Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“But if these notes truly went straight from a French agent’s hands up to the top of the Opéra and stayed there for seven years, this can’t have been what Gendreau was called in to work on. Begs the question of what he and Dubois are really up to, if it isn’t this. Good heavens, and I suppose the French still think we really do have a dooms . . . well, an ultimate weapon.”

Charlotte rested her chin on her clasped hands, staring across the table at the far wall, for long enough that Dexter grew uncomfortable waiting for her to say something.

“ Doomsday substance doesn’t have quite the same ring to it,” he remarked.

“My chemistry knowledge is sketchy,” Charlotte admitted, “but from the looks of those notes it’s more a sort of doomsday putty. If they’re not working on that, though, perhaps Dubois and Gendreau haven’t been writing in code at all.”

Murcheson frowned. “Either way, you’ve done your part well, Lady Hardison. And if Martin isn’t reporting to the French, he hasn’t told them about Gossamer Wing . So perhaps the dirigible program has a future in the Agency after all. Something for you to look forward to working on, after you return to the Dominions.”

CHARLOTTE TRAILED HER fingers over the demilune console that stood by the door of their suite, tapping the gilded wood with a sense of unease.

“Dexter, did you move the pouch the documents were in?”

He peeked around the frame of the bedroom door. “I don’t even want to touch the pouch the documents were in, my sweet. Perhaps the maid moved it. Or took it to the incinerator, if we’re lucky. Are you sure you left it there?”

Charlotte was struck by the cheerful domesticity of Dexter’s response, of the whole moment: the fretful wife who knows she wasn’t the one to move a thing, the indulgent husband who knows the odds are he’ll have to apologize later when it transpires the wife was correct after all about whatever it was. For some reason she didn’t want to examine too closely, a surge of joyful tears pricked at her eyes and clenched her throat.

The happiness faded as Charlotte cast her mind back to that morning, when they had left the suite not planning to return until after the debriefing with Murcheson.

“That’s right, you wouldn’t touch it. Remember, I asked if we should bring it, or just take the papers? We were standing right here by the door, you had just picked up your room key from this table.”

“I said if you brought that thing you could sit at a separate table with it.” Dexter crossed the room to stand next to her, rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows as he walked. “You’re right, it was right there when we left.”

Charlotte struggled to focus on the problem of the missing pouch. Dexter had shed his cravat, jacket and waistcoat in the bedroom, and his white linen shirt clung to his chest and shoulders in a highly flattering way.

“If we don’t find it this afternoon,” she suggested, “we can ask the concierge about it when we go to dinner.”

“We should let Murcheson know. I’ll also rig something at the door to let us know from now on if anyone’s been into the room.” He headed for the bedroom again, doubtless to begin creating a device for that purpose from spare parts in his trunk.

Charlotte sighed and decided to put the issue aside. She thought it more urgent to loosen her corset, put her feet up and enjoy a cup of tea while she read the Paris newspaper she’d picked up in the lobby downstairs. She was still recovering from the strain of her long flight, and her body demanded more rest than she’d given it.

The newspaper, sadly, had other plans for her.

“Bloody hell!”

Dexter dashed in from the other room. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“Yes! No. Damn. Look at this!” She held up the paper to let him see the headline below the fold on the front page. Not a top story, but not exactly buried either.

“I only know about half those words,” Dexter admitted. His French had never been strong, and he’d been sticking to the English papers.

“Mysterious floating black object in the night sky,” Charlotte explained, skimming down the column then flipping a few pages into the paper to read the continuation. “Seen in multiple places by ‘anonymous witnesses.’ In Nancy, Paris and three villages in between, only one of which I think I actually flew over. This is a plant. Somebody wanted to ground the Gossamer Wing for good. Oh, that’s just spiteful!”

“Do you think Murcheson will really call the whole dirigible program off?”

“In a heartbeat,” Charlotte confirmed. “Not worth the risk. Damn!” She threw the paper down on the floor and sat on the divan, frustrated that her corset kept her from flinging herself down in a more dramatic way. “Can you get this bloody straightjacket off me? I can’t rail and moan properly with it on.”

“Language, darling.” Dexter smirked as he slid into place next to her and turned her shoulders so he could get at the fastenings to her gown. “If you wanted me to undress you, you had only to ask.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she assured him, heaving a sigh of relief as Dexter finished with the dress and began loosening her corset strings.

“You don’t need these things.”

“I like pretty clothes,” Charlotte said with a shrug. “Corsets are part of the price one pays for that. It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be. My mother used to require two maids every morning to help her tight-lace. At least I can dress myself.”

“Not in this dress,” he pointed out. “I had to fasten it for you.”

“I ordered it without thinking,” she admitted. “I just liked the style. Usually I’m more careful about my choices, but this time I was blinded by fashion.”

“Lucky for you I was here to serve as ladies’ maid. Otherwise you’d have had to roam the streets of Paris in your undergarments. Not that I’d have objected, as long as nobody else looked at you.”

Charlotte shivered as Dexter tugged her chemise up past her shoulders then ran his fingers down her back, one on each long muscle framing her spine. “Most of my corsets are designed in the new style, they fasten in the front. I have other dresses. You’re hardly indispensable to my toilette.”

He laughed, the sound like a warm velvet touch against her skin. “Careful, sugar plum, or I’ll get in a snit and refuse to tighten you back up. You’ll be left naked.”

“Nonsense. I’ll just ring the concierge and have a maid sent up once I’ve woken from my nap.”

“These marks won’t have faded by then, I suspect.” He traced the impressions left by the formfitting garment, pulling a contented hum from Charlotte. “I prefer your skin in the morning, when the only lines are the ones the sheets have left there in the night.”

“You’re assuming I’ve slept without a nightgown, I take it.”

Dexter pressed a kiss to her shoulder, letting his lips linger there as his hands began to wander. “In my imagination, you always sleep without a nightgown.”

After dinner later that evening the concierge assured them that the housekeeping staff had not moved, or indeed seen, a leather pouch of any sort in the suite.

PARIS, FRANCE

CHARLOTTE HESITATED A long few moments at the curb when the taxi deposited her and Dexter in front of the brilliantly lit Palais Garnier.

It was their first night back in Paris, after an uneventful few more days spent in Nancy for the sake of their cover. Murcheson had secured tickets, and Charlotte wanted very much to see the spectacle of the famous opera in action, all lights and music and glamorous crowd. She was very tired of the building that housed it, however. Looking at it, she was struck with a pang of homesickness for New York City, its familiar theater district, the soaring façade of Trinity Church.