Gossamer Wing (3 page)

* * *

IN THE SKY,
things were quiet. Cold, and sometimes uncomfortable, but blessedly quiet except for the intermittent rush of the gas feed and the occasional radio transmission.

When Charlotte had first seen the tiny dirigible called
Gossamer Wing
, she hadn’t understood how it could possibly do all its inventor claimed. It looked more fantasy than machine.

Indeed, she thought as she made a minute adjustment to starboard and began the steep climb to cruising altitude, the miniature airship was her fantasy embodied, for all it was a technological marvel. One of her fantasies, at any rate.

A pity it must remain invisible to all but a few, and unknown to most. That was its purpose, however: high-altitude surveillance, nearly undetectable to the naked eye or even the average spyglass. That, and undetectable second-story work. Charlotte hoped to become the first field agent to use the vehicle in France, gathering information in an entirely new way, going where others could not. And then, assuming her superior in Le Havre approved the final mission, she might even use the
Gossamer Wing
to help prevent the French from developing a weapon that was almost guaranteed to bring war back to the globe.

Charlotte’s ears clicked and she glanced at the altimeter, knowing she was near five thousand feet up even before the gauge confirmed it. Easing her angle of ascent, she smiled at the soft chime that marked another thousand feet of altitude above baseline. Her new inner ears were no less a wonder than the
Gossamer Wing
, and they allowed her to enjoy this part of her work in a way she’d never anticipated.

Silence. It was so rare, so precious. Even an empty house was never truly silent. There were always servants, guests, the nagging voice of one’s own determined conscience. There was always the overwhelming absence, roaring at her by omission, reminding her the house she lived in had been meant for a family. That it was her husband’s house, and he had died before she even learned to be a proper wife to him.

Reaching for the valve to her left, Charlotte cut the gas feed to the silken blimp and relaxed her legs within the rigging. Floating suspended, easy as a cloud, like a waking dream of effortless flight. The chill air swept through her, swept her clean, swept away all the doubts that gathered like so much dust while her feet were on the ground.

“
Shhhhh-ch
clear today but
shhhhhh-whoosh-ch-ch-ch
devil are you, Charlotte?”

She chuckled as she toggled the microphone switch. For all his many years of experience in the field, her father was still terrible at radio communications, always forgetting to hold the transmitter button down as he spoke.

“I’m directly over your house, sir. In fact”—she swiveled her jaw to the right, nudging the ocular control to zoom in on the ground below, raking her gaze over the scene until she found what she was looking for—“you’re wearing that red cravat I like. Very dashing, but you have crumbs in your beard.”

“Bloody
chhhhhh-shhhh
.”

Her laugh overloaded the microphone, creating a moment of sharp feedback. Charlotte cursed and jerked her head at the sound, ruining her focus and causing her to bobble downward. The ringing vibration and sudden shift in position made her head and stomach swim for several moments, and she had to clench her teeth to keep her breakfast kippers from making an unwanted reappearance.

“Remember thou art mortal,” she chided herself. An airship, particularly one as tiny and responsive as this one, was no place for tomfoolery.

“Godlike aspirations, my dear? Perhaps it’s time you came down to earth.”

That
had come through loud and clear, at least.

“Presently. I’m still testing the controls on the new helmet. I need my mouth for that. I’ll speak to you when I’m down.” After toggling the radio off, she put the proof to her words by gripping the flat leather tab between her teeth and giving an experimental tug. A whirr sounded and a gray-violet filter snicked into place over the ocular’s primary lens. The world jumped into sharp contrast below her. Another tug, and a glare filter darkened the view. Charlotte thought such a filter might be especially welcome when flying over water.

Whirr . . . snick.
A moment’s confusion resolved as she realized she was seeing a version of the world filtered to show only red.

Whirr . . . snick
. Green, blue.

Clever
.

She had been very specific with her requests in the past, and what she had received from the Makesmith Baron had been meticulous, beautifully crafted, and precisely what she had asked him to build.

But when he asked the purpose and she gave him no further guidance than “camouflage,” he had given her all this. Options she hadn’t even known existed, tools she would never have thought to ask for.

“I may never give him more than one word of direction again,” she mumbled to herself around the mouthful of leather. The movement of her jaw triggered the sensitive device, sending it clicking through several filter changes before it stopped. Disoriented, Charlotte clutched too hard at the airship’s pitch control, skewing sharply downward several yards before she could correct. She very nearly lost her stomach’s payload again. And again, she knew she had nobody but herself to blame.

Two

UPPER NEW YORK DOMINION

“IT’S FINALLY READY,
then.”

Neville, Viscount Darmont, sounded more resigned than pleased at the news as he led the way inside the stately manor house.

“I believe so.”

“You’re resolved to do this, Charlotte? It’s not too late for them to assign somebody else, you know.”

She whirled on him, snapping her gloves against her thigh. “This is my project, Father. Mine.” Then, more gently, “Do I ask for so much? I only want to serve the Crown as you do. As Reginald did. You of all people should never question my motivation.”

