Gossamer Wing (21 page)

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.

“Quince tartlet? That one’s plain silly,” Charlotte protested.

“Shh. I’m busy admiring you. Don’t distract me.”

“That doesn’t feel like admiration.”

“If it’s not, I don’t know what is. You’re wholly admirable, my love. Viewed from any angle.” And despite her grumbling she was wholly ready for him, Dexter saw. She trembled when he teased a finger over her. When he ventured farther, she let out a soft, deep sigh.

It wasn’t enough. He wanted moans. He wanted pleading, begging. And he decided he would have that from her before the night was out, even if it meant neither of them slept a wink. Dexter felt reckless, emboldened perhaps by the knowledge that Charlotte couldn’t see him.

“Those trousers you were wearing today were hardly innocent either. You might as well have been wearing your underthings to walk around outside.”

“They’re comfortable,” she argued. “And everybody’s wearing them these days.”

“They make me think of doing exactly what I’m doing now.” He did a few more things to make the point more strongly.

“I rather like what you’re doing now. Perhaps I should acquire more of them and wear them every day.”

“They make every other man who sees you think the same thing. I don’t like that.”

Charlotte chuckled, the sound as velvety soft as sin. “Jealousy, Lord Hardison? Is that wise, do you think?”

“Bugger wisdom,” he retorted, unfastening his trousers to give his viciously firm erection some breathing room and quickly sliding on the sheath he’d had the foresight to stow in his pocket earlier. Returning his hands to her rear end he gave her an affectionate squeeze, teasing with his thumbs. “Hmm. Speaking of buggery—”

“Not if we live a thousand years,” Charlotte snapped.

Dexter laughed and obediently returned to the methods of sensual torture that seemed most effective in driving Charlotte mad with desire. “When we return to the Dominions, perhaps we can reevaluate.”

She gasped at what he was doing with his fingers, but somehow Dexter knew it was his words and not his actions that prompted her to whisper, “Don’t.”

“Is it the idea of reevaluating that bothers you, or the notion that you might actually be alive long enough to worry about it?”

“We can’t talk about what happens when we return. I can’t.”

“I’m going to,” he said stubbornly. “For this one night. I don’t care if it’s unwise. I don’t care if it’s pretense on your part. It isn’t on mine.”

“Dexter . . .”

“You’re my wife, Charlotte,” he reminded her. “And tonight that’s all I want. To make love to my wife. And imagine what it will be like in another few weeks when I’m making love to her in my bed at home.”

She might have been crying. The shuddering breaths she took might have been caused by tears, not bliss, and Dexter knew it. But he sank into her anyway, no longer able to resist the temptation she presented. Her body welcomed him in with a shivering embrace, and if her groan ended on a sob he was too far gone to care. Or so he told himself.

He reached beneath her hips, hitching her closer, finding the place where his body slid into hers and using his fingers to give her the friction he knew she needed. She came in seconds, squeezing so tightly around him that he gasped. Struggling for strength, he rode her pleasure out but kept himself under control, not ready for it to be over.

When her trembling stopped at last, Charlotte pushed her head clear of the layers of skirt, but did not look back at him. He could see her fists clenched hard enough to whiten at the knuckles, peeking out from under the billows of silk and lace like meters of her tension.

“Your wife, you said,” she reminded him in a whisper. She turned her head a little, and he could see the sheen of tears still dampening her cheek. “I want that too. For tonight, I mean,” she said a bit too hastily, and Dexter felt a bolt of unreasonable hope shoot through him.

He leaned over her back, crushing her gown between them and pressing a kiss along her shoulder blade, feeling the movement of her muscles and bones through the silk.

“It doesn’t have to be just for tonight. It can be for as many nights as you like.”

“Not if I never come back.”

“No, Charlotte.”

“I never expected to, you know. Come back from this trip, I mean. I never planned for what I might do afterward, I was too busy getting to this point to think about that. Too many things can go wrong for me to hope for an afterward, anyway, and I’ve known that all along. If it happens, you rejoice, but you don’t put your trust in it. That’s part of the training. But I didn’t think I would mind it this much when I came to it.”

