The Moonlight Mistress (5 page)

“At all,” Pascal said. “My great-aunt never returned from Germany. She died shortly after her marriage. She bore no children. It was forever after a source of grief for my
grand-oncle
, Erard, who was her brother.”

“Kauz presumed upon his distant relationship with you?”

“To try and obtain funds, yes. My superiors found items of interest in his work and thought I would be the best candidate to extract further information from him.”

“Unpublished items of interest, I assume,” Lucilla said. She cast her mind back to the library at Somerville and the welcoming odor of old books. She remembered pursuing strings of letters through a series of journals, trying to discover if any of the writers thought or felt as she did, back when she still imagined she had hope of a permanent academic position, somewhere other than a school for girls. The shifting rivalries and alliances had fascinated her. She’d corresponded with a few fellow chemists, never revealing her gender, but it was difficult to explain why she held no position, and never attended conferences. She had not wanted to lie and pretend to be infirm.

“Yes. He is very secretive—it is rumored he has other laboratories than those at the Institute and at his home, where he pursues bizarre interests in isolation from the scientific community. His public work is often privately funded, and no one knows how much remains unpublished. For instance, his work with the body’s healing mechanisms ran parallel to that of an English biologist I knew from Cambridge, and there were hints of great advances he did not fully reveal. Also, disturbing implications about how the body could be harmed.”

“What college at Cambridge?” she asked.

“Trinity.” He paused. “My English is more respectable than my French.”

She’d barely heard him speak his own language. She nodded. “So why did you come to Germany? What did he promise you?”

Pascal said, “You should understand, not all of the scientists with whom I speak are conventional. I am used to being told strange things. I didn’t know when I traveled here what Kauz wished to reveal to me, though I had my suspicions. He gave only hints.”

“Stop hedging,” she said, annoyed. “I want the story.” She risked a glance at his face, and was surprised by how disconcerted, almost fearful, he appeared. He looked away quickly. His next words were almost lost in the roar of the motor and the rush of the wind.

“Very well, I will tell you. Kauz claimed he had met a woman who could transform her body into that of a wolf.”

“You mean a werewolf?”

His jaw dropped. “You don’t sound surprised.”

“If it weren’t odd, you wouldn’t be embarrassed to tell me about it,” she pointed out. “I think such legends are interesting. My father used to terrify us with lurid tales of beasts who would eat us at the full moon. Well, lurid enough for children. I imagine Kauz’s imagination outdid my father’s. For instance, that he made his werewolf a woman. That doesn’t surprise me at all.” He’d acted as so virulent a misogynist, could perversion be far behind?

“The scope of Kauz’s imaginings is impressive.” His tone was flat.

“I take it you didn’t believe him.” Pascal didn’t reply im
mediately. 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.

Their fingers touched as she accepted the map. “Do you have an eidetic memory?” she asked.

“For some things,” he said. “Why do you wish to know?”

“You needn’t snap,” she said. “I was only curious. It’s a useful talent.”

Pascal took her hand again, and kissed the back. “I am sorry. I tell no one.”

“I won’t tell anyone, either.” It was a strange thing to be embarrassed about, but he was entitled to his secrets. She did not reclaim her hand, and soon he clasped it to his thigh, interlacing their fingers. She asked, “Have you told anyone before?”

“My mother knew,” he said. “My father does not. He would tell the government.”

Enlightenment struck. “I see. You would make a most excellent spy.”

He smiled grimly. “I would make a terrible spy. I am not…diplomatic. Also, I doubt I could withstand torture, or die with patriotic dignity. I wish to do neither of those things. I am not a brave man. I want to live.”

Lucilla tightened her fingers on his. In a rush of boldness, she said, “Kiss me.”

Pascal studied her, then took off his hat. “Come and sit across my legs.”

“Striving for efficiency?” Lucilla knelt, leaned over and kissed his mouth, awkwardly and sideways. Thoughtfully, she teased the corner of his mouth with her tongue. “Mind your arm,” she said before climbing into his lap.

His uninjured arm closed around her so tightly that the boning of her bust bodice dug into her flesh. She hooked her arms around his neck and yanked his face to hers. The heat and slickness inside his mouth forcibly reminded her of how his cock had felt inside her, each slide hot and sweet. She shifted restlessly as their tongues darted and tangled. She dug
her fingers into the back of his neck, then her nails, and he groaned and pulled away. “Off,” he said.

Disentangling herself reluctantly, Lucilla sighed. “Of course we must stop. We’re right beside the—”

She landed on her back in the fresh grass. “Road,” he said. “We’ll have to hurry.” He shoved up her skirt, having to unfasten both sides to do so. It wasn’t cut for such unconventional activity.

“Pascal!”

