The Moonlight Mistress (13 page)

PASCAL HATED BEING INTERRUPTED WHEN HE was thinking, so he ignored the thumping at his door and the polite calls of “Major? Major?” and continued drawing his diagram in strong black lines over the pages of
Le Petit Parisien
. His adjustments would have implications for the future. He glanced at the list he’d tacked to the wall. The Marne would be a problem in this area, he could see it already. The Meuse would also be a problem, though less immediately. He would need maps to record his ideas, but that could wait, as a crew waited for his figures in the minor matter before him. An adjustment of the gun
here
would necessitate another adjustment
here
of another fraction. Perhaps that would help to compensate for the gun’s engineering flaw.

He needed another color of ink. He tunneled among the desk’s litter and emerged with a glass bottle. It held only a dried stain of blue. He cursed and searched again.

The polite calls had increased in volume. Really, they were quite distracting. Pascal bellowed, “I am busy!” and resumed
his search for colored ink. The army had promised to supply him with all he required. Well, he required colored ink. If they wished to have results, they must feed the beast that would provide them. His work would progress much faster with the proper supplies.

He could find no more ink, and in his agitation he’d spilled the open bottle of black. Pascal cursed in English, short and blunt, and shoved the papers onto the floor. He rose, straightened his blue uniform coat and flung open the door.

A scrawny lieutenant fell into the room. Behind him, in the corridor, huddled a tiny woman with huge, rage-filled eyes. She wore widow’s weeds, and a small pin depicting the Belgian flag instead of the more common cameo or crucifix. Pascal raised his brows at her. Her dress was too ragged for her to be an officer’s wife. She was not part of the domestic staff, or she would be wearing an apron. She was not a prostitute; her expression was in no way enticing, and besides, such indiscretions were utterly frowned upon in the Rue Deuxième. She had been brought to his office. She was, therefore, either a scientist or a spy.

Lucilla’s face flashed across his memory, and her scent, and the scar of an acid burn that marred the soft flesh at the base of her left thumb. He carried a letter to her, in his pocket, which he touched ten times a day. He could not mail it, now he was a spy in truth. Who knew what could happen to her if that came to light?

He needed to keep his mind on business. “Out,” he said to the lieutenant, whose expression, he now noted, looked desperate. Apparently, they’d sent the woman to him because no one else could discern what to do with her. It was the story of his life.
“Madame?”
He waved the widow into his office. “Would you like coffee? A pastry?”

The woman pushed by the exiting lieutenant and placed her back against the wall, near to the open door. When the door began to fall closed, she pushed it open again with her foot, and this time it stayed. Pascal noted she wore no corset, and only sandals below the hem of her dress. Her feet were dirty, with ragged nails; a strange contrast to her dress, which looked to be of fine material. Perhaps she had fallen on hard times, or she disliked shoes, or had received the dress from a previous owner. She did not at all have the air of a rich woman. She had not demanded anything of him, not even a chair. Unless she was the sort who was so abominably rich that eccentricity was allowed.

The woman had not spoken. Her eyes flicked around the room, not meeting his gaze, but repeatedly passing over him as if she waited for him to spring. At last she said, “You are the major of whom they all speak?”

Her French was tinged with Flemish but was pure and liquid and upper-class. Given her appearance, he had expected an accent more crude, more like his own uncouth vowels. He nodded. “I am Fournier.” He was careful not to ask her name. “You have information for me?” he asked, sitting on the very edge of his desk, to avoid the spreading pool of ink.

She glanced at the open door, then the window, its sill cluttered with books and two sleeping calico queens. “We will go outside,” she said, and ducked into the corridor, graceful as one of his cats. Pascal followed.

