Gossamer Wing (4 page)

* * *

DEXTER BELIEVED IN
serendipity, believed in the importance and necessity of luck in his work. It was key to his sense of humility; he never took a moment of insight or an accidental discovery for granted. He worked hard, he reasoned through problems, he persevered, but sometimes it all came down to a combination of circumstances no one could control.

At times his delight in the serendipitous was tested, however, and his ability to accept the guiding role of Fate severely strained.

All Dexter could think of as he listened to Lord Darmont’s proposal with dawning comprehension and disbelief, was that it was a short step from embracing one’s fate to being Fortune’s fool. If he wasn’t careful, Fortune was just as apt to bugger him senseless and leave him for dead as she was to favor him. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what a fickle bitch Fortune could be.

He wondered if Lady Moncrieffe might be an even worse one.

“I can’t have understood you correctly, Lord Darmont,” he said after hearing the man through the first time. “I mean to say, I do want to provide any service I can to the Crown and the Commonwealth, and I’ve no great love for the French. If it is within my power to help retrieve these plans and aid your colleagues in whatever it is they’re constructing, naturally I will do what I can to assist. But—”

“It’s the part where you participate in a not-quite-sham marriage to my daughter that has you stymied, eh?” For a wonder, the man sounded as though he were no more put out about the prospect than he might be about a troublesome argument between two of his tenants, or a horse that hadn’t performed as well as expected at Saratoga. “Can’t say I’m thrilled about it either, but she knows her own mind. She has her mission to perform and her own reasons for going through with it regardless of the additional conditions Whitehall has set.”

“May I ask about her particular reasons?”

“I’m sure you may. Whether she answers you is no concern of mine.”

“I see.” He didn’t quite, but Dexter got the impression Lord Darmont would not take well to being pushed on points he clearly wished to skirt.

“You made her a hat,” the older gentleman said suddenly.

“Beg pardon?”

“Charlotte. You made her a funny sort of hat, for flying with that bubble of hers. She reports that it is perfect. Said she could see the crumbs in my beard from a mile in the sky. And she told me not to use your title, because you wouldn’t like it.”

Dexter fought an urge to punch at the air in jubilation. He had known,
known
she would like his modifications.

“Helmet, sir. It was a helmet. I’m very pleased it met her requirements adequately.”

The portly Viscount was watching him with eyes that missed nothing. “She was very happy about that funny hat, Hardison. Happier, in fact, than I’ve seen her since her husband died. When you meet with her to discuss all this, as I suspect you will arrange to do as soon as I depart, you could do worse than to ask her about his death. Get it out of the way.”

“I’ll try to remember. Sir, it’s my understanding that the Treaty of Calais was supposed to bring an end to this sort of activity. Haven’t our agents been recalled from France? And theirs from England?”

Darmont shrugged. “I didn’t take you for a naïve man, Hardison. Perhaps I was wrong.”

“We still have spies in France.”

“Yes,” Darmont confirmed. “We still have spies in France. The French still have spies all over the Commonwealth, including the American Dominions. The old French government, the ousted post-royalist party who never wanted the treaty signed in the first place, have spies among the current French government, the Égalité types. Officially, of course, nobody in any of these governments knows a thing about all that. Nor do I. Officially.”

“And the treaty?”

“Did the treaty make you start trusting the French overnight?”

While Dexter mulled this question over, Darmont stood and wandered over to the rear wall of Dexter’s workroom, to the one frivolous element of design he had allowed himself when converting the room from a parlor to its current purpose. A portion of unplastered stone wall several feet wide was obscured by complex layers of pistons and gears, ranging in size from a few inches to a yard across. The cogs turned, the pistons drove here and there, the whole thing seemed nearly alive with purposeful motion. Its top and bottom workings disappeared into the floor below and ceiling above, suggesting it was clearly only part of some larger mechanism. To keep the dust off, the whole thing was secured under an improbably large pane of heavy glass.

“This is part of the original house, isn’t it? The room, I mean, not . . . this thing here.”

