Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

He wanted nothing more than to crush her in an embrace and keep her there, safe. He knew if she died he would never forgive himself for letting her go. It would make as much sense as Charlotte blaming herself for Reginald’s death, but Dexter finally understood the origin of such notions. Loving her as he did, so furiously that it pained him, he should surely be able to keep her alive through sheer force of emotion. Sadly, as humans had been discovering since they first identified that emotion, love didn’t work that way.

Charlotte’s determined mask slipped again for a moment as she glanced out over the rooftops of Nancy. She looked miserable and frightened, and Dexter knew he needed to present a calm front. If he pretended confidence in her return, perhaps she would feel it too.

“Have a good trip,” he said, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Be careful. I’ll see you back here tomorrow night or very early the next morning.” He kissed her briefly, resisting the urge to respond with more when she seemed poised to lean into it. Resisting too the urge to tell her how he felt. It would have been a relief to him, but only a burden to her.

After a moment Charlotte nodded and climbed into the harness while Dexter held the rigging and started the inflation process. In a few seconds, he was able to release the balloon and let it bob upward, pulling Charlotte beneath it.

Dexter held the tether until the last possible moment. Releasing his grip on that slim length of line was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

MARTIN HAD OPTED to travel to Nancy alone, and Dubois—always interested in a chance to save money, and never able to focus on more than one issue at a time—had allowed it. Martin left his team in Paris, following a hunch that all was not what it seemed with the latest change in the honeymooning pair’s travel plans.

They spent too much time for his comfort in Murcheson’s factory, where Martin had been unable to place a mole. Nor could he spare men to troll the harbor in hopes of spying the Hardisons as they took sail from the factory slips. He only knew Murcheson was up to far more than a plot to outbid Dubois on a steamrail contract. So one of Martin’s men had remained in Le Havre to monitor comings and goings at Murcheson’s factory there, while another performed the same function at the Gennevilliers facility. A third lookout was tasked with watching the Palais Garnier’s entrances, while a fourth man waited in reserve by the radio communicator, in case Martin needed him.

Dubois was up to something as well, Martin could tell. Something to do with Murcheson, something he was keeping from Martin, probably for no other reason than that he could. This deception added a layer of complication and worry for Martin in his own planning, and was another mark in the long tally of Dubois’s sins.

One day . . .

His fond imagining of Dubois’s violent end was interrupted by movement in the window across the narrow street. A sheer curtain shrouded the view of the Hardison’s sitting room, but Martin could make out their silhouettes, large and petite forms moving about the room. They seemed to be preparing to leave, as the Baron had hoisted what appeared to be a sizeable pair of suitcases or trunks under his oversized arms.

“What are you doing with those, brute?” Moving closer to the window, Martin all but pressed his nose against the glass, wishing once again that he’d been able to continue bugging their rooms. Once discovered, however, the bugs became pointless, and he wasn’t one to waste equipment. He also found himself vaguely disgusted by their personal goings-on, he who had scarcely a memory of sex and no wish to revisit the issue.

Lady Hardison’s silhouette looked wrong, Martin thought, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Smaller even than usual, and her movements seemed less graceful and flowing. Perhaps she was wearing the new trousers again, though they didn’t seem popular as an evening style. In the trousers she looked like an androgyne to Martin, who cared even less about fashion than he did about sex, except as it informed him in his trade.

When the Hardisons closed the door behind them, Martin risked a moment with his eyes closed, then stole a swig of the brandy he kept in a flask close by. It would take them at least two minutes and twenty seconds to descend the stairs to the lobby, leave the key at the desk and exit, so he had that much time to collect his thoughts. When three minutes had passed, Martin wondered if they had taken the lift. At five minutes, he considered that the lift might have malfunctioned. He kept his eyes glued to the entrance for another five minutes before cursing under his breath.

They had obviously gone out of their room but not left the hotel. The place had only two entrances, both of which Martin could see from his vantage point. It was eleven o’clock. They had already dined at the bistro down the street and taken dessert in their suite, but now they had left their rooms again and taken luggage with them. Absconded, clearly, but how? And to where?

Perhaps they were still in the hotel. Martin had checked thoroughly, and he knew Nancy well. There were no other exits to the building. Only one door at the front courtyard, one side entrance the staff used, not even so much as a door leading to the—

Words his mother never taught him streamed from Martin’s mouth as he jerked his gaze upward, scanning the roofline for any motion, any sign of activity. He was seconds from deciding that the peaked, pitched roof was not a likely prospect for any human activity, when something caught his eye.

Or rather, a nothing caught his eye. There was a dark spot, blanking out the stars in a flattened oval. As he watched, the oval rose over the rooftop and diminished against the night sky, a minuscule and fast-dwindling blue flame below it the only clue to its nature.

Through the spyglass he caught a glimpse, a shadowed shape, for a few heartbeats. He was warming up his radio transmitter even as the shadow vanished from his sight.

THE NIGHT WAS clear, for which Charlotte was grateful. She hated to think what rain might do to the sooty blue dye on the silk of her beloved airship. It was difficult to look at the Gossamer Wing in this tarnished incarnation. She had almost cried to see her beautiful helmet sullied so, but Dexter had promised her a new one soon.

He had kissed her exactly, exactly like a husband seeing a wife off on a weekend holiday.

Damn him .

She couldn’t sustain any resentment, though. He was too kind, his recent forcefulness notwithstanding, and she could hardly deny his appeal at this point. She could, and did, wish she had met him years sooner. If she had, she wouldn’t be here now. It seemed safe enough to accept that, now that it was too late for it to matter.

The balloon blocked out most of her view of the stars, but Charlotte could still make out enough to appreciate the beauty of the evening. A little too cool, perhaps, but she preferred that to having it be too hot. There was the tiniest sliver of a moon, not enough to give her away on the rooftop. She tried to shake the feeling of being rushed, of things happening more quickly than she could control, and forced herself to relax in the harness. The lights of Nancy dwindled beneath her as she left the smaller city behind and aimed toward Paris.

Hours later, chilled to the bone and struggling with fatigue, she spotted the grid of much brighter lights that marked her destination. Paris gleamed through the night. It beckoned her like a moth to flame, and she hoped the metaphor didn’t imply similar disastrous consequences for her.

Sophisticated though the grand old city was, even Paris slept at three in the morning. Charlotte saw only a few passing vehicles in the street below as she lowered her craft to the blessedly flat roof in front of the green dome on the Palais Garnier. She trusted the brilliantly lit gilded statues on the façade to divert the attention of any onlookers from the tiny blue flame and blimp-shaped black spot against the sky.