Dark Enchantment (6 page)

His jaw tightened. ‘And you want to end your days in a smashed and burning ornithopter on some God-forsaken hillside, do you? Because that’s what happens to most of my men. I can count on one hand the number of pilots who’ve been with me since the start of the war, Miss Laindon-Royse. The chances of your getting through unscathed are ridiculously low – this is not a job for a lady.’

‘What are my chances if the enemy break the line and reach the Peak?’ She thrust her chin out. ‘How unscathed do you think we ladies will remain then?’

The Chief Engineer ground the heel of his hand into his forehead, leaving an oily streak, and changed tack. ‘Well why haven’t you approached the Volunteer Air Corps if you’re so keen? Lord Atherstone might have a place for you.’

Charlotte bit her lip. His grey eyes bored into her. ‘Lord Atherstone is my fiancé,’ she admitted.

Out of nowhere the ghost of a smile touched his face, like sun on a winter mountainside. ‘I can see him having problems with that, then.’

She averted her face slightly.

‘What does your father think of this?’

‘I’m twenty-one.’

He hid the flicker of surprise not quite well enough. ‘Well, good for you, but I’m not asking you to marry me.’

‘I’m legally an adult. I can take this decision myself.’

‘And what would Lord Laindon say if his daughter was brought back charred and limbless? Or not brought back at all?’

‘I want to do my part,’ she repeated quietly but fervently. ‘I can fly. I’m wasted doing anything else.’

He shook his head. Then, to her utter amazement, said, ‘All right, lass. Show me what you can do.’

She stared, her heart starting to thump as it caught up with the tidings. ‘I’ll have to go fetch my –’

‘You do, do you? If the raid klaxons go off you think you’ll have time to pop home and get your toy?’ His mouth pulled sideways. ‘You’ll suit up and take one of my scouts. Now.’

Turning away, he searched down a coat rack laden with grimy flying suits and selected one. ‘Probably the smallest,’ he said, throwing it at her. ‘Get it on.’

Charlotte blinked, holding the heavy padded leather out from her clean dress. ‘Excuse me …’

‘Shy, are you? Not the most useful trait in a fighter pilot.’

She was going red. ‘You could –’

‘Yes, you’re right. I could convert my office to a ladies’ changing room for the duration.’ He pulled a fob watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘One minute or you’re wasting my time.’

She bared her teeth, flung the flying suit over the desk and went to work on her dress fastenings. Luckily it was a summer outfit, with the minimum of buttons. It came off quickly. Chief McGregor watched coolly as she loosened her waistband and dropped her underskirt to the floor, revealing long white drawers and stockings.

Faintly, from outside, came a joyous whoop: someone had noticed and such light relief was truly welcome. Charlotte clenched her teeth and ignored them. She had no time to change her tightly laced boots so she shrugged the leather suit on over the lot: footwear, bloomers and lacy chemise. It was so big that it didn’t even snag on her heels. And it smelled strongly and malely of sweat; the musk made her head swim.
Conflicting
emotions – humiliation and pride, outrage and fear and hope – washed through her from all directions, creating chaotic eddies.

Tightening the straps in a desperate attempt to make the baggy garment wearable, she glared at the Chief Engineer, her cheeks crimson but her lip mutinous.

He lifted one sardonic brow. ‘Well, you might have a weight advantage,’ he allowed.

‘Helmet?’ she demanded, pinning up her hair.

He threw her one from a pile. ‘This way then.’

He led her out to the smallest ornithopter in the row. They had an audience now of grinning men, but he barked at them and they retreated to their duties. ‘In you get,’ he instructed. ‘Take her out; show me some moves. I want to see a one-eighty drop roll. Don’t go beyond the harbour perimeter.’

Charlotte found this the easiest part of the whole process. Once she was buckled into the seat, she felt her confidence surge back. She knew how to fly. Nothing else in her life might be under her control, but this machine was. Nevertheless she was cautious at first, and a minute later glad she’d been so because with its armour this ornithopter was heavier than her own, with a higher stall-speed and pedals that were awkwardly stiff. Once she was used to them she was able to put the machine through its paces. Keeping in sight of the Flight Deck she spun and tumbled under the summer sky, looped the patrol ornithopter and finally scudded back onto the apron. She knew she’d acquitted herself well. She walked back towards Chief McGregor and his group with her cheeks glowing with excitement rather than offended pride, her blood singing in her veins. Even having to hitch up the flying suit did not dent her sense of vindication.