“Yes, sir. The first Baron built it shortly after the Colonial Uprising. His was one of the first Dominion titles.” Those titles had secured land for a growing body of restless gentry in Britain, who were happy enough to swear new oaths of fealty to the Crown—and agree to forego the usual seats in the House of Lords, as they wouldn’t be present to vote—in exchange for the prospect of nobility and wealth in the newly subdued American Dominions.

“I wonder what he would think of this, your ancestor?” Now Darmont was talking about the wall.

Dexter smiled, feeling much more at his ease discussing this than he had the surreal prospect of marrying Lady Moncrieffe in order to go help her spy on the French in violation of an international treaty. “I suspect he would be amused that I’d left it exposed, but I doubt he would mind. He did build it, after all. Or at least he started the process.”

He enjoyed the Viscount’s expression; the man was clearly startled. Dexter always enjoyed telling this tale.

“He was a suspicious old curmudgeon, you see, and after he was widowed at age fifty or so he married again to a much younger woman. She was very beautiful, and he was predictably jealous despite her being, by all accounts, the most virtuous creature ever born and quite in love with the old fool.

“He couldn’t bear to be apart from her, and she did like to take a solitary ride every fine morning. It preyed on his nerves not to know where she went, but he dreaded the thought that she might catch him spying and think ill of him, or think he didn’t trust her. So he rigged a sort of spyglass on the roof. The stairs were hell on his rheumatism, though, so next he developed a periscope in order to watch her while remaining in his own study.”

“I think I see the direction this will take,” quipped the Viscount.

“These things never end well, do they?” Dexter agreed. “From there it became a fixation, and then an obsession. He couldn’t see past the row of trees after she entered the lane from the south gate, but she would certainly question the removal of such a fine old row of elms. So he put a crude sensor in the gate, that tripped a bell if the gate was opened. The system grew in complexity, and he guarded his study as closely as Bluebeard guarded his wives’ heads.”

“We all know how that turned out. Can I assume this tale had an unhappy end?”

“Unhappy, possibly,” Dexter allowed with a smile and a shrug, “but at least not grisly. He did get found out eventually, of course, and she was furious. Nevertheless, she went on to bear him five children that looked too much like him to doubt their parentage, so one can only assume some sort of treaty was arrived at.”

“Based on the evidence of the children?”

“And on her journal. She was alternately horrified and flattered by his intensity.”

“The first Baron Hardison was not a stable chap, I take it.”

“Mad as a hatter, I suspect. But a dab hand with the gadgetry.” Dexter took a moment to appreciate the wall of delicate machinery in front of him. “Of course his devices were mostly glorified trip wires and the like. Levers to pull at bells, essentially, with a few extra steps in between. But the second and third Barons added their own fillips, most notably the clockworks. All the clocks in the house are synchronized by this system here. It’s still wound from a central location in the kitchens each morning. My grandfather added fans and thermostats. Centralized temperature control. I’ve contributed intrastructural communication devices. And this is a cross-section of the entire system. Remarkable, really.”

“Your grandfather was the one who married Eliza Chen.”

“Yes, sir.” He couldn’t help the note of pride that crept into his voice at the mention of his famous grandmother, who’d been a formidable political activist.

Lady Moncrieffe’s father turned that oddly calculating gaze on him again. “And two generations later, her crusade for workers’ rights and the destruction of the class system is honored posthumously by your habit of styling yourself
Mister
Hardison?”

Dexter stared back, suddenly feeling all the potential danger of this man. He heard, in Darmont’s pointed questions, the equally sharp intelligence of his daughter. At least if her letters were any indication. He wondered again what she looked like, and vaguely hoped she took after her mother.

“I don’t denounce my heritage, and I don’t forego the use of my title out of any altruistic notions about the populace, Lord Darmont. One day I may take up the title and wield it for the public good if I can, but at the moment my business interests here and elsewhere aren’t well-served by reminding people of my ancestry. You know it takes a great deal of money to maintain one’s estate. The French and the Spanish buy all sorts of equipment from my workshops. They don’t mind dealing with an American inventor, but I suspect they might be less sanguine about negotiating with the Makesmith Baron.”

