Gossamer Wing (12 page)

He came hard, jerking up into her still-shaking body, shouting her name like a cry for help. Afterward, he had to pull away quickly so as not to compromise the sheath he wore. He had worn one every time after that first, mad night, and didn’t mind it for her sake but for this one thing. He hated leaving her body so soon, particularly this time. He wanted to stay inside her until he hardened again, make love to her once more before the ship’s docking forced them from the bunk.

He pulled out, but he wrapped his arms and legs around her and didn’t let go until the hated voice of the captain on the intercom interrupted them for the last time.

Nine

HONFLEUR AND LE HAVRE, FRANCE

CHARLOTTE WANTED TO
focus on her work. She wanted that very much. She had a list of coordinates to memorize then destroy, along with maps of Paris and Le Havre and a calendar full of notes about the phases of the moon. She had a dossier full of information about her target, Roland Dubois, all of which needed further study before she embarked on her first flight.

But after a night and half a day in Honfleur their contact still hadn’t surfaced, and Charlotte felt no closer to accomplishing any of her goals than she had when she left New York. She was also frustrated and preoccupied by her body’s obvious disgruntlement at being denied its newfound source of entertainment.

Their hotel suite was lavish, and Charlotte suspected Dexter was sleeping comfortably enough on one of the two overstuffed sofas in the sitting room. For all she knew, he was trotting out to find French whores every night to satisfy his obviously quite healthy libido. She only knew for certain he wasn’t satisfying it with her anymore. He seemed content with the arrangement, but in her experience people were seldom what they seemed.

Why it bothered her so much to think Dexter was pretending to be content, Charlotte couldn’t say. She said nothing instead, and the words on the pages before her swam and danced in an endless tedious whirl. Charlotte tried to keep her eyes on the work, on the ridiculous novel in whose margins she’d jotted the coordinates to study, rather than staring across the sidewalk café table at her temporary husband’s sensual mouth.

“Lord Hardison?” A cultured voice, a British voice, startled Charlotte from her reverie. She looked up to see an older gentleman in a top hat nodding to Dexter. A wave of relief, flavored with excitement, swept over her. Dexter leaped to his feet, a broad smile on his face and his hand extended for a gentlemanly clasp.

Charlotte scanned their surroundings automatically as she stood, but saw no obvious eavesdroppers or onlookers. The rooftops across the street were clear, and there were only a few other patrons at the little café where she and Dexter sat lingering over brunch and enjoying the cool coastal breeze.

“I’m Rutherford Murcheson. Heard you were in town. Lad at the embassy said I might find you here.”

Murcheson, Charlotte knew, ran one of the largest makesmith forges in Europa. He was an ideal business acquaintance for Dexter to make on this dual-purpose honeymoon. This also made him an ideal contact for Charlotte and Dexter, and the perfect covert spymaster for the Crown’s agents in France.

“My wife, Charlotte.”

She threw Dexter a warning glance for flubbing the introduction, but the older gentleman covered with a courtly bow over her hand. “
Baroness
, it is a great pleasure. I understand it’s your first visit to Europa. Welcome to France.”

She giggled, as that seemed an indelible part of her cover persona now, and bobbed a little curtsy. “Mr. Murcheson. Oh, are you the Mr. Murcheson who makes those
lovely
curio boxes? How exciting! Dex, we must see if we can impose on Mr. Murcheson for a tour of his factory!”

The passwords
Europa
and
curio
having safely passed between them, they proceeded to make plans for a visit to the factory that very afternoon. Then they all shared fashionable coffee while the gentlemen talked smithing. Dexter was firm and businesslike, while Charlotte continued to speak in sentences that seemed to demand exclamatory punctuation. By the time they parted ways with Murcheson and she and Dexter returned to their suite, she was thoroughly sick of herself and her cheeks were aching from all the forced smiles.

“It really is like an optical illusion,” Dexter remarked, loosening his cravat and shrugging his coat off onto the nearest sofa arm.