“You wear too many underthings,” he said, flipping up her petticoat. He swooped down and kissed her through her drawers.

She couldn’t get her breath. He hadn’t done this the night before. His fingers shaped and massaged her thighs while he slowly and deliberately rasped his mustache against the cambric covering her sex. The hair on her arms prickled. He nuzzled deeper, and hot velvety sensation flooded over her rear and belly. “Christ almighty,” she choked out.

He lifted his head. “Did I hurt you?”

She stared at him, dazed. She licked her swollen lips. “You don’t have to hurry too much,” she said. “If we drive through the night, this…this might be…”

“It will not be the last time.” Pascal bent and firmly kissed her thigh. “I will go to England and find you.”

“What if you’re killed?”

“What if
you
are? Don’t fret about that now. Have you no romance in your soul? You English,” he said, fumbling with the drawstring of her drawers.

“It isn’t romantic to be ravished beside a country lane?” Lucilla asked.

“Bees, flowers, I suppose so,” he admitted. “Touch me.”

She couldn’t reach much of him, so tangled her fingers in
his hair. She didn’t let go even when lifting up so he could drag off her drawers and her awkward skirt. Her petticoat made for admirable protection from the grass, which she quickly forgot about as his rough cheek brushed her thigh. He spread the lips of her sex with his fingers, and for a moment the air on her wet skin was like a chill up her spine. Then his hot breath gusted over her, and his tongue pressed her open with a long lick. She arched into his mouth, her eyes fluttering closed. Delicately, he searched out each fold and traced its path while she twitched in pleasure. She’d never experienced such a light, slick, exact touch; it was as if he found thousands of nerves too hidden for fingers to discover, nerves that tingled and sparked deep inside her belly and sent electrical currents coursing through her arms and legs.

Her belly twisted, coiling her ever tighter. “More,” she said at last. “Please, Pascal. More.”

He shifted her leg, and to her shock lifted her knee over his shoulder. A brief awkwardness, and he did the same with her left leg, wrapping his injured arm lightly around her thigh. She felt splayed open, yet secure because he held her. She tightened her calves against his back and he sighed before bending to kiss her again, his tongue flicking inside her with unbearable intimacy and lapping at each fold of flesh as if it were her mouth. Her body throbbed ceaselessly, and she writhed in his grip, panting for breath. She moaned when he slipped the very tip of his finger into her opening, the sound a momentary relief of the pressure building inside her, until his finger slid deeper and she was forced to moan again. She couldn’t think. “Please,” she said. “I can’t—”

“Harder?” he asked.

“Yes—deeper—”

He slid two fingers inside her, massaging his thumb over her sensitized flesh and, after a moment, closing his mouth over her clitoris and sucking, a bolt of feeling that speared her to the ground. Her back arched; she both craved and winced away from the intensity of his fingers thrusting within her, his lips pulling at her. A brief climax shuddered over her skin without giving her relief. Her body continued to fight toward pleasure until she let her mouth open and screamed, short and satisfying.

Pascal froze and withdrew. “You aren’t hurt?”

Lucilla panted. “Needed air,” she said. “More.”

Lubriciously, his fingers slid into her again, reaching up and in, rotating on withdrawal. He laid his cheek against her thigh, watching his hand move, his expression intent upon her. Lucilla watched his face until she had to close her eyes from the intimacy of it. She laid her head back on the grass and drew deep breaths. The pressure inside built inexorably now, as if her first climax had been only the first road sign on the way to fulfillment. She could feel the tightening within her beginning again, from a different place than before. “It’s so good,” she said, then moaned when he touched his mouth to her again. “Pascal—”

He didn’t withdraw this time, suckling harder, thrusting faster with his fingers. Lucilla lost count of how many times her skin shuddered, flutters of climax teasing her toward some unknown peak. When she crested, at first she expected another small spasm, but it built and built, and then the heavens ripped open and golden sunlight spilled through her and over her, racking her with pleasure in its wake.

She fell into sleep almost immediately after, aware of Pascal kissing her mouth, covering her with her skirt and easing his
jacket beneath her head, then no more. She woke, and it was dusk. A dog howled, then another and another, like a pack of foxhounds baying—she realized that was what had woken her. She blinked at the emerging stars, too few as yet to pick out the summer constellations. Pascal was watching her.

“You needed to sleep,” he said, his tone brusque. His finger gently traced the shape of her upper lip. “I don’t think we should stop again.”

Lucilla lifted her arm, which seemed to weigh ten stone, and closed her fingers over Pascal’s wrist. “I will miss you,” she said.

He leaned down and kissed her, a quick hard pressure. Then he took her hand and helped her to her feet. They didn’t speak as they stowed the remains of their meal, lit the motor’s lamps and set out again.