Outside, soldiers hurried up and down the town’s winding narrow streets, most of them as old or older than Pascal’s father. All the young men had been rushed to the front, and many of the men of middle age, as well. A few boys remained at this headquarters, a few younger officers on detached duty,
and Pascal, whose brains were far too valuable to be blown out. Women could be seen on the street, local women carrying baskets and trailed by children. Pascal saw a khaki-clad British officer, as well, climbing into a motor driven by an elderly Frenchman. The officer took off his cap and wiped his forehead. He had red hair, uncommon enough for Pascal to give him a second look. A dusty terrier ran to the officer’s feet and barked imperatively. Pascal had seen the dog hanging about in the street all week, probably abandoned. The officer swung back to the ground, scooped up the animal, inspected it and tucked it beneath one arm before hopping gracefully back into the motor.

The spy stared at the British officer, stiff as a dog who’d spotted ducks, until the motor pulled away. Pascal thought of taking her arm to gain her attention, but decided against it. She might be violent. “
Madame?
” he said.

She began walking. Pascal, taller by three heads, caught up to her easily and then moderated his stride. “We should appear casual,” he suggested. “How shall I address you?”

“I am Tanneken Claes,” she said. “It is my name and I need no other.”

“Madame Claes,” he said. He rummaged in his uniform tunic. “Cigarette?”

“They are foul,” she said. “The enemy can smell the stale tobacco on your person. You would be wise to abstain.”

Pascal had no intention of getting close enough to the enemy that he could be smelled. Also, he did not particularly care for tobacco, but he’d found it to be a good icebreaker and bribe. He clasped his hands behind his back. “What have you brought me?”

“Numbers,” she said. “I am told you like numbers.”

“They are useful,” he said, a profound understatement.

“I bring, also, measurements. These are not so clear. You will have to interpret them.”

“Measurements of distance? If you will permit me,
madame
, I can teach you methods to more accurately ascertain such matters as distance while in the field. That is, if you wish to continue to help us.”

“Can you teach these methods to a wolf?” she asked.

Pascal blinked. Perhaps he’d misheard, as he often mused on Kauz and his notebooks at inopportune moments. “Pardon?”

“I am a werewolf,” Madame Claes said, as if she discussed making soup. “I visited beyond the Boche lines in the form of a wolf. It is difficult for me to translate this knowledge into a form that will be useful to you.”

Pascal drew a slow breath. If true, this was the luckiest coincidence of his life, after finding Lucilla, of course. He could think of no reason Madame Claes would have to lie about such a thing. He must first ascertain if she had any useful information at all, then he could question her further on the matter of being a werewolf, and what she might know. A chill raced down his chest and settled in his belly. Had she been the werewolf Kauz held captive? “How did this come about?” he asked.

“I have a hatred of the country that invaded mine, particularly since their uncouth soldiers have encamped all over my estate, so I changed my form and went to spy on them,” she explained patiently.

“No, no,
madame
. Tell me about being a werewolf.”

“Do you want my information or not? I obtained it the night before last. It is still fresh.”

“I want it,” Pascal said. “I am simply curious.”

“Your interest is prurient,” she said scornfully.

“Indeed not,
madame!
”

“You all wonder—is she nude when she changes? Is she nude when she changes back? Where is her body hairy? Where—”

“Madame!”
Pascal had not in fact been considering those questions, but now the images surged through his mind with the inevitability of the sea. He could not now help himself from looking at her as a woman: the elegance of her mobile, delicate hands; the shape of her bosom beneath her dress; the tendrils of hair curling against her neck, caressing skin that looked smooth as porcelain.

She smiled, slow and feral, then sniffed. “I can smell your desire,” she purred, those patrician vowels suddenly sensual beyond bearing. “And something else, as well.” She lifted a single eyebrow.

Pascal had always been annoyed with people who had mastered that trick. “Do you have information for me or not?” he asked, aware and irked that she had sidestepped his question.

“I suppose you are no worse than any other man,” she said, suddenly dismissive, as if his reaction reduced his consequence. “Very well. Would you like to hear of the artillery batteries first, or the experimental chemicals?”

“How did you discover the experiments?”

“From the stink,” she said. “My nose was blinded by it. I was forced to retreat.”

“And this was—”

“Near Nimy.”

Pascal nodded. “I would like to hear more of this. But first, if you can tell me the numbers of guns and their sizes as you saw them.”

“You don’t wish to write down my information?”

