“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.”
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.