She was crying again and his heart broke a little. He felt responsible, as though by encouraging her to unburden herself to the point of tears the other day, he’d weakened Charlotte’s defenses to her own emotions. Although he knew it was no way to help, he did the first thing available to him to try to take her mind off her pain; he moved again, easing into a rhythm, forging a connection the only way she seemed willing to allow.

Foolish
, his mind insisted,
selfish
. But his body was so much more convincing.
Sweet
, it told him.
Mine, mine
. Soon all the words disappeared, melting into pleasure that mounted too rapidly to contain. When Dexter felt Charlotte tighten around him again, heard a cry that could not be mistaken for anything but pleasure, he pushed into her until he couldn’t anymore and emptied himself like he was spilling out his very soul.

Fifteen

NANCY AND PARIS, FRANCE

“DON’T SLIP!”

Dexter would have rather found a private spot on level ground for launching the
Gossamer Wing
on its maiden night voyage, but the schedule simply didn’t permit scouting for such a location. Once they’d recovered from their bout of amorous insanity, Charlotte had barely had time to change into more suitable clothing for her mission before it was full dark.

“Don’t fall through the roof,” Charlotte retorted in a whisper.

“Witty, my sweet meringue. Are you sure you remembered your canteen?”

“It’s right here.”

“Boot knife?”

“In my boot.”

“Loaded pistol?”

“I have it, but I won’t use it. I can’t wear it on my thigh in the harness, and I’d never reach it in time in the shoulder holster with my jacket fastened.”

Charlotte already had the larger, lighter of the two cases braced between the roof and a chimney. The back side of the building was dark, and Dexter’s eyes were still adjusting. He wished he had looked longer at her in the light, back in the room.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked politely, wrestling the second case open and tugging out the rigging. Like the silk balloon, it had not been dyed black, but a very dark gray-blue judged by Murcheson’s experts to be the best color for camouflage against the night sky. The color was certainly difficult to see here, on the darkened slate roof of the hotel. So was Charlotte, in her black jacket, breeches and boots—no decorative spats this time—with her bright hair tucked under her helmet, and smudged kohl masking the rest of her fair skin.

“Just hold that there,” Charlotte replied, “I’ll do the rest.”

She was focused, brisk, accomplishing the setup of the
Gossamer Wing
far too quickly and efficiently for Dexter’s taste.

“Take this. I made it for you. It weighs just under half a pound.” He slipped a small, flat, black box from one of his coat pockets, and strapped it to the underside of the harness where it wouldn’t interfere with Charlotte’s movements. “It’s a portable telegraphic transmitter. I have the receiver set up in the hotel room. I thought if you wanted to send a message once you were safely at Murcheson’s factory . . .”

“So tiny.” She ran her fingers over the smooth, painted metal box, but didn’t take the time to open it.

“It had to be. You have your maps?” he inquired.

“You’re worse than my father.” She slapped at a pocket, and Dexter heard the soft crinkle of paper under her hand. “I have the maps. I have them memorized, though, so if all goes according to plan I shouldn’t need them.”

“Does anything ever go according to plan?” He handed her the harness, and she shook it out across the roof as quietly as she could, trying to keep the buckles from clinking as she let it down.

“There’s a first time for everything. That’s it, then, I suppose. I can climb in while it’s down flat like this if you’ll hold the tether and the rigging. That way I won’t have to risk jumping into it from this angle in the dark.”

Dexter nodded, numbness beginning to creep through him. He knew this was the reason for her presence in France. He’d known that from the very start. But now, faced with the reality of her disappearing into the night, he finally allowed himself to acknowledge the danger. She was going after the hidden weapon plans, even knowing that the same man who had killed her husband over them might be waiting for her. If their trip to Nancy hadn’t thrown Coeur de Fer off as they’d hoped, this might well be the last time Dexter saw Charlotte. Charlotte herself seemed to take that unthinkable outcome as a given. Except for those few brief, unguarded moments earlier, she always carried her fatalism like a shield. For the first time he comprehended why she might need to do so, why it was easier that way.

