Victoria Janssen - The Moonlight Mistress

Pascal hesitated then said in a rush, “I did not like his laboratory. He used animals in ways that were cruel, even for science. He said I was soft, and all Frenchmen doubly so.”

“You study—”

“Everything,” he said, with no trace of arrogance that she could detect. “I have a special fondness for maths and engineering, but my work now, it is to find the new things in biology, on behalf of an agency in the government. Since I am paid for that, and I prefer to eat and provide a home for my cats, I cannot practice engineering as I would like. Though I find biology is something like engineering.”

“The new things?” Lucilla asked, still wrestling with the image of Pascal with pet cats.

“The things that will be of interest, that will reward further study. I report on these things to a board, and they decide who is to receive funding. I have met many…eccentrics, I suppose you would say, who believe their work is vital. None discomfited me like Herr Kauz.”

“He’s vicious,” she said without thinking.

Pascal stared at her for a moment, in silence, then he touched her leg, petting it idly. “Yes,” he said. “That is there, beneath the surface. Perhaps it is not a good idea to ask a favor of a man who is vicious, and who has a dislike of women and Frenchmen. But the others at the Institute do not know me, nor I them. I know where to find Kauz.”

“We can only try,” Lucilla said. “A motor would be much better than our other choices, and there are not many available in this town. He can only say no.”

“He could do far worse than that, I am sure,” Pascal said.

“It might be worth the risk,” she said. “He need not know I am involved.” She paused. “If I am.”

“You are certainly involved now, ” Pascal said, sounding affronted. “I did not intend that we should fuck and part.”

“I might swoon, that is so romantic,” Lucilla said.

He glared at her. “I will see Herr Kauz alone. You will wait nearby. If he refuses us, then your plan will be next. Where will we begin?”

“I’ll speak to Frau Greifen, at the coffeehouse across the road from the Institute. She must know someone who would be willing to help us. I saw enough deliverymen lounging there and smoking, every afternoon. If anyone could tell us how we could obtain a motor, or a wagon, surely they would know.”

“Good,” Pascal said. “We should sleep now.”

Lucilla spoke before she could lose her courage. “I don’t think I can.” She cupped his cheek in her hand and brushed his mustache with the edge of her thumb. “Perhaps you would help me.”

He grinned. “And you, me.” He bore her down into the mattress.

CRISPIN DAGLISH LOOKED UP FROM THE STACK OF counterpoint exercises he was marking and froze. The new diction and deportment master held out a slip of yellow paper, a telegram. “Sorry, old chap,” he said. “Didn’t mean to read it.”

Crispin snatched the paper from his hand and scanned it, then blew out his breath. It was not about his missing sister, Lucilla, at all. His hand shaking with relief, he laid down his pen and stood. “I’ve been called up,” he said. “Could you let Miss Tremblay know, so she can take my classes? I’ve got to talk to the headmistress, then I’m to be on a train tomorrow morning.”

Diction and Deportment was extraordinarily beautiful, and the girls were already swooning over him in battalions, but Crispin had quickly and sadly discerned that he was selfcentered and not very bright. “We’re at war? With whom?”

“Not yet,” Crispin assured him. “Perhaps you could glance at a newspaper to learn more about what’s happening in Europe. Your girls might have questions. Particularly the German ones.”

At home, he spun his hat toward his bed, stripped off his suit jacket and tie, and unbuttoned his tweed waistcoat before ascending to the attic. He brought his trunk down and quickly threw together his kit. His uniforms had been laundered recently, and he regularly unpacked his pistol from its box for cleaning and oiling. Quickly, he polished his cap badge, which bore the device of a running wolf. All that was missing was his sister to give him a kiss goodbye.

He thought he would know if anything had happened to her, but confirmation of her safety would have been nice. Perhaps his company captain, Wilks, could put in a word for him with Whitehall or the German ambassadorial offices. Or he could make the journey himself. He’d met some of the other lieutenants in his battalion before, albeit briefly. He particularly remembered the charismatic redhead Noel Ashby. Also the band’s leader, Lieutenant Meyer, a handsome blueeyed blond whose regimentals were uncommonly finely tailored. He could ask Meyer to go with him to London, he thought, and blushed, then was promptly ashamed of himself for thinking what he’d been thinking while his sister was trapped in Germany.

He ought to be worrying about Lucilla, and of course he was, every minute, it had only been a silly fleeting thought.

Regardless, he would at least send a telegram to the British embassy in Berlin. No doubt they’d be inundated with similar pleas. He’d had a tutor at King’s, though, who might be able to help. Still pondering, he assembled a duffel and pronounced himself ready.

Ready for what, he wasn’t sure.

LUCILLA WOKE WHEN PINK LIGHT BEAMED THROUGH the window. She was pinned beneath Pascal’s arm and one of his legs, her nose shoved into his shoulder. She’d had barely any sleep and had gotten quite a bit of unexpected exercise. Also, she was trapped in a country at war, with no easy way home. She felt better than she had in weeks. There was something to be said for meeting the body’s animal needs, when one wasn’t bound up with romance and love and guilt. And when the man one chose paid attention to her needs as well as his own.

Pascal snored very lightly. She drew one finger along the prominent bridge of his nose. He ought to have been producing quite a bit more sound, she thought, and smiled. She hadn’t expected to like him at all after their first meeting. Perhaps he’d blurred her mind with orgasms, because she felt deeply fond of him now, mixed with tender exasperation because she was awake and he was not.

She wanted to kiss him awake and entice him into one more coupling, one last time before they left this temporary haven. She was apparently more of a sensual being than she’d thought. After so many years with no sexual contact at all, once she’d had a taste of how good it could be, she wanted more and more. Perhaps she would become depraved and have to be analyzed. She grinned, then her grin faded. They had no more time for indulgence. She had better accept that their idyll had ended.

Outside, wagons rattled along the street. She couldn’t hear any movement within the hotel, at least not in their corridor. They both needed another bath before they set out. Reluctantly, she set to waking Pascal.

An hour later, the sun was fully up, and she was struggling back into her walking suit from the day before. She was cleaner than the suit, but she had washed her underthings, and they had dried overnight, or mostly dried in the case of her bust bodice. Pascal cautiously slipped into a clean shirt; his entire forearm had turned black with bruising overnight. He was lucky he hadn’t fractured the bone.

“Let me help you,” she said.

Pascal swore. Lucilla ignored this and buttoned the shirt for him. “The aspirin will help. Give it time.”

He murmured a foul word in French and reached for his jacket, a clean and undamaged one he’d extracted from the steamer trunk. “Can you drive a motorcar?”

“Luckily for both of us, yes.”