The Moonlight Mistress

by Victoria Janssen

  “Hailey wears violet toilet water?”

  Still smiling, he shook his head. “No, she smells like a girl. I have a very good sense of smell. For instance, I can tell that before the trucks came in with the wounded, you were having naughty fun in your bed. Alone, alas.”

  Lucilla’s eyes widened before she realized she’d confirmed his supposition by her reaction. Denial seemed pointless. “I suppose Lord Kitchener forbids such goings-on?” she asked sweetly. “Go home, Captain.”

  “You still don’t believe me!”

  “This grows tiresome. Crispin wouldn’t put you up to this—who was it? If you’re trying to cause him trouble, I swear I will—”

  “Wait.” He grabbed her arm, then let go immediately when she whirled on him. “I’ll prove it to you. About my nose, and all that. Just wait here, and I’ll go behind that shed, and—”

  “You’re not going out of my sight,” she said. “Unless it is to leave.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t complain, then.” He set his cap on the ground, loosened his tie and began unbuttoning his uniform tunic.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Taking off my damn clothes,” he said. “It’s chilly out here, too.” He tossed his tunic on the ground, then his tie, and started in on his shirt.

  “You’re insane.”

  He bounced on one foot while wrestling off his boot. “Hailey usually helps me with the boots.”

  Lucilla sighed and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Oh, Lord, if you’re insane I’ll have to bring you in for hysteria, and we haven’t any proper facilities. I can’t just leave you out here.”

  He didn’t seem to be in the grip of a compulsion, but she wasn’t an expert, either. She’d seen some strange reactions to combat already, everything from constant tremors to sleepwalking. This could be another manifestation. She’d need to find help in case he became violent. She wouldn’t win a physical fight. But if she left him, he might disappear, or harm himself. She stayed, keeping a close eye on him.

  Ashby’s trousers hit the ground, and he blithely shucked out of his long shirt and drawers, turning away from her as he did so. She didn’t note any signs of physical injury, and she would have easily seen any in that expanse of smooth, pale skin. His skin wavered, or was it her vision? Was she truly that tired? Another ripple passed over him, like a full-body spasm, only smooth and controlled. Then he hit the ground.

  Lucilla dashed forward. He fended her off with one hand. “Wait!” he said.

  She would need an orderly, or perhaps two, to help her deal with this. But she couldn’t leave him alone in mid fit to fetch anyone. “I’ll stay with you,” she said as calmly as she could. She’d need something ready to thrust beneath his teeth if necessary; she reached into her pocket and found a handkerchief, swiftly twisting and knotting it.

  “All over—in a few seconds—”

  He spoke coherently. His eyes did not lose awareness, and he focused on her face until she felt trapped by his golden gaze. This was the strangest fit she’d ever seen. She could only watch as his body twisted and shifted and arched and…shifted, muscles elongating beneath his pale skin, his skin darkening, coarsening…No. He’d sprouted fur, thick and rufous. His face was gone, and his hands. No, she had to be hallucinating, from fatigue perhaps. She blinked slowly, and saw a very large red dog. No, not a dog. Not with that thick brush of a tail, that ruff, those quizzical dark lines above amber-colored eyes. Except for color, he might have been an illustration in a Jack London novel. This was a wolf. A wolf. In France. In the middle of the hospital grounds. Staring at her, its head tipped to one side, ears pricked.

  The wolf sprang to its feet and shoved its nose between her legs. She slapped it away. It backed up a step and grinned at her, tongue lolling. Slowly, she sank to her knees in the dirt. Her knees protested. The wolf butted its head into her breasts and she saw the flicker of its tongue near a very inappropriate place. She grabbed his ruff and yanked him to arm’s length. “Ashby,” she said. The wolf licked her bare wrist.

  “Bugger me,” she breathed.

  The wolf grinned at her again. He sat in the heap of his clothing. She had watched the entire process. A man had turned into a wolf. Kauz had been telling the truth. She couldn’t wait to tell Pascal.

  Her longing to see Pascal again momentarily swamped her wonder at the miracle she’d just seen. The wolf—Ashby—whined and licked her face. His ruff was soft beneath its coarse outer layer. She burrowed into it and held on for a moment. Ashby wouldn’t be able to speak. At least she didn’t think he would. “You can’t speak like this, can you?”