He wanted nothing more than to crush her in an embrace and keep her there, safe. He knew if she died he would never forgive himself for letting her go. It would make as much sense as Charlotte blaming herself for Reginald’s death, but Dexter finally understood the origin of such notions. Loving her as he did, so furiously that it pained him, he should surely be able to keep her alive through sheer force of emotion. Sadly, as humans had been discovering since they first identified that emotion, love didn’t work that way.

Charlotte’s determined mask slipped again for a moment as she glanced out over the rooftops of Nancy. She looked miserable and frightened, and Dexter knew he needed to present a calm front. If he pretended confidence in her return, perhaps she would feel it too.

“Have a good trip,” he said, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Be careful. I’ll see you back here tomorrow night or very early the next morning.” He kissed her briefly, resisting the urge to respond with more when she seemed poised to lean into it. Resisting too the urge to tell her how he felt. It would have been a relief to him, but only a burden to her.

After a moment Charlotte nodded and climbed into the harness while Dexter held the rigging and started the inflation process. In a few seconds, he was able to release the balloon and let it bob upward, pulling Charlotte beneath it.

Dexter held the tether until the last possible moment. Releasing his grip on that slim length of line was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

* * *

MARTIN HAD OPTED
to travel to Nancy alone, and Dubois—always interested in a chance to save money, and never able to focus on more than one issue at a time—had allowed it. Martin left his team in Paris, following a hunch that all was not what it seemed with the latest change in the honeymooning pair’s travel plans.

They spent too much time for his comfort in Murcheson’s factory, where Martin had been unable to place a mole. Nor could he spare men to troll the harbor in hopes of spying the Hardisons as they took sail from the factory slips. He only knew Murcheson was up to far more than a plot to outbid Dubois on a steamrail contract. So one of Martin’s men had remained in Le Havre to monitor comings and goings at Murcheson’s factory there, while another performed the same function at the Gennevilliers facility. A third lookout was tasked with watching the Palais Garnier’s entrances, while a fourth man waited in reserve by the radio communicator, in case Martin needed him.

Dubois was up to something as well, Martin could tell. Something to do with Murcheson, something he was keeping from Martin, probably for no other reason than that he could. This deception added a layer of complication and worry for Martin in his own planning, and was another mark in the long tally of Dubois’s sins.

One day . . .

His fond imagining of Dubois’s violent end was interrupted by movement in the window across the narrow street. A sheer curtain shrouded the view of the Hardison’s sitting room, but Martin could make out their silhouettes, large and petite forms moving about the room. They seemed to be preparing to leave, as the Baron had hoisted what appeared to be a sizeable pair of suitcases or trunks under his oversized arms.

“What are you doing with those, brute?” Moving closer to the window, Martin all but pressed his nose against the glass, wishing once again that he’d been able to continue bugging their rooms. Once discovered, however, the bugs became pointless, and he wasn’t one to waste equipment. He also found himself vaguely disgusted by their personal goings-on, he who had scarcely a memory of sex and no wish to revisit the issue.

Lady Hardison’s silhouette looked wrong, Martin thought, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Smaller even than usual, and her movements seemed less graceful and flowing. Perhaps she was wearing the new trousers again, though they didn’t seem popular as an evening style. In the trousers she looked like an androgyne to Martin, who cared even less about fashion than he did about sex, except as it informed him in his trade.

When the Hardisons closed the door behind them, Martin risked a moment with his eyes closed, then stole a swig of the brandy he kept in a flask close by. It would take them at least two minutes and twenty seconds to descend the stairs to the lobby, leave the key at the desk and exit, so he had that much time to collect his thoughts. When three minutes had passed, Martin wondered if they had taken the lift. At five minutes, he considered that the lift might have malfunctioned. He kept his eyes glued to the entrance for another five minutes before cursing under his breath.

They had obviously gone out of their room but not left the hotel. The place had only two entrances, both of which Martin could see from his vantage point. It was eleven o’clock. They had already dined at the bistro down the street and taken dessert in their suite, but now they had left their rooms again and taken luggage with them. Absconded, clearly, but how? And to where?

