Gossamer Wing (16 page)

It’s precisely my cup of tea
, she told herself sternly.

For all its wonders, however, Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to enjoy piloting it. She could barely bring herself to contemplate getting in the thing again. Her mouth grew dry as she remembered the experiences of that afternoon.

When the technician had offered to take her for a short trip, she had been excited only until the hatch closed over their heads. From that moment on, she’d been nearly frantic to escape the close, suffocating atmosphere within the cabin of gleaming metal and reinforced glass. The water had seemed heavy and threatening, as though she could feel every bit of the pressure that weighed on the tiny craft. Minutes had passed like hours, and she had practically sobbed her relief when the
Gilded Lily
resurfaced in the docking bay and she could open the hatch and breathe again.

Charlotte was chagrined at how thoroughly fear had ruled her today. Her response made her all the more determined to give the sub another try and get the better of the dread.

“As good as your airship?”

“What?” She turned her head sharply, irritated at having her reverie interrupted. Dexter was staring at her, the curio box apparently no longer of interest.

“The submersible. Will it be as good as your airship? Get you out and away from the things of man? It might be a ready substitute, if Murcheson and his men decide the
Gossamer Wing
is too risky after today’s incident. You could move from field-testing one to the other. Dubois’s office is close enough to the water that you might not even have to change targets.”

She couldn’t quite tell if he was teasing her. His brown eyes were warm and kind, but then they usually were. The subtle crinkles at the corners were always there, whether he was joking or not, as if he’d spent too many hours squinting at tiny device parts. The corners of his mouth turned up too, sometimes with a wry curl but usually seeming predisposed to good humor. Now was one of the wry times.

Charlotte bit her lower lip against the impulse to place a kiss right there, at the slightly sarcastic corner of Dexter’s mouth. Returning her gaze to his eyes, she found, did nothing to make her feel more in control. This was a small space and he filled it, as he had a propensity for doing. She could not have him filling her spaces this way.

“Not here,” she said, nodding toward the front of the carriage. The car might be Murcheson’s, the driver his employee, but that hardly meant he needed to hear everything they had to say. Their room too was almost certainly compromised. Dexter would have to search it for bugs before they slept that night.

“Later,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument, “after dining, we’ll walk through the town or on the beach, perhaps. We’ll talk.” Sitting back and contemplating the curio box once again, he let the curl of his lips develop into a full-fledged smirk. “After all, any newlywed couple on their honeymoon must spend a certain amount of time . . . dallying.”

“We can talk,” she agreed, trying for a frosty smile. “I’m not sure I approve of any public
dalliance
.”

“Conversing into the wee hours, holding hands on a moonlight stroll. Sharing the occasional fond kiss. It’s not as though I’m asking you to do what that secretary was doing, Charlotte. Unless you’d like to, of course.”

His words were like a blow to the abdomen, pushing a startled puff of air from her. The image of doing
that
, on her knees before him with her mouth and hands hard at work, forced itself into Charlotte’s mind and raked the coals of desire she had struggled for days to keep banked. Instantly wet, breathless and trembling, she blinked the vision away and made herself frown as she replied.

“No, thank you.”

“You’re blushing,” Dexter pointed out.

“The driver—”

“Probably can’t hear us over the engine. Charlotte, we did agree to reevaluate . . .”

“
No
.” She threw all her intent into the word, and stared him down, never knowing where the strength to do it came from. After a long, long moment Dexter gave a shrug and a nod.

“Look.”

She followed his gaze down to his hand, where sat a star-shaped wonder, its cunningly hinged lids now open to reveal numerous tiny compartments of varying dimensions. Midnight blue velvet lined the teak and brass. As she watched, Dexter closed and reopened one little lid with a fingertip, and a twinkling tune began to play.

“Like fairy bells,” she whispered, not wanting to drown out the music with anything so coarse as a human voice.

“Mozart,” Dexter said, nearly as low. “Serenade Number Ten.”

“Yes, the ‘Gran Partita.’ I know. Shh.”

They sat and listened until the song wound down, a surprisingly long time given how tiny the mechanism must be. After a pause to make sure it was over, Dexter passed his free hand over the opened box like a magician then presented the restored seamless cube to Charlotte with a polite nod of his head.