  He produced another whine, different from the first. Wolf language, she supposed. “I didn’t think so,” she said wearily. “All right. Because you’ve astonished me beyond…” Beyond anything except for Pascal Fournier. “Beyond…oh, never mind.” A thought occurred to her. “Why couldn’t you track Hailey as a wolf? By scent, if you’re so proud of your sense of smell?”

  She could have sworn the wolf lifted an eyebrow. At least, the dark line over his eye gave that effect.

  “A bit conspicuous, yes. As we’re going to be, shortly. Perhaps you’d better change back, and I’ll help you look for him. Her.”

  Once he’d reverted to human form and dressed, behind a shed this time, Lucilla led Ashby to the temporary buildings housing the X-ray unit, the photographic laboratory and storage for the medical-supply kits that were assembled for the ambulances. Vehicles constantly passed to and fro, both motor driven and animal drawn, carrying ill and wounded. It would be easy to hide there amid the chaos, and a sharp eye could soon discern where bandages were stored, and could be stolen. Lucilla halted on the edges of the stretch of mud where sleepy orderlies and female drivers were washing down the motor ambulances, inside and out. She said to Ashby, “You might have a sniff round here.”

  He lifted his head and sniffed, the barest flare of his nostrils. His eyes drifted closed. “Petrol,” he said in a disgusted tone. “Worse than the carbolic.” He scrubbed above his mustache with his finger and sniffed again, wandering an aimless path around the outskirts of the electric lights dangling from every available roof.

  She supposed she could leave him to it; he was in uniform, and could no doubt come up with an acceptable reason for his presence. But she was curious to meet Hailey, to see with her own eyes a woman who lived as a man, in her own way as much a shape-changer as Ashby. Hailey, apparently, had no idea of how much she had in common with her superior officer. Lucilla didn’t plan to tell her. For all she knew, Ashby told everyone he met, but it wasn’t her secret to divulge.

  Ashby circled a particular patch of air and then headed toward a storage shed, no longer scenting, at least not obviously. Lucilla trotted over, her knees protesting, the boots she wore beneath her skirt squelching in mud. Ashby gently pushed open the shed’s door and poked his head inside. “Bob?” he said.

  Lucilla heard a scrabble of motion and hurried to catch up. She followed Ashby into the shed. A young man sat on a crate next to a soldier, a Gurkha; there’d been a group of them earlier in the evening, she remembered now, most of them with barely a lick of English. The doctors had depended on one of the ambulatory Sikh patients to translate, and none of them had liked it much. This Gurkha wasn’t much bigger than Hailey, though much more muscular and cheerfully dangerous looking; he had a dirty bandage around his thigh. Lucilla almost reached for him, then held back as Ashby went to one knee in front of the two of them.

  “Goddamn it, you terrified the bloody living hell out of me, you little bastard,” he said, his tone tender. Hailey stared at him, wide-eyed. Ashby reached out and the Gurkha blocked his hand. Ashby glanced at him; the Gurkha lowered his hand but put his arm firmly around Hailey’s shoulders, not quite touching the bandage poking out of her ripped sleeve. Ashby completed his gesture and touched Hailey’s face, brushing her cheek with his thumb. “You need to have that wound seen to.”

  Hailey spoke, for the firs
t time. “Jemadar Thapa knew Captain Wilks, in India.”

  “Perhaps he can tell us more about it later. Bob, this is Sister Daglish. The lieutenant’s her brother.”

  “Don’t need nursing, sir.”

  “Thapa does, doesn’t he, Sister?” He pointed at the Gurkha’s bandage. “Bob, it’s all right. There’s nothing you need to worry about with Sister Daglish. In fact, she’s going to set you up in a private room for now.”

  Lucilla stepped forward. “I am.”

  She managed a greeting in Hindustani; her phrases were limited, but efficient, and Jemadar Thapa grinned at her. In a thick accent, he said, “You take care of the boy,” and patted Hailey’s arm. “Wilky-sahib taught me to play at jackstraws.”

  “Sir—” Hailey said.

