Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“He did let on, in his own way. But thank you.”

“There’s a more pressing problem. Can you really spend weeks, perhaps months, effectively hiding how much you despise the French, even under this new Égalité government? You will tend to encounter a fair number of them in France.”

“But Father,” she said, dimpling again, “J’adore Paris au printemps. Et Honfleur est tout a fait charmante!”

“This isn’t a game or a masquerade ball. Nor is it the office work you’re accustomed to doing for the Agency. It could be months , Charlotte,” he reminded her. He apparently had some selective immunity to her charm, or perhaps her demeanor was simply not as charming in French. “Yet another matter presses. In addition to recovering the documents and determining whether the French have started building their own device yet, Murcheson still wants a professional consultation on-site regarding some of the equipment at the new facility. He agrees with me that we can kill several birds with one stone by bringing in somebody from the outside, and Whitehall has approved a plan that will provide the perfect cover for you both.”

Something about the way her father said “somebody from the outside” suggested to Charlotte that he had a particular somebody in mind. “What are the various birds, what is the plan and whom might this convenient new colleague be?”

“Hmm. Yes. Would you care for tea?” He reached for the bell pull before she could answer. “The birds are as follows: the consultation is necessary because a fresh pair of expert eyes might solve some of the lingering technical problems Murcheson’s people have failed to conquer during this past year or more. Our own personnel are not without their talents, but they are only the ordinary sort of geniuses. They create what they are asked to create, quite brilliantly at times, but their vision is somewhat circumscribed. ‘To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail,’ that sort of thing.”

Camouflage , thought Charlotte. To Hardison, one word had been more effective than a laundry list of specifications. He was not, it was clear, any ordinary sort of genius. “Go on.”

“A makesmith could also perform any necessary on-the-spot modifications to the airship you might require. Someone from the outside has the added advantage of having no history with the Agency. One or two discreet visits from a social equal, conversations undertaken in private where there is no danger of eavesdroppers. It would be easy enough to approach him without anyone thinking a thing about it. Such a person would have no other record of a connection with our activities. Even if he fell under suspicion, there would simply be nothing for the French to discover, no matter how thoroughly they investigated.”

“Assuming such a person would agree to work for you, of course. And have the time, means and inclination to leave his business and go haring off to France for weeks or possibly months.”

“There is that, but that brings us to the plan. You’re the widow of a baronet, and you’ve been quite famously in near seclusion for an unfashionably long mourning. Now, now,” he waved off her protest, “we both know you’ve been far busier with your work than anyone knows, and the seclusion at your estate has made a very convenient cover for your absences during training. The fact remains, you’re still known to people, and if we ship you off to France you will almost certainly be noticed there. You must have a plausible cover. Given the choice of your traveling companion, you must also comport with Whitehall’s antiquated notions of propriety when it comes to female and male agents traveling together.”

The twist to his mouth told Charlotte everything she needed to know. He hadn’t been able to prevent her taking the assignment to become the first agent piloting a surveillance dirigible, nor had he been able to keep her from volunteering to use that dirigible to recover the lost weapon plans the British so desperately needed now that the French appeared to be gearing up for hostilities again—so he had engineered an obstacle, a challenge, to try to dissuade her. He expected her to cry off when she heard this new condition. He had invoked Whitehall—clever of him to refer to the faceless bureaucracy of the entire administrative wing of government, rather than blaming any individual Charlotte might try to make her case with—but she knew the real objection was his own. She also knew the officials in Philadelphia were far more puritanical than their counterparts in Whitehall. Still, it was a canny move on her father’s part to point the finger of blame all the way across the Atlantic.

Her father underestimated her resolve. Whatever it was, whatever she must do, Charlotte told herself she would accept it. Though she had never been a rebellious child, she was angry enough at her father’s interference that she knew she would meet this challenge if for no other reason than to prove him wrong. And this mission was not only vital to the Crown, it was vital to Charlotte—a chance to literally follow in her late husband’s footsteps and carry out the objective he’d never been able to complete.

“Traveling together?”

“That’s the cover, you see. You and the consultant in question will pose as newlyweds, honeymooning in France.”

“You want me to . . .” Despite her resolve, her jaw fell open for a moment as she saw the trap her father had led her into. A career was one thing, a reputation quite another, and her father knew as well as anyone how delicate the reputation of a widow could be.

The gleam of triumph in his eye gave him away. He thought he’d won, and his voice was almost jubilant as he continued. “The difficulty, of course, is that we can hardly faux marry you off to just anyone; it must be somebody plausible. Somebody who might conceivably have known you well enough socially to see you during your isolation and woo you out of your grief. Perhaps someone with whom you have already established a correspondence.”

Charlotte kept her bitter smile to herself. “Someone . . . titled?”

Viscount Darmont might look genial and portly and getting on in years, but his amiable round face concealed a mind still sharp as a knife, and he knew his daughter did not tend toward idle speculation. “Indeed.”

“I see. This is all beginning to sound a good deal more public than I had anticipated. And is this actually to be a faux marriage? Or is the Agency counting on a great deal more loyalty than that from myself and the titled gentleman in question?” She couldn’t imagine that her superiors in either Philadelphia or Whitehall would risk the French discovering that the marriage of two such illustrious Americans was a sham. Not when such a discovery would mean unwanted scrutiny of their motives.

“You’d be allowed an annulment afterward. In the meantime, your mother would be thrilled. A baroness for a daughter.” If Charlotte hadn’t known him better, she might have missed the hint of smugness in his tone as he waited for her to demur. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not now. If this was what she must do . . .

“Goodness, and she had abandoned all hope of my ever marrying my way up in this world.”

His smile faltered as he waited in vain for her to say more. “Charlotte, you can’t mean to go through with such a scheme. Even for the sake of the Crown, it’s too much to ask. There would have to be an actual wedding. You would have to share quarters on the ship, hotel rooms.”

“Oh, but I do mean to go through with it, Father. It sounds like an excellent cover story, precisely because it’s so implausible that anyone would go to such lengths. And as you say, we can have it annulled afterward. That will disappoint Mother, naturally, but it can’t be helped.”