Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

Murcheson patted her hand again, seeming to cast about for the right words. “He was young and in love,” he finally said, “and desperate to marry you. He was hardly the first man to lose his head under those circumstances and do stupid things in an effort to present himself in the best possible light. You shouldn’t think ill of him for it.”

Charlotte nodded, but her mind was already elsewhere. On Dexter, his calm and steady voice in the bowels of the rusty freighter, saving his own life simply by being himself.

She might have discussed this with Dexter, but he had sent her a terse message to the effect that he would be remaining at the station for the duration of his work there. Charlotte took to walking the quaint streets of Honfleur and second-guessing all her own choices of the past several years until she thought she’d go mad with the knowledge that she had let a vital moment pass her by. She’d been too overwhelmed by the events of that night on the dock to simply state her mind to Dexter, and having failed to do it at once she had lost her nerve and her opportunity.

The newspapers were diverting for a time, as they were full of the scintillating tale of the heroic agent who sacrificed everything to reveal a traitor to France. True to the promise he’d made the dying man, Dexter had convinced Murcheson and the somewhat bewildered head of French intelligence that Martin’s death could be a public relations opportunity for them both. The official story was that Coeur de Fer, really Jean-Michel Imbert, had spent seven years in deep cover to expose Dubois. He had done it, the papers claimed, for the love of France and the love of Simone Vernier, the notorious femme fatale who had died in pursuit of the truth about Dubois and his involvement in an attempt to prolong the war.

Charlotte liked the story. Enough of it was true that she forgave the French government their hyperbole in reclaiming Coeur de Fer’s achievement for their own. Whitehall too had conspired in the story to cast Dubois in the worst possible light. He became the violent extremist they had always suspected him of being, seeking the steamrail contract only as a stepping stone to effect greater, unspecified evils against the state. Imbert had stopped him just in time to avert calamity. There were strong hints that Dubois had been seeking out mad engineers to build him a doomsday device of his own; this was treated as de facto proof of his desire for world domination and general malfeasance. Of Gendreau, the papers said nothing. The man himself had returned to St. Helena, his exile reinstated.

Charlotte knew this whole approach was more about political convenience than anything else; the current powers wanted to discredit not only Dubois but the politicians and old government officials he’d been aligned with—the faction that had fallen from power shortly before the treaty was signed. Still, that version of events lent a romanticism to Imbert’s deeds, and perhaps because of the propaganda she found herself able to forgive him just a little for his actions toward her, Dexter and Murcheson.

More cold comfort. Charlotte was tired of France. She no longer hated the French, but she longed to be back home, hearing the comfortably familiar accents of the Dominions. The prospect of Reginald’s big, empty house was less alluring. It had never felt like home to her. She had felt more at home with Dexter, even those last few fraught days before his abduction, than she had ever been in the house her late husband had left to her.

She and Reginald had never shared that house, never even stood in it together. Their first time there would have been when they returned from their honeymoon, ready to start their married life together. That day had never come, and Charlotte thought she’d been suspended ever since, unable to move forward. But the only one holding her back was herself.

I just want to go home. But how?

IT WAS FINISHED. The last cable had been laid and tested, the technicians thoroughly trained and vetted. They had even been favored with a live test in the form of a slight tremor from the fault along the chalk lithosome to the east, and the system had worked beautifully. The switch was triggered, the silent beam of light shot from the remote sensor back along the glass cable to the station, and the alarm had gone up, just as Dexter had envisioned. The station crew had evacuated safely, and Dexter had been hailed by one and by all.

The next day, as Dexter made his final adjustments, Murcheson handed him a pair of tickets for a fast clipper ship departing Le Havre for New York in the morning.

“There’s really no reason to stay any longer,” Murcheson told him. “Your work is done here, and Lady Hardison will need to report to the Agency offices in New York soon to discuss reassignment. This won’t be as comfortable as a luxury liner but it’ll get you home in half the time.”

“What will happen to her?” Dexter still thought Murcheson might have turned a blind eye to Charlotte’s escapades if he’d wanted to. None of his arguments on her behalf seemed to carry any weight, however. Dexter suspected Lord Darmont’s hand in having her sent down from field work.

“I think they have some decoding for her to do,” Murcheson replied. “The same sort of thing she was doing before. She’s quite good at it.”

Dexter nodded. “I’m sure she is.”

I just don’t know that she ever liked it much , he thought. It had been an interest she shared with Reginald. They had often worked together, she’d mentioned, but she’d begun pressing for field work shortly after his death. She liked to do things. Fly dirigibles and test her nerve in subs and dance around lampposts while wearing trousers. Charlotte strode around Paris and cased opera houses, braved wild cows and shopped like a demon even in provincial French villages.

It broke his heart to think of her withering away in a dusty office, nose pressed to a stack of encrypted pages. Never flying again.

Dexter knew he should be racing for the hotel to let Charlotte know about the tickets so she could pack. He wasn’t sure why he was dragging his feet.

Letdown, probably. He wanted to be home again—his head was full of ideas for when he got back to his workshop—but he felt like he still had things left to do in France.

The marriage ends when the mission ends . Dexter put his tools away in their cases and the cases into the trunks, his hands moving automatically as his mind poked and prodded at the dilemma.

She’d sent him a message at the station, asking after his health, reminding him that he was welcome at the hotel if he needed to sleep. Dexter had stayed away, even as he’d cursed himself for doing it. He avoided her because he didn’t want to discuss the end of things, didn’t want to do or say something and realize, “this is the last time.”

The same wish for avoidance spurred Dexter’s irritation when he opened the door to his berth on the fast clipper only to discover the tiny space crowded with Charlotte’s trunks in addition to his own. Unlike the cruise ship, the clipper featured Spartan accommodations even in first class. With all the luggage, there was barely enough room to walk from the hatch to the bunk.

Blast .

He wondered if he’d be able to find a steward and sort out the mess before the ship embarked. The citrusy scent of Charlotte’s perfume already wafted about the cabin, and Dexter was damned if he’d spend the next several days steeping in that fragrance. It was already hard enough to forget their last time together—the night of the steam car explosion in Paris—without having a constant olfactory reminder of the woman to whom he would shortly no longer be married.