Perhaps they were still in the hotel. Martin had checked thoroughly, and he knew Nancy well. There were no other exits to the building. Only one door at the front courtyard, one side entrance the staff used, not even so much as a door leading to the—

Words his mother never taught him streamed from Martin’s mouth as he jerked his gaze upward, scanning the roofline for any motion, any sign of activity. He was seconds from deciding that the peaked, pitched roof was not a likely prospect for any human activity, when something caught his eye.

Or rather, a
nothing
caught his eye. There was a dark spot, blanking out the stars in a flattened oval. As he watched, the oval rose over the rooftop and diminished against the night sky, a minuscule and fast-dwindling blue flame below it the only clue to its nature.

Through the spyglass he caught a glimpse, a shadowed shape, for a few heartbeats. He was warming up his radio transmitter even as the shadow vanished from his sight.

* * *

THE NIGHT WAS
clear, for which Charlotte was grateful. She hated to think what rain might do to the sooty blue dye on the silk of her beloved airship. It was difficult to look at the
Gossamer Wing
in this tarnished incarnation. She had almost cried to see her beautiful helmet sullied so, but Dexter had promised her a new one soon.

He had kissed her exactly,
exactly
like a husband seeing a wife off on a weekend holiday.

Damn him
.

She couldn’t sustain any resentment, though. He was too kind, his recent forcefulness notwithstanding, and she could hardly deny his appeal at this point. She could, and did, wish she had met him years sooner. If she had, she wouldn’t be here now. It seemed safe enough to accept that, now that it was too late for it to matter.

The balloon blocked out most of her view of the stars, but Charlotte could still make out enough to appreciate the beauty of the evening. A little too cool, perhaps, but she preferred that to having it be too hot. There was the tiniest sliver of a moon, not enough to give her away on the rooftop. She tried to shake the feeling of being rushed, of things happening more quickly than she could control, and forced herself to relax in the harness. The lights of Nancy dwindled beneath her as she left the smaller city behind and aimed toward Paris.

Hours later, chilled to the bone and struggling with fatigue, she spotted the grid of much brighter lights that marked her destination. Paris gleamed through the night. It beckoned her like a moth to flame, and she hoped the metaphor didn’t imply similar disastrous consequences for her.

Sophisticated though the grand old city was, even Paris slept at three in the morning. Charlotte saw only a few passing vehicles in the street below as she lowered her craft to the blessedly flat roof in front of the green dome on the Palais Garnier. She trusted the brilliantly lit gilded statues on the façade to divert the attention of any onlookers from the tiny blue flame and blimp-shaped black spot against the sky.

The very ease of it made her nervous. She had expected some sort of difficulty to arise by now. For a good two minutes after freeing herself from the harness and tethering the airship, she crouched with a hand on her pistol butt, waiting for somebody to spring at her from some dark corner of the rooftop.

Nobody sprang, however. Once the slight panic had passed, Charlotte straightened up and headed for the base of the statue of Harmony.

She glanced around once more to be certain before reaching to the back of the main figure’s robe where the hem nearly reached the pedestal. The gold-painted bronze fell in folds, and Charlotte said a silent prayer as she gripped a particular one of those folds as tightly as possible and pulled down on it with all her might.

At first there was nothing, no response, and her heart leaped to her throat before she heard a subtle click and felt the piece move under her hand just as Reginald had once described. Bronze squeaked against bronze, but the old mechanism still worked. The piece swung out and down, and she had only to twist it to the horizontal to reveal the little nook in which a switch waited. She flipped it before proceeding along the edge of the roof, counting stones in the low parapet.

First course, third from the corner, not the discolored brick but the one next to it
. She pressed on it hard, twice to the top right corner of the stone, thrice to the lower left, once to the top left . . . and it sprang back against her fingers, swinging open with hardly a whisper. No changed codes, no tricks or traps with the mechanisms. The gears were a bit rusty, but a thick coating of grease had kept them functional.