“Thank you,” she said automatically. She knew he was expecting her to ask how to open it, and did not care to give him the satisfaction. She held its weight in her cupped fingers, letting the warmth of Dexter’s hands transmit to hers through the wood. It felt good and solid to the touch, all that hardwood and brass. She suspected after she’d handled it awhile, the metal would leave its distinctive sharp smell on her hands. Right now, though, the only scent was of the fresh, clean wood and the oil and varnish it had been rubbed with.

It felt solid and smooth, Charlotte reflected, but it was so complex beneath the surface. And she didn’t know how to open it.

With a sigh, she opened her reticule and dropped the box in, careless of the finish.

* * *

SHE’D NEVER KNOWN
that earthquakes could be a problem in the English Channel. But evidently, as Dexter explained, it was a significant concern given the placement of the submersible station and the geological instability of the channel floor.

“They’re worried about having enough warning to get the crew evacuated if there’s a danger of being cut off. I know how to make a seismograph to detect vibrations, but I haven’t a clue how to rig any sort of long-range sensor array that doesn’t use some form of telegraphy.”

“I thought you were planning to use the little spider-cars to help with that.”

“I considered it,” he sighed, “but they’re not fast enough to be of much use, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I see. Well, why
can’t
it use telegraphy? Or radio signals, like the emergency lamps on the ship?” Charlotte clenched her skirts more firmly in hand as they approached the surf. Her toes dug into the sand with each step, and despite the chilly damp numbing her feet, she found it an oddly luxuriant feeling. Sensual. She had never thought of anything as sensual before the voyage from New York, but now it seemed she was running into sensuality everywhere she went.

“No sound. No vibrations. It has something to do with this new device they’re working on that they think the French may be developing as well. To detect sound or motion underwater.”

She nodded. She’d heard rumors. Indeed, she thought a gadget like that would be uniquely useful in her own line of work. She could hardly blame the French for wanting it. Nor could she blame the British military for trying to suss out the secret and beat them to building it.

“What do you know about Murcheson?” Dexter stopped to roll his trousers up before proceeding, and Charlotte lingered until he was finished.

“Not very much. I know his wife is French,” she relayed. “But she’s said to be above suspicion, on what basis I have no idea. She grew up in England. Gossip has it she’s a great beauty, and they’ve a daughter about to debut who looks exactly like her. I don’t suppose that was the sort of information you were interested in, however. Let’s see . . . he was one of the first Englishmen to move his business across the channel following the treaty, as you probably know, and he’s been by far the most successful. His contacts in the Égalité government range wide and deep. Right to the top.”

“They’ve never found him out as an agent of the Crown?” He frowned, looking up at the moon as though studying it for an answer. “I’d think they would suspect him, at the very least. It seems so risky, having the tunnel extend from this side, and right from beneath his factory.”

“Risky, yes. But I think it’s brilliant precisely because it’s so improbable. They may suspect him, but suspect something on that scale? And because he’s building everything from curio boxes to steamrail coaches in his factories, any equipment would be so easy to bring in. He wouldn’t even have had to disguise it. Even his own workers don’t have to know what’s going on. I mean look at the things you’re doing to his toys, but the people who make them had no idea they’d end up as gadgetry for spies.”

She paddled one foot at the wave that trickled toward them, slapping the top of the water with her toes as it swept over their feet. Moonlight and starlight glimmered on the water like so many metaphorical diamonds. It was hard not to be dazzled, and even harder to ignore the playful pull and slide of water and sand beneath her toes, but Charlotte reined herself in. Poetic thinking would not help her.

“They wouldn’t be looking for an entrance on this side of the channel,” Dexter continued her train of thought. “They can search on the English side until the cows come home and never find it, because it isn’t there to find.”

“Risky but brilliant,” Charlotte repeated.

“Tomorrow you’ll be taking the submersible out alone, I hear?”

She nodded. She was already convincing herself she could learn to enjoy it. A bubble, slipping between the waves, and she would be safe inside it. Safe and quiet and solitary. Exactly her sort of thing. She was practically giddy with anticipation. Giddiness often caused one’s palms to sweat.

Dexter startled her when he spoke again. “You know you don’t have to, Charlotte. It isn’t an official part of your mission, is it? Murcheson hasn’t reassigned you.”

