Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“Yes, it could work. If we go to Nancy now, right away, it will throw him off. He won’t be looking for me at the Palais Garnier, and he may even follow us there to keep track of us, putting off a search of his own. If he follows us to Nancy, and I can get away to launch the Wing from there without being seen, I’d be able to return here tomorrow night and retrieve the package quite easily by simply landing on the roof. It would only be a few days to the new moon, so not too much risk of being spotted en route. The main factor would be the length of the trip, given that it’s summer and the nights are short. I couldn’t make it there and back in a single night and be sure of enough darkness for cover. I’d have to stay in Paris and return the following night.”

Murcheson made a skeptical noise, but finally nodded. “I don’t see a better way around it, not within a reasonable time frame. Hardison needs this trip to Nancy for glass anyway. Not much of a honeymoon, as far as your cover goes, but I suppose we must treat it as an opportunity. I’ll arrange a safe place for you to hole up after you’ve retrieved the package, Lady Hardison.”

Murcheson’s Modern Wonderworks had a sizeable factory facility on the outskirts of Paris, more than large enough to successfully hide one small agent and one air balloon.

“There’s only one other concern,” Charlotte said, sighing sadly when the gentlemen both looked at her in curiosity. “When you grounded me, I’d hoped to avoid this, and I have to confess I was a little relieved because I hate to do it. But if I’m to be flying the Gossamer Wing at night, we’re going to need an awful lot of black dye.”

DEXTER STEPPED OVER a closed trunk and neatly avoided an open one to make his way into the bedroom of the suite. Although their hotel in Nancy was picturesquely housed in a Renaissance-era building, renovated stylishly with every modern convenience, the suite was not all that large. Currently, the little sitting room was more than fully occupied by a plethora of trunks, a pair of frazzled assistant modistes and his wife.

He thought perhaps Charlotte was subsuming her irritation at the besmirchment of the Gossamer Wing in this mania for fashion. Surely nothing short of temporary insanity explained the extreme concentration, the alternating frowns and giddiness, the second language she seemed to be speaking with the two young women. They were full of words like bolero and bustlette , and the room seemed full to bursting with all the new garments and fabrics they’d brought.

They had managed to turn what could have been a suspiciously unromantic side jaunt to Nancy into a chance for Dexter to shine as an indulgent husband. When Charlotte couldn’t make her scheduled second fitting with the modistes in Paris, he’d simply paid the modistes to come to Nancy. Charlotte had made sure there was a certain amount of public fuss about all the trouble and expense. The ruse of their extravagant honeymoon was hardly jolted at all. The clothing gave Charlotte something to do while she waited, already a full day more than she’d expected, for the Gossamer Wing to be converted for night use. The dye and paint took longer than expected to dry, it seemed, and the wet silk was far too heavy. The wait was maddening.

“Dexter darling, don’t forget you agreed to walk with me to the Parc de la Pépinière this afternoon. I want to see the roses. And there’s supposed to be a charming pavilion.”

He turned in the doorway, but Charlotte had already focused her attention back on the short, plum-colored brocade jacket one of the junior modistes was helping her into. Similar jackets in scarlet and midnight blue were laid out on the settee, awaiting their turns. It was a fraction of what she’d ordered, but the job could be rushed only so much. Half a dozen items or so had been produced, the rest to be delivered upon the couple’s return to Paris.

“Of course, my sweet brioche,” he said softly, and was rewarded by a swift and adorably dimpled smile from his wife.

His wife. Looking at her here, engaged in such an activity, seeing her smile, wife was suddenly all he could see. Dexter tried to regain a sense of distance, to recall the agent with whom he was meant to have only a pretense of marriage. Charlotte the professional spy, the once and future Lady Moncrieffe.

Instead, his unhelpful mind offered up the image of Charlotte the seductress, naked in his lap with her lips still ruddy from a shockingly intimate exercise. And then, even worse in a way, he recalled the way she had looked that very morning, when he had awakened early and spent far too long watching her sleep. She had one hand curled under her cheek, and he couldn’t stop staring at her fingers—so very slender compared to his own—and the exquisite delicacy of the cheek pressed against them. Then she had opened her eyes and smiled at him, and he couldn’t even name the feeling that had nearly overwhelmed him in that moment.

It was becoming harder and harder for Dexter to convince himself that he was merely scratching an itch. He knew himself too well to sustain the lie, and subterfuge was not his nature. His reactions were not those of a man motivated by lust or even something as innocent as friendship.

They were the reactions of a man falling hopelessly in love with the woman he had married.

SCANDALOUS THOUGH THE new fashion might be, Dexter decided he approved. Thoroughly.

Like many of the women they had seen strolling about since arriving in France, Charlotte was now clad in black breeches that left nothing to the imagination. The little red bolero jacket, in the finest Spanish style, was cut short enough to show off her tiny waist. Her midsection was made to appear even tinier with a wide satin sash that fit snugly in front and finished with a voluminous ruffled bow covering most of her rear end, with ribbons that trailed down almost to the back of her knees. The “bustlette,” Dexter assumed. Although he thought it faintly ridiculous, he had to allow that it at least served the purpose of hiding Charlotte’s remarkable derriere from public view.

Although her legs were more than enough to catch the eye of many a passing gentleman, he noticed. The snug black trousers disappeared into black riding boots, which were in turn gussied up with tall spatterdashes of some stiff, figured black and crimson fabric. Her hair was smoothed into a neat chignon beneath a small black top hat whose decorations of red and gold satin made it every bit as frivolous as she’d promised.

“I’m still not quite sure about this style of clothing. Are you preparing to fight a bull or ride to the hounds?”

Charlotte curled a hand around a lamppost and braced one booted foot at the base, swinging all the way around the pole and stopping when she faced him.

“Don’t you like it? It’s the only thing these days.”

“I certainly don’t dislike it,” Dexter admitted, letting his eyes wander blatantly downward to linger on her legs. “You wear it well.”

“I hope to start a trend when we return home. Trousers have been popular for ten years or so here in Europa, even in England, but it never caught on in the Dominions aside from riding breeches. We’re too stuffy and provincial back home, I suppose. We settled for those hideous split skirts instead.” She leaned back, hanging on to the pole for balance, and looked up at the whimsically gaudy gilded crown that topped the lamp. “Oh, I do love this city. I like how they’ve thrown all these gold swirls onto anything that stands still long enough.”

“Arabesques, I think they call them.”

It was true, the city of Nancy was delightfully ornamented, sporting gleaming gold statuary and colorful architectural fripperies in the most unexpected places. The park, once they located it, proved no less charming.