Victoria Janssen - The Moonlight Mistress

Also by VICTORIA JANSSEN

THE DUCHESS, HER MAID,

THE GROOM & THEIR LOVER

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For Charlotte, for more reasons than I can put into words.

Happy birthday!

THERE WERE NO TRAINS TO STRASBOURG.

The hand-lettered sign on the station wall might be wrong, or something might have changed. She would ask again. Lucilla Daglish clutched her single carpetbag more closely, to protect her scientific glassware from the anxious crowd, but also for reassurance. People jostled past her in every direction, all of them speaking in high-pitched, anxious tones that blurred into a babble conveying nothing but fear. Two different babies wailed, and a larger child screeched between gulping sobs. A fat man, reeking of stale pipe smoke, elbowed her sharply in the kidney as he pushed his way behind her.

Lucilla cursed herself mentally as she tried to explain her problem to the ticket agent. Had the man in the booth needed to know about titration or some other element of practicing chemistry, she could have explained it to him in great detail. However, her more basic conversational German was lacking. Perhaps she had misunderstood his meaning, or he had misunderstood hers. Perhaps her fear had led her to misspeak.

Summoning different German vocabulary, she phrased her question again. She was an Englishwoman. She wished to travel to Paris via Strasbourg. She had a ticket. Here was her ticket. Here were her papers, proving her nationality.

No, it was the gnädige Frau who did not understand. There were no trains to Strasbourg. There were no trains at all. Germany had declared war on Russia. There would be no trains until further orders were received.

“I am not at war!” Lucilla exclaimed in English, knowing the agent would not understand her frustrated outpourings. “Why can I not travel out of this country? Surely you have no use for me here?”

There were no trains today, the agent repeated in German. Perhaps tomorrow. Or the following week. The gnädige Frau would do well to find a room in the town, before they were all taken.

She could not smash her bag into the ticket agent’s smug, condescending face because he would surely call the police. She turned sharply away. She would have to temporarily abandon her trunk here at the train station. She would return to the Institute. Perhaps she could sleep there. She had been a fool to give up her room. An utter fool. But she had not had the money to pay for an entire additional month, as her landlady had insisted, and she was leaving anyway. Or so she had thought.

She had no friends here whom she could approach for help. The other women in the boardinghouse had grouped together at meals, discussing their prospects of marriage or employment. Unlike them, Lucilla was well past the age of marriage, and she was already employed. She had never stayed longer than needed to quickly eat while perusing a journal article; she did not have time for the pleasantries, when the laboratory called to her so passionately. One could not be a friend to one’s colleagues, either, when one was a woman, and they were all men who viewed her more like a trained monkey than a chemist. Some of the men would not speak to her at all, even to exchange pleasantries. After six months in Germany, she knew no one whom she might call, even to meet her for a cup of tea.

The sun had set while she fought the crowds inside the station. Even in the dark, the hot, dusty streets were mobbed, three times as crowded as on a normal night. Compared to that morning, the whole town felt alien to her. Boys hawked newspapers on every corner. Men stood and read the papers under streetlights and in the street itself, arguing vociferously, blocking wagons, whose drivers cursed. Singing and pipe smoke, drunken cheers and angry shouts billowed from the open door of a beer garden. Some men walked purposefully, carrying small bundles—soldiers, already? All the women she saw were in a hurry, whether they hefted market baskets or towed children. Their anxiety wormed its way into Lucilla’s stomach, and she found herself almost running as she drew closer to the Institute.

The tall iron gates were closed and chained, and the gas lanterns to either side flickered merrily, mocking her.

Lucilla ran forward and grabbed the bars with her free hand. Someone would be within. She shouted. No one answered; not a blade of grass stirred. The windows were all dark. She was sweating in her sober wool suit, but her belly contracted with cold terror. She shook the gate and shouted again. “Let me in!”

“Mademoiselle Daglish?”

Lucilla whirled. A young man loomed behind her. She recalled seeing him at the Institute, marked by his height, his pronounced Gallic nose and a truly spectacular air of untidiness, currently exacerbated by his dusty clothing. Smears of dark grime marked his sleeve and his cheek, just to the left of his unostentatious brown mustache.

He was a visitor like herself, but she had never learned his specialty, or his name. He would know her name because she was the only woman ever to study at the Institute. She took a steadying breath. “Where have they all gone?” she asked in English.

“The entire faculty was summoned to a meeting at the gymnasium. My country being likely soon at war with their country, I fear I am not welcome there, nor are you,” the young man said. He spoke English fluently, though with a French accent. From beneath the brim of his hat, he looked her up and down. She had an impression of grim displeasure, though nothing in his voice had revealed it. “You cannot stand here in the street, shouting.”

“And I suppose you have a better idea?”

“I have retained an hotel room. I suppose you have not done the same?”

“Such deductive prowess,” Lucilla muttered. Her hair was coming unpinned. She shoved the curling strands away from her face, one-handed, and glanced down the deserted street. She had to calm herself and think. “There must be another way out of the country.”

“I do not wish to be shot in the dark as a spy because I am in the act of escaping,” the Frenchman said. “You must accompany me. You will stay in my room tonight.”

“I will do nothing of the sort. Mr…?”

“I am Fournier. Tomorrow we may consider our dilemma further. Come, we should go.” He turned and began walking, not offering to carry her bag. She didn’t want to release her bag anyway; it held her precious laboratory notebook as well as her glassware.

She should not go with him. It was quite improper. True, Fournier was younger than she by at least a decade, so she did not fear he had designs upon her. Or not more than a basic level of caution would dictate. But it galled her to be ordered about like a lab assistant.

Lucilla scurried to catch up with him. “I will find my own room,” she said. He could ruin her reputation, merely by being seen with her in a hotel.

Fournier snorted. “A woman alone, and a foreigner? Don’t be foolish. No one will give you a room.”