“Are you worried for me?” she asked with wry amusement. “I assure you I can manage the sub. It’s no more dangerous than the
Gossamer Wing
, at least.”

“But in the
Gossamer Wing
, you’re not closed in. Genuine phobias can do strange things, cloud the mind, even when you think you’re in control of your emotions.”

She clenched her fists tightly, then made herself release the tension in her hands. “I don’t have a genuine phobia. It’s under control.”

“I see.”

He sounded indulgent, but also a little preoccupied, as though his mind had already moved on to some other topic. From the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw Dexter stop his slow ambling at the water line and frown down at his feet. She could see nothing unusual, only the sand and water flowing back and forth with the tide, over his feet and his ankles. The bottoms of his pants were damp despite being rolled, the cream-colored linen dark with moisture.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just . . . silica.”

“Silica?”

“Mmm.” He crouched and rubbed a bit of wet sand between his fingers, staring off across the water. “Tomorrow morning you’ll try out the submersible again if you feel you must. But after that, since Murcheson has grounded the
Gossamer Wing
for daytime flight, I think it’s time we moved along to Paris.”

“To Paris? But we’ve only just arrived, we’re supposed to have another three days here. Why do we need to go to Paris already?” She could sense a growing excitement and restlessness in him.

“Because it’s only a few hours’ steamrail ride from Paris to Metz or Nancy,” he explained, standing and flicking the grains of sand from his fingers.

Charlotte suppressed a frustrated growl. “And what is in Metz or Nancy?”

Dexter grinned and started back toward the street with a swing in his stride, not waiting for her to follow as he called back over his shoulder.

“Glassmakers.”

Eleven

ATLANTIS STATION, BENEATH THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

DEXTER WAS ANXIOUS.

Charlotte should have been back fifteen minutes ago.

He stared at the self-contained docking tank, as if he could conjure the submersible back by sheer force of will. A dozen different scenarios played through his head, ranging from simple engine failure that might leave her stranded and unable to return, slowly suffocating to death, to an elaborate scene involving Charlotte taken captive by a rogue French agent who interrogated her using the most appalling torture methods imaginable. In between the two lay the all-too-realistic fear of her succumbing to panic from her claustrophobia and becoming disoriented, unable to pilot the sub back to safety.

He hadn’t pressed because he hadn’t the right. He wasn’t really her husband, so he wasn’t able to put his foot down. Nor was he quite a friend, because he hadn’t known her long enough to get away with saying the things a friend might say. Now he was not even her lover.

He had been a fool. Such a fool. He thought he’d been giving her time to come to him on her own. Instead, he’d only wasted the time they could have been spending together.

“She was very eager to try it out, sir. Determined, I would say. She was a quick study learning the basics yesterday, and she has plenty of air and fuel. Probably just taking her time.”

“She should be watching the time more closely than that,” Dexter snapped.

“Yes, sir.” The young midshipman manning the tank clearly knew when not to push a point.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Dexter allowed gruffly. But by the time Charlotte’s vessel broke the surface of the water some five minutes later, he was practically vibrating with a combination of fear and relief that translated into an unfocused rage when he finally saw her face.

“Dexter, you’re here! I think you may have been right after all, are you amazed to hear me admit it? It was ghastly!” she nearly shouted, all decorum forgotten as she pushed the hatch up and muscled her way from the sub’s cabin, visibly eager to abandon ship. “The longer you stay in the damn thing, the smaller it gets. Somehow being alone in there was even worse than having a copilot, but I refused to let myself panic and give up. It also took me a bit to get the hang of the controls,” she admitted, leaping from the bobbing lip of the hatch to the pool’s broad edge, “and then I decided to practice with the periscope, just to test my resolve I suppose, but
then
—”

Dexter snatched her from the ledge by the waist and hauled her down in front of him, barely letting her feet graze the ground before he spoke.

“Get out.”

It took both Charlotte and the technician a moment to realize he was talking to the young man.

“Sir?”

“Get. Out.” Low. Fierce. Not to be ignored.

The midshipman hesitated, his hands still on the rim of the hatch he had leaned over to close. Then, with an alacrity that might have been amusing in any other circumstance, he vacated the stony little chamber to leave them alone.