  “It’s all right,” Ashby said. He ruffled his hand through her hair. “I know, Bob. And it’s no one’s business.”

  “Sir!”

  “I’ve got to get back before someone notices I’m gone,” he said, squeezing Hailey’s shoulder before rising to his feet. “Sister, you’ll be all right?”

  “Perfectly,” she assured him.

  “I’ll return when I can. I owe you more than thanks.” He patted Hailey’s arm once more, exchanged salutes with Thapa and departed.

  Lucilla stared at her two new charges. A jemadar was a lieutenant, and he spoke English. At least one of her problems was temporarily solved. If she set him to translating as soon as his wound had been cared for, she’d be able to spirit Hailey away. Assuming Hailey was really his—her—name.

  Luckily, she was able to catch a couple of orderlies to help support her new patients into the ward. Jemadar Thapa immediately took charge of the wounded Gurkha riflemen, insisting on limping to each bed for a word or two before being settled into his own. Lucilla took advantage of the distraction to lead Hailey into Dr. Fitzclarence’s office and bolt the door. “Have a seat,” she said, seizing some supplies from a cabinet. “I’ll help you with your tunic and shirt.”

  Cautiously, Hailey sat on the edge of a wooden chair that stood across from Dr. Fitzclarence’s desk. Lucilla saw a boy perhaps as old as his late teens, slightly built, with large hands and feet he might grow into later. Too-long hair flopped into his angular face, which, along with his cap, obscured his eyes. He had a strong jawline and a snub nose and a wide mouth. Then she touched the boy, who winced back, and she somehow knew more than intellectually that Hailey was not male. Her face seemed to change before Lucilla’s eyes, and she was a gamine young woman with a boyish form.

  Abruptly, Lucilla felt less maternal and more as if she was caring for a comrade. “I’m Lucilla Daglish. You’re Hailey?” she asked.

  Hailey nodded. She lifted her hands to her jacket buttons, winced and let them fall. “Don’t cut my sleeve on the bias,” she whispered. “I can mend it.”

  “I’ll see if I can manage.” Lucilla undid the buttons and carefully peeled the jacket off her arms, first the uninjured arm and then the bandaged one. She laid the jacket aside. “Where is your coat?”

  “Gave it to a bloke on the truck,” Hailey said. Her voice was low, hoarse. Lucilla wasn’t sure if she naturally sounded like that, or if the effect was cultivated. Lucilla had known a few women at university who’d affected men’s clothing and mannerisms, some of them lesbians and some not, but they’d all been wealthy women, and not really hiding themselves, at least not from other women. Hailey’s accent placed her as lower class, from somewhere south of London. Lucilla wondered if her family knew of her masquerade, and what they thought of it.

  “Give me your cap,” she said, and when Hailey obeyed, studied the running-wolf badge. Her memory flashed up an image of Ashby, a grinning wolf with lolling tongue. She couldn’t ponder that properly now. She had work to do. “Once I’ve seen to your wound, we’ll get you tidied up,” she said. “No one will come around trying to bathe you if you’re already clean.”

  “Thank you, Sister,” Hailey said, her voice a mere breath, her eyes fixed on Lucilla’s hands as she unbuttoned her shirt. Lucilla very deliberately did not react to the breast bindings she found beneath, nor try to unfasten them. She could get at Hailey’s wound well enough like this. She spread her supplies over the scarred surface of the wooden desk, ready to hand.

  To distract the girl, she asked, “Do you know Lieutenant Daglish?”

  She looked up; Lucilla swiftly untied the bandage over her wound and explained, “I don’t get much news.”

  “He was all right, last I saw,” Hailey said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Was pretty rough out there, though.”

  Lucilla was sorry she’d asked. She said, “When you return to your regiment, would you carry some letters to him, for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You needn’t call me ma’am,” she said more sharply than she’d intended. “Do you have a brother, Hailey?”

  “Just a sister.”

  “And how long have you been—” She covered her moment of hesitation with an injection of morphia. Hailey winced as the needle entered, then relaxed almost immediately. “When did you join the army?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “Why—” She was suddenly embarrassed to have asked. “Never mind.”

  “For the money,” Hailey said. “Army pays better than being a seamstress.” She grinned a little drunkenly.