“Oh, you hate the French, I’ve no doubt at all of that, and I won’t say you’ve no cause.” He rushed on when Charlotte opened her mouth to interrupt. “But I might well question your objectivity as well as your fitness for such a dangerous assignment. You have doubts of your own, or you wouldn’t have gone behind my back from the start to volunteer your field services with the Agency. You knew I would object, and you knew why.”

“You’re my father, of course you object. It’s dangerous. I didn’t go behind your back, though. I merely waited until Lord Waverly had approved my participation and I had completed initial training before informing you of my plan to follow in your illustrious footsteps, sir.”

The deliberately applied charm, the hint of a dimple at the end of her statement, was a rare glimpse at the impish Charlotte of the past. She knew it would distract and soften her father. He had always been helpless before the dimple.

“My dear, I would tell you that Reginald would have hated to see you risk yourself, but the truth is I’m sure he would have found you every bit as enthralling in this as he seemed to find you in all other things.” They had reached her father’s study, and he took his usual chair with more than his usual sigh of relief to be off his feet.

Enthralling?
Reginald had always seemed so controlled, so determined and deliberate.
Enthralled
sounded like such an undisciplined, hapless state of being. Charlotte’s skepticism must have shown, because her father smiled and shook his head as she seated herself opposite him. “I forget how short a time you really knew him as an adult. As his friend, I assure you he was more captivated by you than he ever let on.”

Despite all the secrets their lives held, Charlotte and her father had never sought to conceal their thoughts and memories of her late husband, Darmont’s protégé. She found it a relief to talk about Reginald openly, fondly. Most people were painfully delicate about it, though, including her mother who still treated her like a Tragic Young Widow.

“He did let on, in his own way. But thank you.”

“There’s a more pressing problem. Can you really spend weeks, perhaps months, effectively hiding how much you despise the French, even under this new Égalité government? You will tend to encounter a fair number of them in France.”

“But Father,” she said, dimpling again,
“J’adore Paris au printemps. Et Honfleur est tout a fait charmante!”

“This isn’t a game or a masquerade ball. Nor is it the office work you’re accustomed to doing for the Agency. It could be
months
, Charlotte,” he reminded her. He apparently had some selective immunity to her charm, or perhaps her demeanor was simply not as charming in French. “Yet another matter presses. In addition to recovering the documents and determining whether the French have started building their own device yet, Murcheson still wants a professional consultation on-site regarding some of the equipment at the new facility. He agrees with me that we can kill several birds with one stone by bringing in somebody from the outside, and Whitehall has approved a plan that will provide the perfect cover for you both.”

Something about the way her father said “somebody from the outside” suggested to Charlotte that he had a particular somebody in mind. “What are the various birds, what is the plan and whom might this convenient new colleague be?”

“Hmm. Yes. Would you care for tea?” He reached for the bell pull before she could answer. “The birds are as follows: the consultation is necessary because a fresh pair of expert eyes might solve some of the lingering technical problems Murcheson’s people have failed to conquer during this past year or more. Our own personnel are not without their talents, but they are only the ordinary sort of geniuses. They create what they are asked to create, quite brilliantly at times, but their vision is somewhat circumscribed. ‘To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail,’ that sort of thing.”

Camouflage
, thought Charlotte. To Hardison, one word had been more effective than a laundry list of specifications. He was not, it was clear, any ordinary sort of genius. “Go on.”

“A makesmith could also perform any necessary on-the-spot modifications to the airship you might require. Someone from the outside has the added advantage of having no history with the Agency. One or two discreet visits from a social equal, conversations undertaken in private where there is no danger of eavesdroppers. It would be easy enough to approach him without anyone thinking a thing about it. Such a person would have no other record of a connection with our activities. Even if he fell under suspicion, there would simply be nothing for the French to discover, no matter how thoroughly they investigated.”

“Assuming such a person would agree to work for you, of course. And have the time, means and inclination to leave his business and go haring off to France for weeks or possibly months.”

“There is that, but that brings us to the plan. You’re the widow of a baronet, and you’ve been quite famously in near seclusion for an unfashionably long mourning. Now, now,” he waved off her protest, “we both know you’ve been far busier with your work than anyone knows, and the seclusion at your estate has made a very convenient cover for your absences during training. The fact remains, you’re still known to people, and if we ship you off to France you will almost certainly be noticed there. You must have a plausible cover. Given the choice of your traveling companion, you must also comport with Whitehall’s antiquated notions of propriety when it comes to female and male agents traveling together.”

The twist to his mouth told Charlotte everything she needed to know. He hadn’t been able to prevent her taking the assignment to become the first agent piloting a surveillance dirigible, nor had he been able to keep her from volunteering to use that dirigible to recover the lost weapon plans the British so desperately needed now that the French appeared to be gearing up for hostilities again—so he had engineered an obstacle, a challenge, to try to dissuade her. He expected her to cry off when she heard this new condition. He had invoked Whitehall—clever of him to refer to the faceless bureaucracy of the entire administrative wing of government, rather than blaming any individual Charlotte might try to make her case with—but she knew the real objection was his own. She also knew the officials in Philadelphia were far more puritanical than their counterparts in Whitehall. Still, it was a canny move on her father’s part to point the finger of blame all the way across the Atlantic.

