Victoria Janssen - The Moonlight Mistress

“I take it you didn’t believe him.” Pascal didn’t reply immediately. Lucilla glanced over. He was glaring at the innocent cows whom they were passing. “You did believe him,” she said.

“I did not disbelieve. There are more things in heaven and earth,” he growled.

“That’s true,” she said. “But?”

“He had no evidence, no photographs or film.”

“Or a werewolf.”

“No, not one of those, either,” he confirmed with a hint of humor. “Though perhaps I should be grateful he did not present me with a corpse. Wolf or human.”

Lucilla shuddered. “What evidence did he show you? He must have had something. You seem like a practical sort of chap.” Except when blathering about human souls in the midst of sex, but she could forgive him that. “Did he have samples, of blood or fur?”

“No, only quantities of figures,” he said. “Weights of the woman and of the woman-as-wolf. Lengths of time to shift from one to the other, and back again. A detailed description of the process, which was not limited to the full moon as legend suggests. An analysis of nutritional needs, and lack thereof.” He paused. “Length of time to heal injuries. As woman and as wolf, and if the change from one form to the other took place while injured. Clean cuts, ragged cuts, cuts from a silver blade, bruises to soft tissue. Broken bones.”

“I like Kauz less and less. That’s monstrous.” Electrifying a dead frog was nothing compared to deliberately injuring an intelligent creature. One was science, the other cruelty.

“His laboratory notebooks read as if he’d held a werewolf captive for months. The records did not appear to have been faked—he’d written them over a long period of time. His results were consistent with physical possibility. However, he could not produce this werewolf, though he repeatedly hinted that he would do so once he was sure he could trust me. But I do not think that day would ever have come. His werewolf may have existed only in his fevered mind. I am not sure if I am grateful or not, that he could produce nothing to support his statements. Then, I cannot help but worry that his captive was real, and that he might have killed her. As he kills his laboratory animals once they have served his purpose.”

She glanced away from the road and saw Pascal looking back at her, his expression troubled. “Perhaps she escaped,” Lucilla suggested.

“Perhaps,” he said. “To survive so long, she must have been— be resilient.”

Lucilla said, “I don’t think anyone at the Institute knew of this.”

“No. Perhaps I should have spoken of it to the trustees, but I didn’t think they would take my word, a visitor and a foreigner, over his. I was preparing to visit him again, to see if I could gather more evidence. Then I heard that war had been declared. I am now obligated to return to France.”

She drove for another kilometer in silence. Neither of them could do anything now about a situation that might be at least partly illusory. Best to distance herself from the troubling implications and concentrate on the most fascinating part of Pascal’s revelations. “Both species are mammals,” she said. “I wonder how different they are? Humans and wolves?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Pascal said. “Do you think it possible?”

“Perhaps the wolf form isn’t a true wolf. Perhaps it only looks like one. On the inside, it could be more human. It’s an interesting exercise. Though I wonder how the change would initiate? Would the werewolf trigger a chemical reaction in her own body? It’s a bizarre idea, but possible, I suppose.”

“Like the duck-billed platypus.”

Lucilla cast him a glance. He was smiling. She said, “If it could turn into a duck, as well.”

“Have you ever traveled to the Antipodes?”

Lucilla considered his change of subject. She didn’t want to talk about Kauz anymore, either. “Alas, no. You?”

“Once, with my grand-oncle Erard, who worked on a merchant ship. I was eleven. It was the greatest adventure of my life.”

His tone sounded affectionate in a way she hadn’t heard before. “Tell me about it, and him,” Lucilla said.

“Perhaps later. First you will tell me how you became interested in chemistry,” Pascal said.

“Done,” she said.

LIEUTENANT GABRIEL MEYER WAS IN THE MIDST of testing his boy trumpeters on their fingering exercises when his fellow lieutenant and closest friend, Noel Ashby, entered the band room. Ashby, a lean man with cropped red hair and a slender mustache, leaned against a cabinet and crossed his legs at the ankles, outwardly casual, but Gabriel could read the tension in his normally relaxed posture, and he tensed, as well. Kern fumbled a pattern and stopped.

With a glance, Gabriel silenced the comment about to erupt from Wiley’s mouth. Wiley was inclined to rivalry. “No, keep on with it,” he said to Kern gently. “If you stop, you might stop there the next time, and make a habit of it.”

“Sir,” Kern squeaked, and lifted his trumpet again, aiming it at the regimental wolf banner that hung behind Gabriel’s chair. This time, he played more slowly, but accurately.

“Good,” Gabriel said. “Why don’t you two run along. I hear there’s cake for tea.”

When the boys had gone, Noel ambled over to Gabriel’s podium and leaned on his wooden music stand. “Reserves have been called up,” he said.

Gabriel rubbed his mustache with his forefinger. “So it’s happened then.”

“Soon,” Noel said. “I came here because we’re to be in the same company.”

“The same—you mean, the band—”

Noel gripped his forearm and gave it a shake. “I’m sorry. When it comes to war, your boys are to be trained as regimental stretcher bearers. There won’t be any band for you to lead.”

“Bloody hell.” Gabriel bowed his head, reeling from having his musicians snatched away from him. They’d be scattered across the regiment. Some of them weren’t old enough for active duty, and would have to be left behind. Kern and Wiley would be someone else’s responsibility now.

His stomach plummeted as another thought occurred. “Jemima,” he said. “She won’t be pleased.”

“Now’s a good time to break it off, then,” Noel said.

Without rancor, Gabriel said, “You’d marry to have children, too. You’ve said it a thousand times.”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t marry Jemima. ”

“She’s Jewish,” Gabriel said with a shrug. “You know I can’t marry a Gentile. Not unless I never want to hear the end of it.”

“You don’t really care about that,” Noel said.

Gabriel wasn’t up to resurrecting an old argument. “I’ll run down to the office and telephone her.”

Noel sighed, and cuffed his shoulder. “Good luck. I’m thinking I’d rather be shot at.”

THE REST OF THE DAY’S DRIVE FELT LIKE AN OUTING. Lucilla had rarely had the opportunity to speak at such length, and with such freedom, to another scientist. She didn’t think she ever had done, except once or twice at university with older alumnae, as her own crowd all studied literature or languages. The next village appeared, but the motor had plenty of petrol, and she and Pascal had plenty of food. They ate their tea while sitting on the grass, seen only by a few birds gleaning seeds from the roadside. She doffed her hat and let the afternoon sun glow on her face. Bees buzzed in the hedge.

Pascal drew an astonishingly detailed map in one of his notebooks, his lines strong and sure. Lucilla peered over his shoulder, noting that they would need to drive through the night. When he’d finished drawing, he tore the page free. “Take this, and keep it safe,” he said.