Buch lesen: «The Moonlight Mistress», Seite 2

He sucked in a breath when she lightly scratched the small of his back with her nails. “More,” he demanded. She was willing to oblige him. She shoved his thin knitted vest higher on his back and dug her fingers into the straining muscles of his waist, then slid her hands lower, beneath the waist of his drawers, wrenching them down, glorying in his gasp and curse as his erection sprang free and slammed into her thigh. She gripped his buttocks firmly and yanked him to her, wanting his flesh melded to hers. He landed on his injured arm and made a sharp noise of pain. Before Lucilla could apologize, he stopped her words with a quick, hard kiss.

For a few moments, they lay together, panting, her hand circling in the soft hair on his chest. She swore she could feel his cock pulsing against her leg, straining to go higher and burrow deep within her body. Her thighs slid against each other, bathed in her own wetness. She shifted them apart, cradling his narrow hips, needing pressure against her sex more than she needed air to breathe.

Fournier abruptly sat up. “Prophylaxis,” he said, as if it were a swearword. His chest heaved, and he yanked his vest the rest of the way off, throwing it onto the floor. Lucilla’s hand, without her volition, floated toward the line of dark hair that bisected his belly, pointing the way to his cock.

She said, “I have prophylactics,” and stroked the silky-soft hair all the way down to the tangled, coarser hair of his sex. Fournier froze in place. She grasped his cock in her hand and dreamily stroked it in the ring of her thumb and forefinger. His skin there was the softest and most delicate skin in the world. With some effort, she summoned words to her lips. “I have condoms. In my medical kit. Sometimes they’re useful. As bribes. If you get one, and put it on, we can—”

Panting, Fournier said, “What?” She repeated herself. He said, “Let go. Let go or in moments we will be fucking. Without prophylaxis.”

Clive had never said the word, but that was what they had done. They had fucked. At least this stranger admitted to what they were doing. After Fournier tumbled off the bed and took a moment to finish removing his drawers, Lucilla might have found sanity or decorum. What use, though, were they? She wanted this, and she was old enough to choose for herself. She sat up and decisively stripped her shirt the rest of the way off. The breeze tickled her bare skin, and she shuddered, already needing his hands on her again.

“Fournier, hurry,” she said.

“Pascal,” he growled, then lifted a hand in triumph, holding a paper packet. “What is your name?”

“Lucilla,” she said.

He gave a little bow. “Good. We are introduced,” he said, snorting with laughter. After a moment he noted, “I fear you would enjoy this process too much,” and applied the condom himself before rejoining her on the bed.

She liked the way he’d laughed. Lucilla reached for him as he lay down on his side, butting her forehead into his chest and wrapping one arm firmly around his waist. He was breathing hard; she felt light-headed. “We’re going to do this, aren’t we? We’re really going to do this.”

Pascal said, “It’s my devout hope.” His hands shaped her shoulder blades, her spine, the upper curve of her buttocks as his hips eased against her, flinched away, then shifted toward her again. “It is wondrous. Inexplicable that this mere act can make one forget all else. Not merely a matter of biology. Truly it makes me believe in the physical existence of souls, for they must meet somehow when—you are a scientist. You understand these things, that is why I can say them to you.”

She’d heard Frenchmen were flatterers. She had to confess she liked being flattered—and the incongruity of his theorizing while naked and aroused. Lucilla cupped the head of his cock in her palm. He gasped, and said, “I…am sorry. I fear all the blood has left my brain.”

Lucilla chortled and pressed a kiss to his chest. “A philosopher!” She hesitated, then said, “I think it’s wondrous that our animal bodies can give us such pleasure, which I suppose is a form of transcendence.”

Pascal said, “Do you think the body matters, when it is the soul that is immortal?”

She stroked her free hand over his rib cage. “How can we separate ourselves from our bodies?” she asked. “Would anyone desire that?”

She did not think she had ever met a man who would have had such a conversation, especially with a woman. It made her belly shiver, to think of souls mingling like two chemicals in a beaker. What would be the end product? Apply heat, she thought. Distill.

She said, “I want you inside me. I don’t want to be alone.”

Pascal kissed her, groaning deep in his throat when she squeezed the length of his cock. Lucilla needed his weight on her, enveloping her. She turned onto her back and he followed, bracing himself above her with his injured arm. “Closer,” she said, spreading her thighs. Air tickled and cooled the hot folds of her sex, and she squirmed.

