Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“It almost makes me wish I had a rose garden at Hardison House,” Dexter said as they wandered between the carefully cultivated rows of blooming shrubs. The Parc de la Pépinière had started as a nursery, and was still a noted horticultural garden. The plants were almost obscenely healthy, so verdant and lush in the early summer air that they looked too good to believe.

“It probably wouldn’t look this magnificent if you did have one,” Charlotte pointed out. “They take years to develop properly. But it is lovely to have fresh roses. Dexter, two of those trunks weren’t clothing. They were from Murcheson. His people finished dying and painting the Gossamer Wing . He had it delivered along with the clothes.”

Reality, cold and jarring, slapped Dexter back into the present, reminding him that he was no honeymooning lordling. He nodded stiffly and glanced around the nearly empty garden before answering. “I see.”

“Murcheson’s message said our friend has followed us to Nancy. The hotel seems clean, however, probably because the move was so sudden. He had his team make a sweep with some of your brilliant little bug detectors. We also have two men on surveillance duty outside the hotel. They say so far it seems our man is content just to keep watch, rather than making a move on the hotel itself.”

“Or perhaps he’s busy modifying his bugs to escape detection, before he bothers wasting any more of them.” Dexter couldn’t help but feel a moment’s smugness at having hindered Coeur de Fer at least that small amount. “So when must you go?”

She brushed a fingertip over a bobbing pale pink rose, and then bent to smell the blossom. A peacock screamed from somewhere in the park, and Dexter had to strain to catch Charlotte’s reply.

“Tonight.”

CHARLOTTE WOULDN’T HAVE cared if Coeur de Fer had bugged every nook and cranny in the hotel suite. From the moment she’d read Murcheson’s terse, coded missive, she had barely been able to think of anything but that evening and being alone with Dexter.

This was her mission, it was the sort of assignment she had trained for, planned for, even looked forward to in some ways. Night or day, the Gossamer Wing was designed for just such an occasion, and it had been entrusted to Charlotte only on the understanding that she could use it to go where other agents couldn’t. What’s more, she was getting an unexpected second chance to prove her usefulness with the craft, after her early disappointment at being spotted over Le Havre. She couldn’t ignore the sense of rightness, of long-sought completion that followed when she thought of finishing this mission Reginald started all those years ago—not to mention preventing another war.

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?”