thumb over the harder point that seemed to flare in instant response to his touch.
More, his body was insisting, and he probably ruined the arm of his jacket against the stone of the bench as he reached beneath Charlotte’s legs to lift her into his lap, but Dexter didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but more.
His hungry lips had blazed a trail down to her neckline and his hand had made a good deal of headway beneath Charlotte’s petticoats and back up her leg when her alarmed gasp broke through the lust-fog.
“That girl’s mother. Dexter. That girl is coming back with her mother!”
She drummed on his shoulder in a panic, and he released her and hurriedly smoothed her skirt back into place, then reached into his trouser pocket to snag the ring.
“Marry me?”
He didn’t wait for an answer or bend to one knee, just shoved the ring toward her and grabbed her free hand to pull her off the bench and back toward the terrace.
“Certainly.”
She caught up enough to loop her arm through his, and had the ring worked onto the appropriate finger by the time they passed the distressed girl and her mother who had clearly been working herself up to a fine outrage over the scandalous carryings-on in the garden.
“Lovely evening,” Dexter said, tipping a nonexistent hat to the pair and picking up his pace, though Charlotte was forced to an unsightly scamper to keep up with him. She was quite out of breath when they reached the relative safety of the terrace.
The scampering was responsible for her flushed face and slight air of disarray, and the brightness of her eyes, of course. Not what had preceded the scampering. No, surely not. She couldn’t possibly feel as flustered as he did, or as full of unsated arousal careening blindly about with nowhere to go.
“See? Our relationship is full of intrigue and danger already, Charlotte,” he said, hoping he sounded more droll than hopelessly besotted.
Her look was definitely droll, if still a bit charmingly mussed. Her lips, he noticed despite himself, looked extremely freshly kissed and no mistaking it. He decided not to tell her.
“Nonsense. It’s a highly respectable marriage of social convenience between a dull, long-in-the-tooth widow and an aging bachelor who’s finally realized he needs a woman’s touch to properly manage his an
cestral estate. Nothing could be more ordinary. Baron Hardison.”
But then she smiled, with those delightfully wicked lips. Like magic, two utterly charming dimples materialized on her cheeks.
How long, he was already beginning to wonder, might he be able to drag their mission out?
Five
UPPER NEW YORK DOMINION
CHARLOTTE’S MOTHER WOULD have preferred a wedding with all the considerable pomp and ceremony of her first. After all, she pointed out, the first marriage had hardly lasted very long at all, and even Charlotte’s mourning had lasted longer than her engagement and marriage combined.
“A bit too long for good taste, these days, dear,” she’d pointed out gently. “Although I know one can’t hurry grief.”
One can suborn grief entirely in the rush of learning to fly, and going through months of combat and strategy training, Charlotte refrained from saying. To her mother, she was a proper grieving widow. Just as her father was a proper gentleman who had never worked a day in his life.
Tell that to the French, who still spoke of him in furious hushed tones as La Main de la Mort Silencieuse . . . the Hand of Silent Death. Would she live long enough to earn her own melodramatic epithet, Charlotte wondered? It seemed a less romantic prospect lately, dying for her country. She rather thought she might prefer to live to fight another day. Her course was long settled, though. Looking to the distant future was pointless.
“The dove gray is pretty with your coloring, Charlotte. Unless you’d prefer blue? I know I won’t talk you into pink. You’re still young enough to get away with it, you know. It’s quite fashionable this year.”
“Peacock blue,” Charlotte said, much to her mother’s obvious surprise. “That’s popular just now, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“And it would flatter me, I think.”
“Of course it would. Would you like me to arrange a visit from Madame Elaine?”
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