Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

Charlotte shook her head. “No. I just kept the agents from rushing in. You rescued yourself. You were so reasonable in there. So . . . kind.”

“Why don’t I feel complimented?”

Dexter was irked, in fact. He was tired, very tired. He wanted a substantial kiss and a great deal of coddling, and instead Charlotte seemed too stunned at his forgiving nature, too awed by his supposed kindness to provide those things.

“I’m sorry. You should feel complimented. I’m . . .” She blinked back tears, shaking her head sharply then flinging herself at him in a ferocious embrace. “I’m just so glad you’re not dead!”

“That’s better,” Dexter chuckled into her neck.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He wrapped his arms around her, dipping down and picking her up by the waist for a few seconds. Amazed, as always, by how light she was. He set her down gently and framed her face with his hands, wiping a tear away with one thumb.

“I just realized, you came all the way here in the submersible, didn’t you? I can’t believe you did that for me. That was very brave of you.”

Charlotte nodded. “Murcheson may be less than pleased, though.”

“You did it without his permission?” Dexter asked, taken aback.

She blushed as she confessed, “I did it against his express orders to stay at the station.”

Dexter frowned. “My knight in shining armor. But you took too great a risk holding the agents off like that. They had their orders to follow. You can’t go drawing weapons on your own side, Charlotte. Murcheson will be even less pleased about that than about the sub.”

“Sir? Ma’am? We’re heading back to the station. We’ll need you to come with us.”

Dexter ignored the agent who’d spoken, and indulged in another few seconds of staring at Charlotte. She licked her lips and offered a tentative smile, and Dexter couldn’t help himself. He bent and kissed her as chastely as he could manage, then pulled away long before he wanted to and nodded at the waiting agent.

“I’ll meet you there, I suppose,” Charlotte said. “I’ll have to take the sub back to base.”

“It’s already on its way there, Lady Hardison,” the agent told her, as he set off for the waiting steam car, clearly expecting them to follow. “I sent Jensen with it. Boss’s orders.”

“Oh. I see,” she responded, and shot a guilty glance at Dexter. “I’m already in disgrace, I suppose.”

He took her hand in his. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

THE AMBULANCE SPED toward the hospital, steam engine roaring and the stoker working constantly to keep the fuel and water levels steady. Jean-Michel Imbert had just enough consciousness left to wonder why they bothered to hurry. The poison had nearly finished its work inside him, he could tell. He would be surprised to survive the trip.

At least I die as myself , he thought. At least Dubois died first .

He hoped that Hardison would hold to his word and see that his mother got his body. Between the arm and the ear, he was probably carrying close to a pound of gold around inside himself; as the least reactive metal, it was the standard for lining implants, and his were top-of-the-line models.

I always loved you, Simone . He wondered if he would see her in heaven, some special section set aside for people like them who had done terrible things in the service of a greater good.

“Simone,” he whispered.

“Shh,” the attendant sitting next to him said. “Save your strength, monsieur.”

“For what?” Jean-Michel wondered. He thought he said it aloud, but the medic didn’t respond so perhaps not.

For what, indeed ? When it came to the moment of truth, it seemed, dying was really quite easy. Painful, yes, but it required no action on his part. He could struggle or he could give in, but he would die either way.

Jean-Michel decided he had struggled quite enough; it was finally time to give in.

HONFLEUR AND LE HAVRE, FRANCE

TO CHARLOTTE’S DISMAY, once she and Dexter finished their debriefing and returned to Honfleur things seemed to go back to exactly the way they had been.

Dexter slept for half the day then returned to the station, eager to finish the work on his seismograph. Charlotte went to the station as well, where she received an official suspension from duty for her unauthorized use of the submersible and for interfering with the other agents. The paperwork made no mention of her pulling a weapon on them, a small concession to the fact that her argument for not storming the freighter had proven accurate. Murcheson strongly implied she was lucky to get off so lightly, however, and that her interests might best be served by resigning her position as a field agent upon her return to the Dominions.

“I’m better at desk work anyway,” she admitted.

“It was bad luck about the airship,” Murcheson offered, though it was cold comfort. Charlotte missed her dirigible keenly. Martin—Imbert—had admitted to tipping off the press about it. “Perhaps the Agency will be willing to try again in another few years.”

“Will you tell me something?” she asked Murcheson before she left Atlantis Station for the last time. “It’s about Reginald.”

“Anything I can, my dear.”

“When Dexter asked about that night Reginald took the documents, you said something about Reginald going up the side of the Opéra. I was just curious what you meant? Was there scaffolding there at the time? If there was, why didn’t Martin—Imbert, I mean—just follow him up? It must have taken much longer to pick the locks and use the stairs inside.”

Murcheson shook his head. “No, Reginald scaled the side, like a monkey. You know how acrobatic he was. The boy left everybody in the dust during training whenever the job was to climb a wall or scramble up a rope.”

“I’m sorry?” Charlotte felt like she’d been caught in the wrong conversation. “I was talking about Reginald. My late husband.”

“Yes. Moncrieffe. Skinny chap, tall, very fit, spectacles, good at maths? Moncrieffe.”

“But . . . but Reginald hated sport. He wasn’t remotely athletic. We used to laugh about that, about how in school he never played for the teams, he always—”

“Oh, dear. No, of course he wouldn’t have, would he? They wouldn’t let him. He was usually a good many years younger than the other boys in his form, as quickly as he went through.”

Charlotte nodded. “That makes sense.” Something still struck her as strange about it, though.

Murcheson reached over and took one of her hands, patting it kindly. “I forget how young you both were. My dear, I have a question for you. Do you like sport?”

“No,” Charlotte said immediately. “I enjoy riding but on the whole I’ve never been a fan. Particularly of anything involving teams.”

“Yes, I see. And Reginald knew of this, I suppose?”

She considered it for a moment. Had he known? He must have. She had never held back her opinion on the matter. Far from it, in fact—there might have been a certain amount of open scorn. “I think he must have.”

“I think it’s possible he wasn’t so much averse to athletics, then, as keen to share your aversion. He did like to impress you, you know. But when you weren’t looking, he was a demon on the cricket pitch for the interagency team. And the lad could scale a sheer wall like a lemur on cocaine.”

She smiled at the image, even as her heart ached to learn this new thing about Reginald, too late for it to do any good.

“He should have just told me,” she sighed. “It’s not as though I would have minded. Why would he be so dishonest?”