Her father underestimated her resolve. Whatever it was, whatever she must do, Charlotte told herself she would accept it. Though she had never been a rebellious child, she was angry enough at her father’s interference that she knew she would meet this challenge if for no other reason than to prove him wrong. And this mission was not only vital to the Crown, it was vital to Charlotte—a chance to literally follow in her late husband’s footsteps and carry out the objective he’d never been able to complete.

“Traveling together?”

“That’s the cover, you see. You and the consultant in question will pose as newlyweds, honeymooning in France.”

“You want me to . . .” Despite her resolve, her jaw fell open for a moment as she saw the trap her father had led her into. A career was one thing, a reputation quite another, and her father knew as well as anyone how delicate the reputation of a widow could be.

The gleam of triumph in his eye gave him away. He thought he’d won, and his voice was almost jubilant as he continued. “The difficulty, of course, is that we can hardly faux marry you off to just anyone; it must be somebody plausible. Somebody who might conceivably have known you well enough socially to see you during your isolation and woo you out of your grief. Perhaps someone with whom you have already established a correspondence.”

Charlotte kept her bitter smile to herself. “Someone . . . titled?”

Viscount Darmont might look genial and portly and getting on in years, but his amiable round face concealed a mind still sharp as a knife, and he knew his daughter did not tend toward idle speculation. “Indeed.”

“I see. This is all beginning to sound a good deal more public than I had anticipated. And is this actually to be a faux marriage? Or is the Agency counting on a great deal more loyalty than that from myself and the titled gentleman in question?” She couldn’t imagine that her superiors in either Philadelphia or Whitehall would risk the French discovering that the marriage of two such illustrious Americans was a sham. Not when such a discovery would mean unwanted scrutiny of their motives.

“You’d be allowed an annulment afterward. In the meantime, your mother would be thrilled. A baroness for a daughter.” If Charlotte hadn’t known him better, she might have missed the hint of smugness in his tone as he waited for her to demur. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not now. If this was what she must do . . .

“Goodness, and she had abandoned all hope of my ever marrying my way up in this world.”

His smile faltered as he waited in vain for her to say more. “Charlotte, you can’t mean to go through with such a scheme. Even for the sake of the Crown, it’s too much to ask. There would have to be an actual wedding. You would have to share quarters on the ship, hotel rooms.”

“Oh, but I do mean to go through with it, Father. It sounds like an excellent cover story, precisely because it’s so implausible that anyone would go to such lengths. And as you say, we can have it annulled afterward. That will disappoint Mother, naturally, but it can’t be helped.”

For a long moment they locked gazes, fading steely slate eyes staring down ice-chip blue. Then the Viscount glanced toward the door as one of the upstairs maids opened it to make way for the tea cart automaton. A frippery, but Charlotte knew he ordered it when she was visiting because she had adored it as a child. The brass gleamed as bright now as it had then, a polish no mechanical means could ever accomplish quite as well as human hands wielding a soft rag and a simple compound of diatomaceous earth and naphtha. The gentle metallic clanking as the machine eased to a halt by her armchair was a sweet, soothing moment of auditory nostalgia.

She poured, but left her own tea cooling in the cup as she waited for her father to speak again.

“Political marriages are hardly uncommon even in these modern times,” he offered at last, only the taut whiteness about his mouth revealing the extent of his dissatisfaction. “I suppose I shouldn’t be too shocked that you’ve outdone me at my own game. You have grown cold, Charlotte, these past five years. Perhaps pretending to like the French will be easy compared to pretending to be a happy young bride.”

She ignored the insult. “I will do both, difficult or not. Will you be the one talking to him, then?”

She didn’t pretend not to know the target of the Agency’s plan. Her father’s plan. It would have insulted them both. She was far too much like her father, Charlotte often thought, for all she was a physical copy of her mother, Lavinia.

“Yes. With your permission, I’ll visit his workshop tomorrow and speak with him.”

“My permission?” Her gaze flew around the room, landing on the frescoed ceiling, on the bookshelf, on the tea cart—anywhere but her father’s face. She had no reasonable explanation for the embarrassment she could feel staining her face. “Isn’t this a fine mess? The father asks his daughter’s permission to go propose to a man she’s never met?”

An interesting man. A man she had corresponded with for years, but with whom she had never truly
communicated
until that recent brief missive, jotted in a moment of frustration. Not another agent ordered on a mission, someone she could be polite and collegial with, but a person who would have his own unknowable motives for accepting such a dangerous charge from the Crown . . . if he did accept.

“Would you like to accompany me?” her father asked, as if the thought genuinely hadn’t occurred to him until that moment. Perhaps it hadn’t, as he’d so obviously expected her to reject the mission once the new condition was revealed. He’d been right to expect that. Any sane woman would have rejected it. “Or even go in my stead?”

“No.” She hoped she didn’t sound as abrupt as she felt. She wished she knew why her heart was racing. Charlotte lifted her teacup to her lips, finally taking a sip. “Tell him that the helmet is perfect.”

“The new blue thingum with the outlandish eyepiece?”

She nodded, and then thought a moment before adding, “Remember not to use his title. Apparently he doesn’t like it.”