Charlotte was clearly far from pleased. “Dexter, what the hell do you think you’re—”

He kissed her. Not because he wanted to silence her, or because he thought much could come of it, or to make any greater point about the future of their marriage. He felt big and clumsy, an ox without words to express what he could barely identify even to himself. And she was alive, and not being violated by a Frenchman.

Mine
.

His lips forced hers open with no subtlety or seduction. It almost wasn’t about sex, that kiss. Relief, yes. Possession, quite possibly. His arms folded her closer, wrapping around her at the shoulders and buttocks, lifting her higher. He ignored her effort to push him away, the tapping of her hand against his shoulder. She didn’t tap him very hard, or very many times, before she seemed to resign herself and clasped her hands behind his neck.

By the time he let go, setting her on the floor and separating his mouth from hers abruptly, she was trembling nearly as badly as he was. Her mouth looked swollen, her cheeks were pink. The dark blue coverall she wore fit closely enough to reveal her ragged breathing. It revealed entirely too much, Dexter felt, as the trousers were tailored enough to show the curves of her ass and thighs to perfection.

He thought of the young midshipman watching her clamber in and out of the submersible, and had to dig his fingernails into his own palms to restrain himself from grabbing her and kissing her again.

Finally, into the shocked silence, he cleared his throat and said, “I expected you back a bit sooner.”

After a few unsuccessful attempts to reply, Charlotte rallied a little. “I see.”

He tried a smile, although it felt horribly forced and he suspected it was more of a rictus. “I’m pleased you’re not dead. Why is there no radio on that blasted thing again?”

She laughed, but there seemed to be no pleasure in it. “You have a peculiar way of demonstrating that you’re pleased about things, and there is no radio because silence is the key to stealth, remember?”

“Oh.” He closed his eyes against the irritation in hers, and tried to slow his breath. So he didn’t notice her approach, until he felt a touch tracking down the side of his face, soft as breath. He looked then, and saw that she was studying his face with the keen observation of a scientist watching a critical phase of an experiment.

When the fingertip passed over his lips, Charlotte’s eyes changed. Darkened. She stared at his lips and then, so quickly he almost thought he might have imagined it, licked her own.

Without thinking, Dexter took her finger between his teeth. Not biting, not nipping. Just securing it there. He expected her to yank it away, and his heart flipped over in his chest when she didn’t.

“You were concerned for me?”

He had to let go of her finger to answer. “Yes.” Out of his mind with concern, not to put too fine a point on it. “And later, we
are
going to reevaluate.”

“Going to . . . oh.”

“Ahem
.
”

The very pointed throat-clearing jolted them both, and they jumped away from each other, turning to face the interloper.

Mr. Murcheson and the station’s captain were standing in the doorway, the former looking amused and the latter scowling.

“Pardon the interruption,” Murcheson mugged. “Admiral Neeley is planning an evacuation drill this afternoon, and you’ll want some time to pack and so forth if you’re still planning to take the evening train to Paris. I believe it’s time we were off. If you’re quite through with everything you were involved in here, for the day?”

“Quite,” Dexter assured him, rolling his eyes at the older man’s wicked smile.

The young midshipman was standing in the corridor, looking abashed, and Dexter gave him a stiff nod in passing. He grasped Charlotte’s hand firmly when they moved off down the hall, not letting her escape his side until she reminded him she still had to change back into her street clothes.

A STEAMRAIL COACH, BOUND FOR PARIS, FRANCE

“IT WAS BUILT
for a larger person, that sub. It was the same when I used to try to drive my father’s steam car,” Charlotte grumbled, staring out at the passing scenic blur. The private steamrail coach was luxuriously fitted, but the ride was still tedious after the initial interest died off. They had already dined, then toured the saloon car and found nobody of interest there. There was not much to do, although Charlotte had spent a few minutes idly prodding at the curio box without any success. And now, with dusk falling, even the scenery was fading from view.

“You couldn’t reach the pedals?”

She shot him a haughty glare. “It was not built to accommodate my unique specifications. Even though it was a relatively small car, because Father wanted my mother and me to learn to drive it, the controls weren’t designed for a small person. It’s almost as though the manufacturers can’t really quite believe there are short people who might want to drive things. Sometimes it even happens when I’m having something custom-made. They have to do it over because they make it too big the first time even though I’ve
told
them . . .”

