Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

The older man smiled again. “Nobody ever really knows, before they wed, whether the marriage will be a good one or not. No matter what the original reason for the marriage, no matter the obstacles or benefits it might present, any marriage has as good a chance as any other, from all I’ve seen. What’s more, we don’t get to choose who captivates us. It simply happens, and denying it rarely works out well. And so my advice to you, Mr. Hardison, is that you go back to Paris and spend your honeymoon with your wife .”

THOUGH THE PALAIS Garnier was in general magnificent, Charlotte had managed to see some of its least savory parts as she worked her way to the top of the building with only her sense of direction to guide her. Once she reached the final door, however, she was thwarted before reaching her rooftop goal.

Charlotte stared at the heavily fortified barrier in mounting frustration. She had managed to pick the lock on the door itself with little trouble, but the sturdy chain and padlock that further secured it were proving insurmountable. If she couldn’t get to the roof this way, and Murcheson didn’t allow her to use the Gossamer Wing as originally planned, Charlotte had little chance of finding out whether the documents Reginald had stashed away were still there, safe in their secret nook. Nor could she look out and see what he had seen that fateful night, and feel whatever tenuous connection with him the view might bring to her.

Charlotte knew she would have to give it up soon. If she didn’t rejoin the tour group within another few minutes, she would almost certainly be missed. For all she knew, her absence had already been noted. Perhaps she’d been followed into the group. One of those portly, comfortable tourists could be the agent on her trail and not the skeletal man at all. Shuddering at the notion, she returned her attention to the lock for one last attempt.

The pins and tumblers defeated her efforts, and she finally gave up and retreated down the many flights of stairs until she found herself back in the hallway behind the cloakroom and toilets. She spotted the door to the lobby with a sigh of relief.

“Puis-je vous aider, madame?”

Charlotte jumped and whirled to find herself facing the man she’d seen outside the modiste’s.

Time stopped for a moment while her brain registered details, as it had been trained to do. He was pale, and his unfashionably long dark hair was hanging down on one side, covering that ear and falling past his shoulder. He wore a black suit that only emphasized his lean height. When the clock of life commenced ticking again, Charlotte started backing toward the lobby door, toward safety. Relative safety, at least. Just a few yards more . . .

“ Parlez-vous Francais ? You require help?” he repeated in heavily accented English.

Where had he come from, and what had he seen?

“N-no. Non, merci .” Charlotte donned her sweet, vapid mask, though it took even greater effort than usual with her heart racing as it was. “You gave me such a start, sir! Parlez-vous Anglais ?”

“ Oui , madame.” The man gave a little bow from the waist then took a step toward her.

“Wonderful! I seem to have taken a wrong turn and lost my tour group. We were looking at the ceilings and I couldn’t stop staring. Silly me, I never thought about it, but do you know that if you look up and turn around and around long enough, you’ll grow quite dizzy? I nearly fell over!” She was still backing up as she prattled, stealing closer and closer to the door that opened onto the lobby. “Then, I went looking for . . . well, you know. Some water to splash on my face. But I must have gone through a wrong door somewhere because there were all these stairs and at one point I was on a catwalk over the stage! Can you imagine? It took me forever to find a way back down. Oh, does this go out to the front again? Splendid!”

She had the door open and was out in a trice without even checking to see that the coast was clear. She hoped she wouldn’t be spotted by any theater employees, but was too frantic to escape the man to care about a scolding for leaving the tour group. When she glanced back, giving a last adorable little wave over her shoulder like an ill-timed reflex, the man in black was staring at her with such cold, soulless eyes that her step faltered for a moment. A stray sunbeam from the entrance glanced across his face, lighting the side with the hidden ear, and for an instant she saw a flash there through the curtain of hair, as of light reflecting against glass or polished metal.

Forcing a giddy grin onto her face, Charlotte turned and scampered back across the lobby and up the grand staircase to rejoin the group, feeling as though the hounds of hell might be at her heels. She would not allow herself to look back again.

“AT LEAST NOW I know who to be on the lookout for.”

Charlotte didn’t feel nearly as easy as she sounded regarding her brush with potential danger. And Dexter wasn’t fooled, she suspected.

“You continued to stroll around even after you suspected you were being followed?” He spun around, incredulous, and stood in front of her with his arms crossed, looking stern and imposing, blocking her from taking another step.

Charlotte glanced around, hoping that anybody overhearing them would assume it was a marital spat and move along.

“More quietly, please. Yes I did, and I learned a great deal.”

“How so?”

“For one thing,” she pointed out, “we know he’s more suspicious of me than of you. When we separated, he chose to follow me.”

Dexter shrugged. “For all I know there was somebody tailing me in Gennevilliers as well. I would be much less likely than you to pick up on something like that.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. At least if there was, it was just somebody sent after you for form. Furthermore, I believe I confirmed Murcheson’s suspicion that Dubois is working with the French government.”

Charlotte inclined her head toward the fountain that sparkled merrily in the streetlights a few dozen yards away along the walkway. Dexter followed her lead, and they found a bench beside it.

“The sound will help mask the conversation,” she explained. “It’s shadowy here too, which may give us a bit of cover if anybody is observing us.”

“How can you know this is the French, and not just some lackey of Dubois’s? You sound very certain. What do you know, that you haven’t been telling me?”

She sighed, wishing she could resist the pull of her memories. She didn’t want to believe her suspicions were true, wanted to think she was being melodramatic. But Charlotte had never been melodramatic, and she was fairly sure she knew who was tailing them.

“Reginald’s last field mission before the treaty was here in Paris, as you know.”

Dexter nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“He’d been following Roland Dubois as well, I gather, because at the time Whitehall thought they might be able to use him to get close to some French agent, a woman who’d apparently stolen some important laboratory notes from a scientist who was working for the British government. At any rate, that night I told you about, Reginald had an encounter with a French agent outside Dubois’s office. He recognized the man as an enemy operative and managed to take a bundle of documents from him. Reginald only got a glimpse inside the bundle, but he thought they looked like the stolen lab notes. He ran off and escaped the agent by somehow making his way to the roof of the Palais Garnier then sliding down a line on the opposite side.”

“How the devil did he get up—”