The Chief Engineer waited with his arms crossed over his
broad
chest. He nodded as she stood in front of him. The other men were smiling, not unkindly this time.

‘I can fly,’ she said, looking him in the eye.

‘You can fly,’ he agreed. ‘But when an enemy ’thopter comes at you out of the sun and there’s shrapnel ripping through the bodywork, will you scream and freeze or can you
fight
?’

And he slapped her hard across the face.

If she hadn’t been so charged with exhilaration she might have shrunk back and burst into tears. But she was burning with pride. She staggered, stared, and then launched herself at him, striking him in the face with her first blow. After that he caught her arms and pinned her out of reach.

She spat at him.

‘That’s the reaction I want,’ he said, his eyes no longer cold. ‘You’ll fly scout until you’re trained on the guns. Cartwright, take her to the Osprey and show her how to strip down the ammunition belts.’

That was a few months ago. Tonight she wore her own flying suit of cream leather cut snugly for a female figure. Tonight she entered the Flight Deck without trepidation. She wasn’t even the only aviatrix in the Royal Ornithopter Brigade any more, two others having followed in her footsteps since she had set the trend – though Alicia Holdstock was getting all kinds of pressure from her family to give up such low-class company and fly scout for the more genteel Volunteer Air Corps.

Charlotte had no problems with the company she kept. The crews, mindful of her status, were more restrained towards her than they might be to one of their own class, though they did not modify their general behaviour at all. She turned a deaf ear to the crudest of their conversation,
but
she liked their humour and their camaraderie. She liked their professionalism.

Of course it was impossible that she share their whole lives. While they bunked in barracks near the Flight Deck, ready at a moment’s notice, she was isolated at home. She did her best to be ready for action, and wore her flying kit at all times. She didn’t shy away from unpopular or dangerous missions, and the Chief showed her neither favouritism nor hostility.

When she stepped out onto the Flight Deck, she found it silent except for the faint roar of the boilers. The lights were dimmed, the shutters down over the apron. She walked slowly down the ranks of machines, pausing to touch their metal flanks as if they were sleeping horses.

Nobody else was about. They would, she supposed, be asleep at this hour, or if like her they could not they would be entertaining themselves in a public house somewhere, though with restraint. Unlike the V.A.C. who deemed it proper to fuel their pilots on champagne, here the Chief did not permit drinking on the Flight Deck – in fact he wouldn’t let anyone fly whose breath betrayed the smell of alcohol. The pilots grumbled but obeyed.

He was awake tonight though. Her heart bumped a little to see him. He sat at a workbench, lit by a spotlamp, absorbed in his special project – a bulky complex chunk of machinery that people said was supposed to be an entirely new design of phlogiston engine. Most of the time it hid under a tarpaulin as the Flight Deck was too busy for speculative engineering.

‘Chief,’ greeted Charlotte as she got close.

He glanced up at her briefly. He was busy smoothing a perforated brass disc bigger than his spread hand with a file the size of a toothpick. ‘You should be asleep at this hour, Laindon.’

‘I can’t.’

He grunted under his breath, his attention on the machine part.

She folded her arms and paced in front of the bench. ‘I just can’t sleep. I keep worrying – what if I miss the call out? What if I can’t get here in time?’

He sat back then, chewing his lip as he regarded her. ‘You’re not going to fly at your best if you’ve not rested.’

She wondered if he’d seen himself in a mirror recently; there were black shadows under his eyes and lines were beginning to etch themselves deeply into his face. ‘I just wish it would start,’ she complained. ‘It’s the waiting that’s the worst.’

‘No.’ His voice was low. ‘The longer the attack takes, the more likely we are to have our allies in place to help us.’

‘But I can’t wait! I want to fly! I feel sick when I eat, and I can’t sleep, and all the time I’m listening out, and I think if it takes any longer I’m going to go crazy. I mean – this is it. Everything hangs on this! Can’t you send me out on reconnaissance, Chief?’

‘At night? We need to conserve fuel, Laindon. You know that. The sentry systems will warn us in time.’

