She didn’t plan to come here, his instinct told him. He listened to that instinct, and held back to watch her.
Dubois had ordered him to stick to Murcheson, and more recently to the Makesmith Baron, as though these men were some demons sent specifically to take down his empire. The more Dubois insisted, the more Martin became determined that the woman somehow posed the greater threat.
The American agent’s face still haunted Martin’s dreams on occasion, two aspects of the same man at very different stages of his life. The first, as the young agent saw his death approaching at breakneck speed but miraculously escaped it. The second, right before he lost all ability to control his speech, at the very moment he recognized that death had finally caught up with him.
Both times he had spoken the same, single word. “Charlotte.”
Coeur de Fer had no nemesis. He was a legend to himself, a shadowy figure in the annals of international espionage. But he did have a bit of an obsession with that boy from the Dominions.
“The only one who ever got away,” he mused to himself, “though even he couldn’t avoid me forever.” Martin lost himself in the crowd as he followed Charlotte across the boulevard and up to the Palais Garnier. Despite his outlandish appearance, he was talented at fading into the background.
She was just in time to buy a ticket for the next tour. Martin almost laughed aloud. A tour of the building where her husband had almost met his grisly end. So be it.
Martin would buy no ticket. He already knew how to pick the locks at the Palais Garnier quite well.
Fifteen minutes later, when he finally accepted that she was not with the tour group, Martin saw it as another sign. The woman was an agent, clearly, he should have seen it from the start. Her story was too pat, her demeanor too glib, to explain her presence as a simple tourist in the country her husband and father had lived to defeat. Despite her earlier expression of befuddlement, her presence in the Palais Garnier couldn’t be coincidental.
She was also still in the building, and he had a reasonable guess as to where she was heading. Just as he had once received a sign, Martin decided it was time for Lady Hardison to receive a sign. Or merely a scare, depending on her nerve and whether his guesses about her occupation and reasons for being here were correct. Sighing, he melted from the mezzanine and made for the service passageway to await her return.
“GLASS ISN’T MY area, to speak of. Can you be more specific? Are you interested in ceramics, resistor production, that sort of thing? Or specialized casings?”
“Neither, actually,” Dexter told Murcheson’s man Cormier. The rabbity, bespectacled Frenchman looked more like a clerk than the head of regional operations for a large manufacturer. Nevertheless, it was Cormier who ran things at the large Murcheson facility in Gennevilliers, and the various satellite facilities near Paris. Dexter could tell Murcheson held the man in the utmost respect, but he hadn’t thought to ask before the meeting if the obviously local Cormier was privy to his employer’s clandestine occupation. Murcheson’s placid expression gave him no clue, so Dexter decided on circumspection. “It’s a new application I’m developing. Trade secret, I’m afraid, but quite promising.”
Cormier frowned, as well he might. “Not much to go on. But if you’re heading to Nancy anyway, might try looking up young Arsenault. Late of the Lalique operation, has his own workshop now. He’s known for innovation. If it’s something new you’re after, I suspect Arsenault’s the one you ought to talk to.”
Dexter noted the name, and thanked Cormier profusely as the man walked out to have his secretary fetch the address.
“I can have him send a message ahead, if you like?” Murcheson offered.
“No, no. I don’t know when I’ll be there, I want to keep things flexible.” Dexter mostly wanted to keep from broadcasting any travel plans ahead of time. He was beginning to adopt the habit of caution, of suspicion. It gave him new insight into Charlotte’s reserve. What must it have been like, only child to a notorious gentleman spy? Wanting to follow in his footsteps, just at the time it was becoming feasible for a woman to do so? She had been shaped by her father for this role, whether or not he’d intended to do it. Dexter knew a moment of fear that Charlotte might never be able to adapt to a calmer, less perilous life.
But the more time he spent with her, the more he grew convinced that he wanted such a life with Charlotte. Far from fading, his initial infatuation seemed to be deepening with each day that passed. She was not the fantasy woman he’d once envisioned, but he had long since ceased to daydream about that Charlotte. The real Charlotte maddened him, challenged him, inflamed his passions and excited his intellect. But most of all he simply liked the lady so damn much it frightened him. He felt comfortable with her, and he had no idea why. She was nothing at all like the women he usually spent time with. Voluptuous, friendly, often tall and occasionally a bit too brassy for good taste. Good girls, all of them, but they were so many overblown roses, merrily shedding petals in every godless shade of red. And bless them, all of them, for he adored women like that. Especially in his bed.
Whereas Charlotte . . . Charlotte was a rosebud chiseled in diamond, dainty and crystalline and not nearly as fragile as she looked. But such sparks, such heat, if one could but look past the icy surface to see the flaring colors beneath. And when he was inside her . . .
Dexter crossed his legs, uncrossed them and crossed them the other way, clearing his throat nervously. He hoped his reaction to his own reverie was not as apparent as it felt. Chiding himself for regressing to schoolboy behavior, he forced his attention back to the factory plan that Murcheson was now describing to him.
“And here,” the older man was saying, pointing to a dotted outline on the plat, “we intend to expand our research laboratory next year. More focus on battery efficiency. This will also free up much-needed space on the factory floor, once we’ve rebuilt.”
“Impressive.” Dexter traced over the closest factory wall on the floor plan, a double blue line bleeding a bit into the thin white vellum. “Not quite as impressive as Le Havre, of course. No offense to you, Monsieur Cormier,” he said as the man returned to his seat, the secretary evidently duly informed.
“None taken, I’m sure.”
“Your steam cars are built here prior to delivery, I gather?” Dexter asked, sensing that both men would be eager to continue discussing their operation.
He caught the first few words of Cormier’s response, then lost the thread of meaning as his mind wandered forward to the afternoon’s schedule. He wanted to be back at the hotel so he could greet Charlotte when she returned from her shopping and cultural tour of Paris. He wanted to know she had made it back safely. She had looked so small, so precious, when he left her that morning after breakfast. The unsatisfied urge to pick her up and carry her back into bed, strip her naked and spend hours making love to her, had been a physical ache in his body all day.
“But then elephants never have made very good chauffeurs, as they can’t seem to learn their left from their right.”
Dexter blinked and shook his head. “I’m sorry. Did you say elephants?”
“I wasn’t sure you were listening.” Cormier grinned at him, suddenly looking extremely French. Murcheson himself was doing a poor job of hiding a smirk. “This is your honeymoon, isn’t it, Monsieur Hardison?”
“Yes, it is.” It was a honeymoon of sorts, at least. The only one he’d ever had.