“I beg your pardon?” She sighed with relief as she removed her hat. One of the pins had been poorly placed, poking her with distressing frequency throughout the contact session.

“I know you’re the same person. It looks like you, it’s wearing the same clothing. But that insipid creature simply isn’t you.”

You seemed to like her well enough on the ship
, Charlotte was tempted to say, but she knew there was a difference. On the ship she had come to feel almost childlike for a time, able to enjoy things freely. Playing the part had become a game, and not all her giddiness had been a pretense.

Now, however, the charade was in deadly earnest. Each giggle, each stupid question or eyelash-batting, had a purpose. To misdirect, to glean information from an unwitting source. She had to be, very deliberately and aggressively, the last person anybody would suspect of espionage. It was her job to be other than what she seemed.

“Of course it isn’t me. That’s the point,” she snapped.

“She gives me a headache.”

“Me too. But darling,” she simpered, because the room might even now be under surveillance, “you know it’s just because I get nervous around people.” She shot him a warning look, which it took him a moment to process. When he did, he nodded with weary resignation and mouthed an apology. She shrugged it off.

“Would you like to come with me to see Mr. Murcheson’s factory this afternoon, sweetheart? Perhaps there’ll be a shop. You know how you love shops,” he said with droll good humor, the perfect indulgent honeymoon husband.

She smirked. “Well dearest, a poor lonely widow has to find some way to spend her days.” With an undignified flop, she slumped to the sofa opposite Dexter and let her head loll back. It was an unseasonably warm day in Honfleur, and the fans in the room only seemed to stir the air, not cool it. Charlotte had felt sticky since they’d reached the coast, even in the evenings when the temperature dropped.

“Her money too, I suppose. But lambkin, I know a number of widows who find other ways to spend their time. Fascinating ways, some of them.”

She glared at him and whispered, “Lambkin?”

He shrugged, then grinned in a completely unrepentant way. His aggressive good cheer was almost grating.

“Volunteer work?” she guessed. “Charity balls?”

Dexter lifted an eyebrow, seeming to gauge the risk of his answer before speaking. “Yes, in fact I know several very accommodating widows who are well known for volunteering to work on balls, among other things. Perhaps not for charity, but certainly out of the goodness of their own hearts.”

She held her stern face for only a few seconds before breaking. He laughed along with her, and she watched him with delight until she realized she was watching him with delight, at which point she quickly looked away. His next words caught her completely off guard.

“Charlotte, tell me more about Reginald.”

Time froze for an instant, or perhaps it was only that her heart seemed to stop beating. Then it thudded in her ears, loud and insistent, as a rush of feeling came over her. It was something like terror, or panic. Charlotte couldn’t name it, nor did she understand why it came upon her now. In broad daylight, in this peaceful setting, with a man she trusted.

“Why?”

“Because he was important to you.” He was keeping his voice light on purpose, she thought, but she could hear the serious intent beneath that.

“What would you like to know?”

“Did you love him?”

She nodded. “Yes. Very much.”

“What was he like?”

Might as well ask her what air was like, or water. It was there in the background and it was essential. You only noticed its importance when you no longer had it.

“He was quiet. I had known him since I was about fourteen, and the first time I saw him I thought ‘There is the man I shall marry one day.’ Reginald did not know this until much later, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He had come to see my father on some business matter. He can’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen at the time himself. Still at university. He had started very young, though, so he was nearly finished at that point. My father’s people had already tapped him. He was brilliant, you see. Do you know the, ah, nature of his particular work?”

Dexter paused and then nodded. “Yes. I’m familiar with it, although I don’t understand it.”

