At last, he growled, his fingers tightening on hers as his hips rapidly jerked. She felt his cock twitching within her and kissed his chest lingeringly until his crisis passed and he sagged onto her, panting. A few moments later, he kissed her, withdrew with a sigh and disposed of the condom. Lucilla snuggled into his arms when he turned back to her, drifting in a lake of well-being. Their skins were slick with sweat in the summer air, but lying still, the breeze began to cool them. Her eyelids drooped. From the limp weight of Pascal’s arm on her, he was already asleep.
After one of the worst days she could remember, and the most surprising evening, Lucilla slept the best sleep of her life, at least until an elbow dug painfully into her breast. She shoved Pascal’s arm away. His eyes opened and he blinked at her, dazed. “Quelle heure est-il?” he asked.
“Go back to sleep,” Lucilla mumbled. A loud noise from the street sent her bolt upright, clutching his forearm. “A gun?”
“Backfire, from an auto,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I have had army training. I know the sound of a gun.” He turned to her and smoothed her hair away from her face. “You must not be afraid. It will obscure your thinking.”
“You aren’t afraid?” She thought he must be, given that he had embraced her in the night for comfort before he had done so for sex. She wished, now, that she had been brave enough to draw nearer to him. The mere act of joining together had strengthened her, soothing the near panic that had buzzed along her nerves like bees.
She sensed him smile. “Were I an English gentleman, I would say I wasn’t afraid. It would be a lie, of course.”
“No, it’s a way of pretending until the pretending feels real.” Lucilla grabbed his wrist and turned it to see his wristwatch in the light from the window. Three o’clock. “It will be light soon,” she said. “If there are no trains, I had thought we might find someone with a wagon who would be willing to take us closer to the border. Perhaps one of the men who brought deliveries to the Institute. They will recognize me, and I have some money.”
“If we can reach my colleague at the Institute, perhaps we can borrow his motorcar,” he said. “That is why I came here in the first place, to see him. Perhaps he will feel obligated.”
“You sound doubtful.” Lucilla drew up her knees and rested her chin on them.
Pascal turned to his side, facing her. “I was…dismayed, by Herr Doktor Professor Kauz. We had never met before last week, only corresponded. He requested I come here, insisted he must share a discovery of incalculable importance.”
“Kauz,” Lucilla said, remembering a paper-skinned old man with wild hair and a cane. “A biologist as well as a chemist, with a grant from the kaiser’s special fund. He was rude to me.” In truth, he’d said a woman who worked alongside men was no better than—she’d had to research the German word he’d used, which turned out to mean whore. From his vicious tone when he’d said it, and his frequent vituperative glances, she hadn’t been surprised by the meaning.
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.
INTERLUDE
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 self-centered 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 blue-eyed 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 i
n 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.
2
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.”
A slow smile stole across his face. “You are a paragon among women.”
Lucilla patted his shoulder and handed him his hat. “Where does Herr Kauz live? In the town, I hope.”
“It’s not far.”
Pascal carried the pistol in his jacket pocket, his uninjured hand tucked in on top of it. She’d suggested a sling for his other arm but he’d said it would be too conspicuous. He’d abandoned his trunk and stuffed a few items into his rucksack. Lucilla carried her carpetbag, with his rucksack slung over her back. Herr Kauz lived only two streets over from the Institute, in a brick house that looked far more pleasant than its owner, with fat red flowers growing in pots to either side of the front door. A plump woman in a servant’s uniform pinned wet trousers to a line in the side garden. Lucilla could see the motor, an open two-seater model, parked just beyond.
“Wait here,” Pascal said, stopping in the shade of an elm. It overhung the corner of a neighboring house’s front garden, and would provide good concealment.
Lucilla desperately wanted to go with him, not because she felt it wise, but because she felt more exposed standing in the street than she had the night before in their bed. She set her carpetbag on the grass and crossed her arms, to prevent herself from reaching for him. She was a middle-aged woman who had traveled to a foreign country to perform research, not a green girl who couldn’t let her lover out of her sight. “Go,” she said.
She watched as Pascal strode off down the street. He followed a neat brick path to Kauz’s door and rapped the knocker. She could not see who answered, but he was admitted. She bent and fiddled with the hooks on her shoes, feeling excessively visible again. She was sure many pairs of eyes burned through her back and could sense lace curtains being twitched aside all along the street.
She amused herself by imagining explanations for her presence. She was Pascal’s mother, and he the illegitimate son of Kauz. She was a spy. She had been sent by the German government to check their readiness to deal with foreign spies. She was selling scientific glassware, door to door. She watched Kauz’s housekeeper finish with the laundry, pick up a basket and go inside by a rear door, letting it slam behind her. Lucilla stared at the motor, thinking.
