Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“My wife, Charlotte.”

She threw Dexter a warning glance for flubbing the introduction, but the older gentleman covered with a courtly bow over her hand. “ Baroness , it is a great pleasure. I understand it’s your first visit to Europa. Welcome to France.”

She giggled, as that seemed an indelible part of her cover persona now, and bobbed a little curtsy. “Mr. Murcheson. Oh, are you the Mr. Murcheson who makes those lovely curio boxes? How exciting! Dex, we must see if we can impose on Mr. Murcheson for a tour of his factory!”

The passwords Europa and curio having safely passed between them, they proceeded to make plans for a visit to the factory that very afternoon. Then they all shared fashionable coffee while the gentlemen talked smithing. Dexter was firm and businesslike, while Charlotte continued to speak in sentences that seemed to demand exclamatory punctuation. By the time they parted ways with Murcheson and she and Dexter returned to their suite, she was thoroughly sick of herself and her cheeks were aching from all the forced smiles.

“It really is like an optical illusion,” Dexter remarked, loosening his cravat and shrugging his coat off onto the nearest sofa arm.

“I beg your pardon?” She sighed with relief as she removed her hat. One of the pins had been poorly placed, poking her with distressing frequency throughout the contact session.

“I know you’re the same person. It looks like you, it’s wearing the same clothing. But that insipid creature simply isn’t you.”

You seemed to like her well enough on the ship , Charlotte was tempted to say, but she knew there was a difference. On the ship she had come to feel almost childlike for a time, able to enjoy things freely. Playing the part had become a game, and not all her giddiness had been a pretense.

Now, however, the charade was in deadly earnest. Each giggle, each stupid question or eyelash-batting, had a purpose. To misdirect, to glean information from an unwitting source. She had to be, very deliberately and aggressively, the last person anybody would suspect of espionage. It was her job to be other than what she seemed.

“Of course it isn’t me. That’s the point,” she snapped.

“She gives me a headache.”

“Me too. But darling,” she simpered, because the room might even now be under surveillance, “you know it’s just because I get nervous around people.” She shot him a warning look, which it took him a moment to process. When he did, he nodded with weary resignation and mouthed an apology. She shrugged it off.

“Would you like to come with me to see Mr. Murcheson’s factory this afternoon, sweetheart? Perhaps there’ll be a shop. You know how you love shops,” he said with droll good humor, the perfect indulgent honeymoon husband.

She smirked. “Well dearest, a poor lonely widow has to find some way to spend her days.” With an undignified flop, she slumped to the sofa opposite Dexter and let her head loll back. It was an unseasonably warm day in Honfleur, and the fans in the room only seemed to stir the air, not cool it. Charlotte had felt sticky since they’d reached the coast, even in the evenings when the temperature dropped.

“Her money too, I suppose. But lambkin, I know a number of widows who find other ways to spend their time. Fascinating ways, some of them.”

She glared at him and whispered, “Lambkin?”

He shrugged, then grinned in a completely unrepentant way. His aggressive good cheer was almost grating.

“Volunteer work?” she guessed. “Charity balls?”

Dexter lifted an eyebrow, seeming to gauge the risk of his answer before speaking. “Yes, in fact I know several very accommodating widows who are well known for volunteering to work on balls, among other things. Perhaps not for charity, but certainly out of the goodness of their own hearts.”

She held her stern face for only a few seconds before breaking. He laughed along with her, and she watched him with delight until she realized she was watching him with delight, at which point she quickly looked away. His next words caught her completely off guard.

“Charlotte, tell me more about Reginald.”

Time froze for an instant, or perhaps it was only that her heart seemed to stop beating. Then it thudded in her ears, loud and insistent, as a rush of feeling came over her. It was something like terror, or panic. Charlotte couldn’t name it, nor did she understand why it came upon her now. In broad daylight, in this peaceful setting, with a man she trusted.

“Why?”

“Because he was important to you.” He was keeping his voice light on purpose, she thought, but she could hear the serious intent beneath that.

“What would you like to know?”

“Did you love him?”

She nodded. “Yes. Very much.”

“What was he like?”

Might as well ask her what air was like, or water. It was there in the background and it was essential. You only noticed its importance when you no longer had it.

“He was quiet. I had known him since I was about fourteen, and the first time I saw him I thought ‘There is the man I shall marry one day.’ Reginald did not know this until much later, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He had come to see my father on some business matter. He can’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen at the time himself. Still at university. He had started very young, though, so he was nearly finished at that point. My father’s people had already tapped him. He was brilliant, you see. Do you know the, ah, nature of his particular work?”

Dexter paused and then nodded. “Yes. I’m familiar with it, although I don’t understand it.”

“Few people do.” She tried to think of ways to describe Reginald, ways that didn’t involve code-breaking or the Agency he gave his life to. “He was never good at people. Numbers and patterns, he had a passion for, and music. But people baffled him.” She rose and wandered to the French doors that opened onto a narrow iron-railed balcony. The street, two stories below, was noisy and even hotter than the room. The balcony, however, offered a breeze and a splendid view of the harbor from one end. “Except for a few, and I was one of them. Even as a young girl, I could always talk to Reginald. It was inappropriate, I suppose, but I was always in the library and when Reginald visited the estate—which was fairly often, once he started working for my father—we would sit there together. Usually alone, which was the inappropriate part. We would talk about books and ciphers. Other things.”

“His misanthropy?”

Charlotte smiled. “He wasn’t really that way. He never could stop thinking, analyzing. I suppose I was just enough like him to understand. I even went into the same line of work, for a time, after all. Unlike him, however, I seem to be able to function in society without too much difficulty.”

“It’s an act, though.”

“Yes. I much prefer being private.” A gull cried overhead, sweeping through the air toward the estuary, and Charlotte longed to join it in flight.

Dexter frowned, stopping to choose his words. “You were willing to give that up, though. Privacy, I mean. When you married Reginald.”

Letting her eyes track along the bright strand of the beach, Charlotte tried to think whether she had really even considered that factor when she married. She had been so young, only twenty-two, and she had barely known herself. Being with Reginald was hardly like being with another person at all.

It struck her, with a deep pang of honest regret, that if Reginald had lived she might well have grown quite miserable living with him. She would have suffered the most horrible loneliness of all, that of being with another person who isn’t present in spirit. There was no way to explain the feeling to Dexter without sounding disloyal. Charlotte finally responded without really saying much at all.