She spun on her boot heel, breathing hard. ‘I’ve been through the drills so many times. It’s not helping. I’m going blank on things I should know. I find I can’t remember what day it is, or what I’m supposed to be doing –’

‘Laindon!’ He held up his hand, arresting her mid-flight. His eyes held her. ‘It’s all right. Come into my office. I’ve got something there that’ll help.’

What was that? she wondered as she followed him. A bottle of whisky? It didn’t seem likely. The story among the crew was that when he’d been younger he’d had trouble with the bottle, but nowadays he was a hymn-singing teetotal Nonconformist.

But she trusted him. Everyone in the Ornithopter Brigade trusted the Chief, even if he was a swine to work for. As for Charlotte, she would do anything he told her, willingly. He’d let her fly.

Inside the office, Charlotte watched as he adjusted the blinds so that the slats shut out the world. There was a jerky tension to his movements. Whisky, she thought. It has to be. Only when he shot the brass bolt on the door did she feel the first stab of doubt.

‘Chief?’

Then he turned towards her and she saw the intent in his eyes, but she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t react even when he took her shoulders and shoved her up against a wrought-iron pillar and pressed his mouth down on hers in a fierce kiss that ate her breath. Even when he released her bruised lips she had nothing in her lungs to scream with. He grasped the hair at the back of her head without any gentleness and she let out a squeak.

His hard, handsome face was fierce with desire. His eyes burned. He kissed her open mouth again, triumphantly, relishing the softness of her lips and the slipperiness of her tongue. His thighs trapped hers.

‘Yes,’ he whispered as he pulled her head back and kissed her throat. He hadn’t shaved recently and his stubble rasped on her neck. She could feel the threat of teeth in his kisses.

‘No!’ she gasped.

‘Why not, lass?’ he growled. ‘Am I not good enough for you?’ The hand that wasn’t pinning her head moved to the front of her flying suit and worked dextrously at the hooks and eyes holding it closed. She pushed feebly at his hand with her own, but she was weak with shock. He revealed the silk chemise beneath the leather and his hand moved on her breastbone and her left breast, chafing the nipple into reaction. ‘Now don’t
tell
me a girl of your spirit hasn’t tried some things out with her fiancé already. I’ll bet Lord Atherstone has had a handful of these pretty wee things.’

Her breast seemed tiny in his broad hand, but when he thumbed her nipple it filled with electricity.

‘Please!’

‘Please?’ He laughed. ‘Of course, lass.’

‘Please don’t …’

‘Oh now. Don’t go disappointing me, your ladyship.’ His pelvis pressed against hers and she found it difficult to believe how heavy he was, how hard. His hand worked her breast, more teasing but equally as implacable. ‘You’re no coward.’

She tried to reply but he kissed her words away like he would eat her protests. Then he drew back. His breath was hot on her lips, his grey eyes boring into her brown ones. She didn’t understand why her body was responding to none of her commands, why it was awash with heat and as limp as boiled laundry.

‘Have you ever touched a man’s prick?’

She whimpered.

He abandoned her breasts to fumble at the fly of his trousers, popping the buttons. His lips curved tauntingly. ‘Have you touched Lord Atherstone’s prick?’

She couldn’t answer. The world made no sense to her any more and the room was spinning away into darkness. The only thing in her world was his hard body and his hard eyes and the hand that was taking hers and guiding it to his crotch as he released his proud erection.

‘Was it like this, then?’ He folded her fingers around an incredibly hot thick length of flesh and she shook from head to foot.

Comparing Lord Atherstone’s slim dart to this thing was like comparing a Skylark Celestial to a gunship.

‘Ah.’ For a moment the fire in his eyes dimmed, as he visibly enjoyed the sensation of her fingers on him. ‘Lass.’ He smiled. ‘You should take a closer look.’

Stepping away, he pushed her to her knees in front of him. She came eye to eye with his flushed and turgid cock.

Charlotte now discovered that men of the lower orders did not shave their body hair. His balls nested, bulging, in dark curls. And his member – well, she had only a prior knowledge of Freddy Atherstone’s to draw upon, but if this was a typical working man’s cock then it was as honed and strengthened by labour as the rest of his body. A spill of clear moisture slicked the swollen glans that thrust from his foreskin.

‘Like it?’ His voice was misleadingly tender. ‘Not too indelicate for you?’