Pascal emerged. He did not turn toward the side garden, but walked quickly toward her, his shoulders rigid. He ducked behind the tree’s trunk and swore.
“Stay calm,” Lucilla said. She picked up her bag and handed him his rucksack. “The servant went inside. We’ll walk to the motor now. There’s no crank, it must have a self-starter.”
“He refused.”
“Then we commandeer his vehicle. Isn’t that the word? You know how to start the engine, don’t you? I can do it if you don’t know how.”
Pascal only hesitated a moment before seizing her arm and walking back toward Kauz’s home.
“Not too quickly,” Lucilla murmured. “We must behave as if we have every right.”
“He will hear the engine.”
“There’s a clear path from his garden to the street. We must be quick. Do you know where he is in the house?”
“He returned to his library.”
Laughter gurgled in the upper region of Lucilla’s chest as she ducked beneath damp shirttails fluttering in the summer breeze. Pascal pushed his way through a sheet. She would never have dared this on her own, would never have entertained such desperate measures had the night not changed her entire idea of herself. She would never have imagined that stealing a motor could be such a thrill.
She laid her carpetbag gently in the rumble seat, took Pascal’s rucksack and laid it in, as well. Pascal quietly opened the door; he fiddled with the spark and throttle levers while she arranged herself to block him from view and kept a wary eye out. He looked at her beneath his arm. “When the engine catches, be ready. You must drive.”
Lucilla nodded and gathered her skirts into her hands. The engine roared and Pascal threw himself onto the seat, sliding across. She followed, remembering to release the hand brake before she slammed the door and sent the motor into high gear. She hadn’t driven in over a year. “It’s like cycling,” she said to herself, turning onto the street. Behind them, she heard banging doors and shouting. She gave the motor more petrol, and soon the shouting faded. It was satisfying to drive faster than Kauz could run. She hoped he’d seen her. He could add thief to whore, she thought with savage glee.
The Institute’s gates were still shut. As they neared the more populous areas of the town, she tried to look as if the motor belonged to her. Surely someone would recognize it. But if they did, they were too concerned with their own business to take note of who occupied the seat. They passed the train station’s brick facade. The shaded porch was even more crowded than the day before, and there was no sign of trains. She glanced at Pascal, who slouched in the seat next to her, cradling his arm. “Do you have a map?”
He shrugged. “In my head.”
They motored past the town’s medieval walls and were suddenly surrounded by countryside. The summery smell of grain blew in Lucilla’s face. She would have to see if Kauz kept goggles in the glove box. For now, her hat would have to serve as protection. “Can you get us to France?”
“If no one shoots us, and we do not run out of petrol.”
“I’d forgotten about petrol,” she admitted. “It’s a pity motors can’t eat grass.”
“Perhaps in the next town they will be willing to sell us some.”
“I’ll be helpless,” Lucilla
decided. “My children are waiting for me.”
“You have children?” Pascal asked abruptly.
“Not a one, but I’ll pretend if necessary. You?”
“Of course not! I am not married.”
Lucilla laughed. Unless she had amnesia about the event, he was not married to her, but that had not stopped him from making love to her for most of the night.
He seemed to hear her thoughts. “That was different!”
Lucilla continued to laugh. He sounded younger with every protest. At last she said, “I’m laughing in relief, I think.”
“We aren’t safe yet.”
“We’ll proceed one step at a time,” she said, thinking of chemistry experiments.
“Perhaps if we run out of petrol, we can sell the motor and buy a cart,” he said.
“That’s a good plan.”
“I would sell this motor now for coffee and croissants.”
Lucilla’s stomach growled in agreement. “I forgot about that sort of fuel, too.”
“You were fed by criminal instinct,” Pascal suggested. She glanced at him, and he was grinning. “This could be easier if you stayed in France. With me.”
Excitement leaped in her chest. She took a deep breath. “In the middle of a war.”
“England will soon declare war. This may have happened already. We did not see the papers, as we did not have coffee and croissants.”
Her empty stomach fluttered, and she felt short of breath. “I have to go home. My brother, Crispin, is a reservist. He might be called up. If there’s fighting, they’ll need nurses.”
“You could nurse for France, if you desired. Or you could work as a chemist.”
“I’m sure France would look on that as kindly as England does,” she said. “I already don’t like being a foreigner alone among foreigners in a country at war, and that’s how it would be for me.” When he said nothing, she added, “If I don’t return now, I might not get the chance later. I don’t want to be away from my family in a crisis.”
The Moonlight Mistress Page 3