Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

She bent over and untwisted the rough huckaback towel from her hair, letting the damp strands fall where they would as she stood back up. Dexter was watching her with nothing like the keen interest she had come to expect, and the change upset Charlotte more than she cared to admit.

“I want you to be safe,” he said gently. “I won’t apologize for it anymore.”

“I understand that. I do. It’s just that . . . well, who do you think you are?” It took Charlotte a second to register the hurt on Dexter’s face, and realize how she’d phrased herself. “No, no, I don’t mean it like that. I meant . . . in all this. What’s your role in all this, as you see it? Who do you think you are?”

She watched him think it through, discarding the first answer he bit back, deciding how to phrase it in some more acceptable way than “your husband.” Finally he shook his head, unable or unwilling to put any other words to it.

Charlotte approached him, speaking as gently as she could. The impulse to lash out had been replaced by an aching compassion; she could see Dexter was suffering, and she hated to know she was the cause of it. He’d said he loved her. She couldn’t allow him to keep thinking along those lines. “You came here to do a job. I came here to do a job. The rest . . . is compelling, I grant you, but it doesn’t mean I can forget the mission, even if I’ve accomplished my main task. I’ve tried more than once to make that clear, though I know I haven’t done very well at following my own terms. I’ve let you muddy the waters, and I’ve muddied them myself. Still, the fact remains, I don’t report to you,” she concluded, “I report to Murcheson. To Whitehall.”

Dexter reached out to coax her closer, then leaned his cheek against her stomach, hands resting on her hips for a moment before sliding around to clasp her waist. After a moment, unable to help herself, she started stroking his hair. The soft, straight strands fell through her fingers in a soothing flow, an interesting contrast to the prickle of whiskers she could feel through the linen of her night rail.

“This is why they advise against this sort of entanglement, I’m sure,” she murmured.

Dexter chuckled, the vibration and the heat of his breath warming her skin. “ They never like any of the really enjoyable things. I don’t know why we all keep listening to them , anyway.”

“We didn’t listen, and look where we are.”

“I can think of worse places to be.” He gave her a squeeze. “Charlotte, when all this is over, I—”

“Don’t,” she warned him, tapping him on the head sharply a few times with one fingertip before she resumed carding his hair in slow, smooth sweeps. “Don’t.”

THE FLASK OF brandy was empty by lunchtime, and the bottle too. Martin tipped one then the other into his glass, idly watching the last lonely drops creep down the side of the tumbler to pool in the bottom. Most of it evaporated on the way back to the rim when he tried to eke a final swig from the dregs.

Empty, empty, empty . The flask. The bottle. The disgusting leather pouch. Martin tried to make himself throw it away, but he couldn’t do it. He’d had it for years, that little pouch. He couldn’t even remember its original purpose now, but he had used it to stow loose papers as a schoolboy. He’d strung a rope under the flap and slung it over his shoulder when he worked as a bicycle courier for a few short, miserable months in his sixteenth year.

Years later he still had it, and it had been the first thing to hand when he thought to run to Simone’s office at the agency after learning of her death. Before anybody else thought to do it. An instinct he had thanked the heavens for at the time, and cursed shortly thereafter and ever since.

“You are a metaphor for my entire life,” he said, raising the empty glass to the pouch. It sat on his table silently, refusing to respond to his toast. “A promising start. Then one wrong turn and the next seven years wasted. Unable to serve any useful purpose, stuck in the dark to molder and rot. By the time you’re free once more, it’s far too late for you. You contain no secrets, have no more power, no more teeth with which to bite. Empty and hideous. You’re fit only to discard.”

You’re boring a leather pouch with drunken philosophy, imbecile . Martin transferred the tumbler to his right hand, pulling a lever near his wrist. His more-than-fingers began to tighten, squeezing inexorably closer until, with a pop, the glass shattered, sending shards to the ground.

Martin didn’t bother to sweep up the pieces. The landlady could take care of the mess. He’d never been particularly fond of her anyway.

“Time to pay a final call on Monsieur Dubois,” Martin said to the flat, which was too small and mean to echo in reply. “Today I call his bluff, or I die. But either way it will be the same to him.”

CHARLOTTE HAD DECIDED to lend more credence to her cover and spend the morning shopping again while Dexter reviewed his plans for the work at Atlantis Station. Even with two agents assigned to cover her she was jumpy and uneasy, prone to glancing over her shoulder, then checking to make sure her guards were still in place.

Tittering with salespersons and bargaining poorly in atrocious French took all her energy, and by noon she was more than ready to find Dexter and repair to some quiet bistro where they could pretend to be a honeymooning couple in love.

When she walked into the suite, however, Dexter was packing his trunks.

“The glass is ready. Arsenault just sent a wire. It’s being delivered to Le Havre, so I’ll need to start work there tomorrow. We can stay in the same hotel we used before, in Honfleur.”

“We’ve barely settled into the suite here,” she sighed.

“With the documents recovered, there’s no reason to linger in Paris.” Dexter placed a pair of shoes neatly into a drawer-like compartment within one trunk, securing it closed with a snap. “You could always remain here, you know. For a few more days at least, assuming Murcheson doesn’t have anything pressing for you to do in Le Havre. I’ll need a week or so for the installation, and God knows Honfleur won’t offer you nearly as much diversion as Paris during that time.”

Charlotte tossed her reticule on the bed and started to remove her gloves, trying to account for the queasy fluttering in her stomach. “Are you asking me to stay here while you go on?”

He abandoned the pretense of interest in packing and sat on the bed, picking up the yellow silk purse and toying with the strings. “I’m giving you the freedom to choose whichever option seems best to you.”

She wanted to resent him for laying the decision on her shoulders. He was trying so hard to do the right thing, though, that she couldn’t bear him a grudge for it.

“If I were a stronger person I would stay, for both our sakes.”

“If I were a stronger person I would carry you to the embassy kicking and screaming and make them lock you in a room until it’s time to put you on the next ship to New York.” He sounded as though he had given the idea serious thought.

She thought of his possessive anger in the submersible bay, the fierce way he’d taken charge on the train after she’d frustrated him by setting her terms. Not to mention that long-ago fork jabbed into his brother’s hand over a chop. Perhaps that was his usual response to being thwarted in matters of the mind or heart, to settle the matter through brute force and determination. That, to him, was strength. It had probably served him quite well over the years, and Charlotte was suspicious at his suddenly adopting a less direct approach.