“Few people do.” She tried to think of ways to describe Reginald, ways that didn’t involve code-breaking or the Agency he gave his life to. “He was never good at people. Numbers and patterns, he had a passion for, and music. But people baffled him.” She rose and wandered to the French doors that opened onto a narrow iron-railed balcony. The street, two stories below, was noisy and even hotter than the room. The balcony, however, offered a breeze and a splendid view of the harbor from one end. “Except for a few, and I was one of them. Even as a young girl, I could always talk to Reginald. It was inappropriate, I suppose, but I was always in the library and when Reginald visited the estate—which was fairly often, once he started working for my father—we would sit there together. Usually alone, which was the inappropriate part. We would talk about books and ciphers. Other things.”

“His misanthropy?”

Charlotte smiled. “He wasn’t really that way. He never could stop thinking, analyzing. I suppose I was just enough like him to understand. I even went into the same line of work, for a time, after all. Unlike him, however, I seem to be able to function in society without too much difficulty.”

“It’s an act, though.”

“Yes. I much prefer being private.” A gull cried overhead, sweeping through the air toward the estuary, and Charlotte longed to join it in flight.

Dexter frowned, stopping to choose his words. “You were willing to give that up, though. Privacy, I mean. When you married Reginald.”

Letting her eyes track along the bright strand of the beach, Charlotte tried to think whether she had really even considered that factor when she married. She had been so young, only twenty-two, and she had barely known herself. Being with Reginald was hardly like being with another person at all.

It struck her, with a deep pang of honest regret, that if Reginald had lived she might well have grown quite miserable living with him. She would have suffered the most horrible loneliness of all, that of being with another person who isn’t present in spirit. There was no way to explain the feeling to Dexter without sounding disloyal. Charlotte finally responded without really saying much at all.

“I was younger, and less set in my ways.”

* * *

NONE OF THIS
is what it seems
. Martin avoided drawing conclusions too early in the game; he preferred to wait for the evidence to unfold. This, though, was an objective assessment he couldn’t avoid. He reviewed the transcript of their conversation, still not sure he would believe these words if he hadn’t chanced to hear them for himself.

It was she, the widow of his old enemy, as he had suspected. Martin supposed a younger version of himself might have experienced remorse while listening to her brave, loving reminiscence about the man he had poisoned.

Martin of the current day experienced only curiosity. His minions had reported the new baroness to be flighty, an overage ingénue of that tiresome American variety, as empty of thought as she was beautiful to look at. This profile comported with his perception of the Makesmith Baron as a man who would appreciate an ornamental wife, one who could entertain and charm his business associates and bear him attractive children.

The people he’d listened to in that hotel room didn’t match their reports. The woman was no empty vessel, and the man no dilettante industrialist. Furthermore, Lady Hardison was evidently not just the widow but also the daughter of a spy. What might his superiors in French intelligence have made of that, Martin wondered? Viscount Darmont a spy all these years? It would have explained quite a few things. They would never know it now, and Martin supposed it wasn’t important. The daughter was, however. He would bet his life she was following in her father’s and dead husband’s footsteps. He still wasn’t sure what to make of the new husband.

Why had they come to France? Was it only to meet with Murcheson and scheme to undercut the steamrail bid, as Dubois suspected? Nothing to do with politics, except as it impacted on matters of business?

Impossible.
If Martin had learned anything in his many years of working in the private sector for Companie Dubois, it was never to trust Dubois’s assumptions about people and their motivations. Whatever professional assistance the American might need from Murcheson, Murcheson certainly didn’t need the American to strengthen his own position. Yet he’d invited Hardison to tour his factory, and spent a cordial few hours away from his office just to chat with the man. Therefore, Hardison must have some other reason for being here, and so must his bride, who seemed unlikely to have chosen a honeymoon in France. Martin might work for Dubois now, and dwell on stifling competition and stealing trade secrets, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten every instinct of intelligence work. Industrial espionage wasn’t so very far from spying for the government, after all. Trade secrets were trade secrets, no matter the business.

Martin handed the notebook back to the twitchy youngster monitoring the hotel room. “They travel to Paris soon. Have Claude find out where they plan to stay so we can prepare their room well in advance.”