Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

Hoping to learn something else of interest, Charlotte shifted her directional microphone’s focus to another room while she kept an occasional eye on the unseemly proceedings in Dubois’s office. With her attention divided thus, she waited out Dubois while listening in on two other French businessmen argue about the outcome of a cricket match.

“Perhaps it was in code,” Dexter suggested later as he helped her from the harness. To maintain the appearance of a honeymooning couple they were staying together as much as possible, dividing their time between Charlotte’s test flights and Dexter’s sessions with the engineering team in the station. Dexter had been put to work piloting the little dinghy that bore Charlotte from a secluded dock under Murcheson’s guard to a point out in the harbor, a safe distance from shore, so she could launch the Gossamer Wing unseen. While he waited for her, he scribbled plans and fiddled with a pile of gadgets he’d appropriated from the team at Atlantis Station.

“The cricket conversation?” she asked, puzzled.

“No, I meant the sex.”

Charlotte blushed. Dexter seemed less and less content with their platonic arrangement, and increasingly inclined to hint they might resume their shipboard relationship, but the risk of distraction was very real to Charlotte. She could not let emotion and physical urges cloud her judgment. It was a matter of life and death to her, and knowing Dexter didn’t feel the same made her anxious. He should be as cautious as she; he risked them both by thinking he was safe to spend a single thought on dalliance.

“What are you doing with all this?” she changed the subject, waving in the direction of the equipment Dexter had brought along.

He followed her gesture with his gaze, then shrugged. “Contemplating possible improvements.”

The second day, Charlotte risked a flight later in the morning. Though the weather had returned to the cool, overcast and intermittently rainy standard for the area, the Gossamer Wing still faded well into the sky.

“Minor success,” she reported gleefully after touching back down beside the furled sail of the dinghy. “More cricket talk too. Perhaps it is code, he was talking about a British bowler. But Dubois was busy dictating a letter about an appointment with someone. The name was very familiar.”

Gathering balloon silk with practiced motions as the Gossamer Wing deflated, Dexter lifted an eyebrow at Charlotte. “The secretary was actually taking dictation? Sounds as though that young woman has many talents.”

Charlotte coughed and avoided his eyes, unwilling to say more about what she had witnessed from her unseen vantage point in the sky. Voyeurism was all too easy with a large enough window and a strong enough lens. Though she hadn’t intended to linger once it was clear the dictation was over, she had found herself compelled to watch.

She still felt aroused from what she’d seen, but she hardly wanted Dexter to know that. It was hard enough to watch him working in shirtsleeves on the tiny boat, his athletic body managing her dirigible and the dinghy’s sail with captivating ease, without the added reminder of everything else that body could do.

“What, Charlotte?”

His question made her look up; his expression made her heart stop. Dexter’s eyes had gone dark, heavy, a quality she had seen on the ship many times. How could he know what she’d been thinking? It was obvious he did, though. His expression screamed lascivious speculation.

“Nothing,” Charlotte lied, returning to the task of stowing the little sugar-candy dirigible parts in their padded case. The tiny craft swayed on the water, making her task more difficult.

“You saw something else. Tell me.”

Unwise , she chided herself, even as she spoke. “I saw the secretary demonstrate another skill. At least I assume she was skilled at it, since Dubois seemed highly appreciative. It was . . . not an activity of which I had been aware, though in retrospect it seems like an obvious possibility. You did it to me, after all.” This last bit was sheer deviltry, a direct response to the glaze of lust over Dexter’s eyes.

“Ah. So you would not be averse to trying this activity? Turnabout is fair play, and all that.”

“You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mr. Hardison.”

But it was Charlotte who felt wobbly, unsure of her footing, when Dexter ignored her warning and kept pressing. “Yet you led me here. You didn’t have to tell me, but you did. You’re curious to try it, aren’t you, Charlotte? I think you liked what you saw.”

“I think it’s a wonder the French get any business done at all.” Jerking the case down onto the floor of the boat and sitting a bit too firmly on the broad plank bench, Charlotte pointedly changed the subject. “Tomorrow afternoon, Dubois is going to be meeting with Maurice Gendreau.”

It took a moment for the name to register with Dexter. Then his eyes widened. “Gendreau? The mad makesmith? He’s supposed to be in exile on some island off the coast of Portugal.”

“Then I hope he has access to a very fast boat, if he’s to make it to that meeting on time.”

“Does Murcheson know he’s back in France?” Dexter asked, lashing the rudder in place then picking up what looked like a cross between a mechanical spider and a small toy steam car.

Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t imagine so. He would have mentioned it, surely. He knew they were corresponding. He thinks Dubois is conspiring with Gendreau to build the post-royalists a weapon that will change the course of Franco–English relations.”

“A doomsday device. These things always end up being about doomsday devices.”

The very notion of such a device made Charlotte chuckle uneasily. “You shouldn’t read sensationalist novels. They’ll rot your brain,” she scolded. “This is a serious business.”

“And here I am playing with toys. At least they’re more entertaining than doomsday devices. Here, watch.” Dexter passed Charlotte one end of a slender, almost threadlike cable. “Hold that. Don’t let go.”

He clamped the miniature vehicle’s crabbed “legs” closed around the cord. Then, holding the other end of the thread to form a gently descending arc between himself and Charlotte, he started the toy up and released it.

She held on and watched, fascinated, as the little car descended the cable toward her then reversed its course to return to Dexter’s hand, seeming all the while to balance on the swaying cable like a tightrope artist. Dexter caught the mechanism, flicked a panel open, adjusted a knob and sent the car back toward Charlotte with scarcely a sound.

“Magic!” She held the gadget up, examining its workings, and found she couldn’t lay it on its side even when she tried. It righted itself instantly every time.

“Gyroscopic stabilization,” Dexter corrected her, “and some very nice clockwork Murcheson provided. It’s a toy he makes at his factory.”

“A toy, but you’ve improved it?”

Dexter grinned. “Not much point in having it go and come back, go and come back, up and down a vertical string. That grows dull quickly. Much more interesting if you can tell it exactly where you want it to stop and go, and make it follow a cable anywhere you can attach one, don’t you think?”

“And carry a payload, perhaps? Silently?”

“You’re quick. That room full of engineers back at Atlantis took ages to catch on to the possibilities. All they saw was a toy.”

“Speaking of Atlantis, we need to get back. Murcheson will want to hear about this meeting with Gendreau. Whether or not it involves anything as dramatic as a doomsday device.”

Dexter nodded and glanced at the sail, unlashing the rudder and sitting back down to direct the boat’s rather lazy course. “We’re heading in that general direction. I just thought it might be nice to travel at honeymoon speed. Good for our cover story.”