  “It’s an interesting change of career,” Lucilla noted, cleaning the wound more ruthlessly now that her patient didn’t notice the pain of it. She wiped the whole thing with Lysol, then doused a handful of gauze in tincture of iodine, ready to slap on once the stitches were in.

  “First I wanted to be a tailor. Pays better than being a seamstress. So I learned all about men’s clothes. But nobody would hire a woman to make a man’s clothes, not unless they didn’t have the money to pay for a man. I did some uniforms, though, for young lads just starting out. So I got the idea to make a uniform for myself, and a suit, and all that. I figured out all the best ways to hide that I was a woman, and then I went right up and enlisted. Never looked back.”

  “Worked out well for you, has it?”

  Hailey’s head was twisted around as she tried to watch the needle going into her skin. Suddenly, she closed her eyes. Her head drooped. “It’s moving. Like a boat.”

  “Deep breaths,” Lucilla advised. “How’s the army been?”

  “Not bad, ’cept for the war coming along, bollixing it all up.” She paused. “Still, I’m learning all kinds of things. All kinds.”

  Lucilla tied off her thread and slapped on the dressing with one hand, scooping up a rolled bandage with the other. “Will you stay in the army once the war ends?”

  “Have to, don’t I? I’ve got my family to care for. You’re lucky to have a brother like him, ma’am. He’s a good one, Daglish is. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

  “He’s the best brother in the world.”

  After Hailey was safe and cared for, Lucilla walked down the muddy path back to her quarters in one of the slapdash rear huts. She was dizzy from lack of sleep and reliving, in a near trance, the moments when Ashby had shifted from one form to the other. If only she could tell Pascal. For a few wild moments, she considered ways of sending him a letter—through the French command, perhaps, or to his relatives in Le Havre—before laughing at herself. He would not be pleased to hear from her, she was sure. He no doubt had quite a few pretty mademoiselles trying to catch his eye. No, that was unfair; there was work to be done, and she felt sure the French army had not overlooked his usefulness. It made her feel a bit better to think of him occupied with engineering problems. She could even consider him with nostalgia.

  He would love knowing that werewolves truly existed. She could encode that information in a letter, perhaps; it would not be like sending a letter simply because she wanted to do so. He would wish to discuss her discovery with her, and they could—no. She really had nothing to do with all this. She was neither an officer in the
army nor a person with any scientific standing that an army would recognize. She should let Ashby know about Kauz, and leave it to him to speak to Pascal, if it could be managed. She would betray no one’s confidences that way. If she hadn’t been so tired and overwhelmed, she would have done it already.

  Perhaps Hailey could carry a message to her captain. Lucilla could give her a letter for Crispin, as well, and some tea or his favorite nut-milk choc. It made Lucilla weary to think of turning and going back to ask. Hailey would be asleep by now, she hoped. She could speak to her tomorrow. Oh, she would give anything right now for a cup of tea, heavily dosed with Irish whiskey.

  When she pushed open the door to her hut and saw the light on, Pascal standing there beside her bed, at first she thought she was dreaming. In one stride, he held her by the arms. A moment later, his mouth swept down upon hers. His mustache tickled her nose. That felt real. He drew back, looked down at her as if to confirm his welcome, then kissed her again before lifting her off the dirt floor and holding her tightly against him.

  Lucilla stroked her hands up and down his back. Was he thinner than he’d been? She’d never before seen him in his uniform. The pale blue didn’t really suit him, nor did the loose cut of his jacket. Of course, her own uniform added at least ten years to her, and included a silly hat and cape besides, so she supposed she couldn’t criticize.

  “Lucilla,” he said. He kissed her cheek and set her on her feet. “I thought I would have to search you out.”

  “How did you—”

  He shrugged. “I am a spy. Not in the field,” he added hastily. “I persuaded them that would be unwise. I have been working with data that others provide.”

  “But, here—”

  “I missed you,” he said with devastating simplicity. He cupped her cheek in his palm. “I had hoped you might miss me, as well.”

  Exhaustion and shock shattered over Lucilla’s head like a shell exploding. Before she could burst into tears, she buried her face against Pascal’s chest. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on. “Yes,” she said, muffled against his uniform.