He threw the epithet out and waited for a response.

“But it’s the Makesmith Baron who would make such a convenient husband for my daughter. You would need to use your title, foster the notion that you’re a typical blithe aristocrat. Play the baron to Charlotte’s baroness.”

They both knew the truth of that. What other single man could fulfill all the necessary roles for this particular political ploy? Who else had the technical expertise to advise the Agency’s engineers and work on the dirigible if necessary, the conveniently public disinterest in politics and the perfect credentials of gentility to marry the widow of a baronet, daughter to the eminently respectable Viscount Darmont?

Serendipity.

And Matthew, upon his return from delivering the “funny hat,” had waxed rather lyrical regarding the physical charms of the widow Moncrieffe. He had met her a few times before, he said, but had clearly been too callow a youth at the time to appreciate the qualities of such a subtle blossom. He was no longer too callow, apparently. Dexter supposed the woman took after her mother, after all.

“Pocket Venus,” Matthew had extolled. “Chilly as a winter day, and black isn’t her color, but still. Fire under all that ice, you know? You forget she’s tiny while you’re talking to her, then all of a sudden it strikes you that you could break her in two if you weren’t careful. Although . . .”

“Although?” Dexter had tried to pretend he wasn’t interested in Pence’s prurient gossip. He’d remained bent over his workbench, pencil in hand, sketching a design that wouldn’t leave his mind’s eye.

“She wouldn’t break, I suspect. There’s steel there.” Hardly the thing to say in compliment to a delicate lady. But he said it with admiration.

Dexter hadn’t risen to the bait. He hadn’t asked for more detail about the potential charms of the interesting widow with her inexplicable need for esoteric devices. For
camouflaged
devices.

Now that he knew the reason for the camouflage, he had more difficulty concealing his desire to learn more, and to meet her face-to-face at last. She was intriguing, this Lady Moncrieffe, with her mourning turned to espionage and her father who was willing to pander her to him on a temporary basis if necessary. Not that her father seemed happy with the idea.

“Did you mean for her to be the inducement, sir?” Dexter asked him. He was politely horrified by the very notion, and mortified to have to ask, but he thought it best to have it out in the open either way. “I would have taken this on for Crown and country. Even if nothing comes of it, you can depend on my discretion. Title or no, I think my reputation and my family’s honor are insurance enough of that.”

“I
meant
for her to continue her safe, sedate work decoding documents for the Agency. Before that, I meant for her to marry my protégé Reginald and induce him into an early retirement from the field,” the Viscount said gruffly, not meeting the younger man’s eyes. “I also meant to have a grandchild or two to dandle on my knee by this time. Instead I have a daughter who rarely smiles, who wears black all the time and looks terrible in it and who wants to turn her work into some sort of clandestine suttee. If I could forbid her to work for the Agency, or even persuade her to give up this profession and look for a new husband in earnest, to build a happier life for herself, I would. As I can’t, I will do my best to further her interests in the path she has chosen.”

He smiled a resigned sort of smile, and Dexter saw the clean, aristocratic lines of his profile pulled into prominence for a moment. “I can’t keep her safe. She’s a grown woman, and I can hardly tell her not to do what I’ve admittedly done dozens of times. Not the marriage part, of course, I’ve only done that once, but the mission itself. This work is addictive, I warn you. Few escape it once they’ve begun.”

“I’ll take my chances on that, I suppose.”

“The primary mission is Charlotte’s, fetching this blueprint or whatsis that our man in Le Havre thinks may still be secreted somewhere in Paris. He’d like to rule it out, at least. I think it’s a fool’s errand and there’s no chance the damn thing is still there after so many years. But we also need your expertise, Hardison. Badly. I think I can guarantee that once you learn what your part of the project is about—assuming you agree to the terms the Agency sets, of course—you will be so eager to work on it that the rest will fade into insignificance. It’s the type of thing a man like you would never be able to resist. One day, it could make you very, very famous indeed.”

“That part doesn’t interest me,” Dexter rushed to assure him.