“Well, you are very tiny.”

“You never did that,” Charlotte pointed out. “All the things you’ve made for me, you never ignored the specifications like that.”

Dexter smiled and shrugged. “I’m empirical. I confess I never really considered how very small a woman those measurements implied. I took the numbers at their face value. It’s a weakness of mine.”

The opposite of Reginald, Charlotte supposed. Reginald, who took no numbers at face value. To whom all symbols represented something other than the thing they first appeared to represent.

“Not a weakness. An inclination, rather.”

“A tendency.”

“Exactly. Mister Woolly Bear.”

His eyebrow pricked up at the teasing tone. “Have you solved your puzzle box yet, dumpling?”

She gave him a little frown, a pretty pout of displeasure suitable for the Lady Hardison of shipboard life. Whether for the reminder about the box, or the implication that she was dumpling-shaped, she would never let Dexter know.

“I have not.”

“Would you like me to show—”

“I would not, thank you, snookums. I’ll get it.”

“I’m sure you will, my little cinnamon scone. In the meantime, about that reevaluation?”

In the silence following his question, Charlotte heard the rhythmic clatter of the wheels on the rails, the huffing tension of the steam engine that propelled them, and the beating of his own heart. She felt turned to stone, her eyes trained obediently out the window and her expression giving nothing away. She waited long enough to speak that her response, when it finally came, seemed to take Dexter by surprise.

“What, precisely, do you propose?”

“Propose? I didn’t really intend a formal negotiation, you know. I don’t have
terms
.”

Charlotte kept her eyes glued to the passing twilight view as though she could will herself into it. As though, if she concentrated hard enough, she might find herself outside the steamrail coach altogether and away from Dexter Hardison and the conversation he wanted to have with her.

It wasn’t that she found the idea abhorrent, far from it. She found it pleasantly diverting in the extreme to consider resuming physical relations with the Makesmith Baron. Whereas she had expected the time on the ship could be easily left behind, a fond memory fading like a dream, in reality she recalled every moment, every word. She could still feel him, his touch on her skin, inside her, wrapping her up and consuming her, as though they had just that instant tumbled out of bed. She thought she might go mad from remembering, and from wanting more. Or from the sense that she had somehow betrayed Reginald by enjoying it as much as she did.

The guilt was ridiculous, she reminded herself. The curiosity and attraction were normal. It was the timing she couldn’t ignore, the horrendous happenstance that they should find this inexorable force drawing them closer together when they needed detachment the most. It was all she could do not to indulge in what-ifs. What if they had met sooner, what if their correspondence had led them to one another as she’d occasionally speculated it might?

Reevaluation. What was there to reevaluate? She wanted him, and she couldn’t afford the complication of having him. That should make it simple. Her duty was to the mission, to Reginald’s memory. Not to this maddeningly appealing giant who seemed born to bring her pleasure but had arrived too late.

But even now, as he shifted his long frame a little closer on the wide red velvet divan they shared, her body responded. She felt herself turning toward him, a flower opening to the heat and light of the sun.

“Perhaps we
need
terms,” she suggested, finally abandoning the landscape to gaze on Dexter. Because she was tired, so tired of fighting this, and she didn’t think she could resist any longer. The resistance was becoming as harmful a draw on her attention as the act itself would be. She wanted to unfurl. She missed the sun. But she needed a way to make it all right, to convince herself that it would not become a liability to them both. She needed limits, conditions. “If we are to do this—”

“Charlotte!”

Dexter leaned in, a smile already breaking, to take her hands in his.

“We mustn’t make foolish promises we might regret later. No talk of when we return home.” She saw a flicker, a hesitation in his smile, before he nodded. “The mission comes first. Always. No arguments, no discussion. We’re here to do a job. This arrangement between us would be a convenience, nothing more. We must both assume it will end when the assignment does.”

The smile was gone entirely now, which made Charlotte a little sad. It was such a handsome smile. If anything, Dexter looked a bit angry. She tried not to dwell on the fact that if he was angry, or hurt, she was the one who had made him so.

“A convenience. Just mutual physical gratification, then? No bothersome emotional entanglements, and afterward we go our separate ways with our respective itches nicely scratched? That’s your proposal, Lady Hardison?”