He snorted. “If you would like every person on the street to see me writing your words, I would be glad to do so. I am not a fool, Madame Claes. I can hold the information in my memory.”

She looked him over, clearly assessing. “You have not asked anything further about the matter of werewolves. You know about us. And I know why.”

Pascal met her gaze. “Give me the artillery information first.”

“Very well,” she said at last, and began to recite what she had seen.

Pascal filed it all away in his memory, even the things that seemed useless or that confused him. One never knew what might make sense later. The chemical odors she spoke of disturbed him profoundly, all the more because he did not know the aim of the research, assuming it had been research and not accidental. Perhaps he could bring her to a laboratory, and ask her to smell various chemicals in the hope of identifying them and their uses. It was a pity Lucilla was not here. She could be useful.

All the while as Madame Claes talked, they continued to stroll down the street, occasionally pretending to look in shop windows. Toward the end of the street, he glanced into a tea shop and found it empty but for the shopgirl. “Would you like tea, Madame Claes?”

If she had not been so much smaller than he, she would have been looking down her nose. “I am not hungry,” she said.

Pascal was. His stomach reminded him he had eaten nothing since his coffee and croissant at dawn. “Then perhaps you will accompany me. You will have to pretend, at least, so we are not conspicuous.”

She sniffed, and he had the feeling that she did so func
tionally, to discern his intentions. After a moment, she nodded. “I will sit with you.”

Pascal held out his arm, and she laid her hand on it, just barely touching his sleeve. The gesture matched her accent. He decided the dress was hers. Odd as it seemed, her feet were also a part of her, or perhaps a visible sign of her werewolf nature. Were shoes too much trouble when she changed form? And, no doubt, a corset would be impossible.

The shop was tiny, with equally tiny tables and spindly chairs that forced him to hunch like a crane. The shop did not sell coffee. He ordered a pot of their strongest tea and a plate of madeleines and little flaky pastries filled with sweetened cream. Madame Claes sat stiffly atop her chair, hands folded on the table. She wore no rings. Her fingernails were not dirty, but just as ragged as her toenails. A man’s wristwatch clasped her bony wrist, just visible beyond the edge of her sleeve.

She said, “You are very rude to stare.”

“I am rude,” Pascal acknowledged. He poured tea for both of them, adding copious amounts of sugar to his. She looked as if she could use a good meal. Her fingers looked as if they could be snapped like twigs. He remembered Kauz’s laboratory notebooks and felt sick. He held out the bowl to her. “Do you take sugar?”

“I do not want any tea.”

“Pretend as if you do. It will give you something to do with your hands.”

She said abruptly, “You would like my hands on you.” She didn’t sound as certain as before.

“If I did, we would not be sitting in this lovely shop.” He glanced toward the counter. The waitress had retreated to the
rear and begun washing dishes. The noise easily covered their low-voiced conversation. “Tell me about being a werewolf.”

She gave him a pitying look and ate a madeleine in one bite, then picked up another. She chewed, swallowed, and said, “You will not lock me up. I would kill you first.” She took a third cream pastry and studied it a moment before popping it into her mouth. Despite himself, Pascal watched the movement of her lips as she chewed. It wasn’t entirely his scientific interest that led him to do so. He felt an incongruous curl of arousal simply from watching her eat.

He had not told Lucilla he had met a werewolf before, so he already knew Madame Claes’s magnetism was not inherent in her species, or at least not entirely; he had only met male werewolves. Perhaps what he sensed was her focus and concentration, so like Lucilla when she pondered a problem.

Deliberately, he looked down at his tea and poured in some milk, then wrapped his fingers around the cup. He imagined Lucilla sitting next to him, her expression alert with scientific interest. She would have so many questions. “Where did you come from?”

“I did not arise from the earth like a plant. My mother gave birth to me.”

“I meant, where is your home?” he asked, and sipped his tea. “Were both your parents werewolves?”

“I am a Belgian. It is not always necessary,” she said, drinking down her tea. She did not expand on this answer. Pascal poured her another cup, and again offered the china bowl that held lumps of sugar. This time, she took two lumps and dropped them in.