“Soon.” Streetlights limned his tousled hair, the prominent bridge of his nose, the long line of his jaw. He traced his hand down her cheek, her neck, her breast, her hip. He ran his fingers through her pubic hair and thumbed apart her folds, slicking his hand and circling with his thumb until he brushed her clitoris. Lucilla had gone rigid with anticipation, and now a cry escaped her. Her awareness spiraled inward, down and in, as his thumb circled and pressed, circled and pressed, until the whole area was so sensitized she thought she could come from a puff of air. She was moaning, she knew that because she had to gasp in a breath. Pascal pressed the heel of his hand into her mound, slow and steady, imprinting her with pleasure. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to breathe and make this stop. It built, and built still more. She cramped with pangs of ecstasy, and then it overflowed, spilling out of her, jerking her helplessly in its wake.

All her strings had been cut. She lay gasping while Pascal kissed her forehead, then her mouth. She could feel him smiling. “In me,” she murmured. “We haven’t finished this experiment.”

She held him close as he guided his cock into her, both of them flinching at first from the intensity of the sensation. She laid her cheek against his chest, liking the slide of his flesh on her face as his cock pressed the walls of her vagina. She flung one arm over her head and he twined his fingers with hers as he thrust and withdrew. After a time, she found the strength to lift her hips to his, working with him toward climax. It all flowed into one sensation of lazy pleasure, an endless rocking and slapping like floating in the sea. She did not climax again, but she didn’t mind. It was too fascinating to concentrate on Pascal, the feel and sound and musky salt scent of him as he lost himself to physical pleasure.

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 selfcentered 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 blueeyed 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 in 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.

Chapter Two

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.”

“They cannot endure this crisis without you?”

“It’s not a matter of—think of sheep huddling together.”

“You are not a sheep. Not in the least.”

“I am also not young and idealistic, like you,” she said. “I would love to stay with you a bit longer, to see what might happen, but I can’t. I have to go home. I feel I owe a duty toward my country.” Also, she feared Pascal did not truly mean what he said, not deep in his heart. He might think he did, after their enjoyable sexual encounters, but she doubted he could have formed serious feelings for her in so short a time.

Pascal didn’t speak for several kilometers. At last he said, “There’s a sign. Perhaps we can find coffee in that town. That would immeasurably improve the quality of this day.”

As Lucilla had suspected, croissants were not on offer in the village of Grobschmiedensberg, but she was able to obtain sausages, cheese, fresh bread, a thermos of strong coffee, and bottled beer and lemonade for a reasonable sum. Two cans of petrol cost an exorbitant price, but she was glad for it, having no idea how much remained in the motor’s tank, and how much petrol would be required for the distance they must travel. The hazards of being an auto thief, she supposed. Three kilometers down the road, she stopped the motor and they ate ravenously, in silence.

Lucilla offered the last of the coffee to Pascal. He shook his head, so she drank it herself and shook the drops into the road. “Will you tell me about Herr Kauz?”

“Why do you wish to know?” Pascal looked wary. Even earlier, in the midst of danger, she hadn’t seen that expression on his face.

“It’s a long way to the border.” He knew about her work—it was common knowledge that she experimented with pharmaceuticals to alleviate pain—but she knew little about his. Before she had to leave him, she wanted to know more of this man with whom she’d shared her body.

Pascal leaned over the seat back, rummaged in his rucksack one-handed, and emerged with a crumpled wax-paper packet. Lucilla tidied away the remains of their breakfast and tucked the brown paper parcels in among the beer and lemonade, so the bottles wouldn’t clink together. When she settled back in her seat, Pascal pressed a small piece of chocolate between her lips.

Sweetness blossomed on her tongue, mingling with the saltiness of his fingertips. She suckled the tip of his thumb, closed her eyes and swept out her tongue, caressing its length. He cursed softly and kissed her, crushing their hats together.

Desire drenched her entire body. For a few moments, she didn’t care that the motor sat beside an open field, many kilometers from safety. The sun heated her blood, and Pascal’s hand on her cheek was even hotter. She dislodged his hat and grabbed the back of his head, holding him to her with a desperation she’d buried until this moment.

He pulled his mouth away and thudded his forehead to hers. His breath puffed unsteadily against her face. “Pardon,” he said.

“Bugger,” Lucilla said. She loosened her hands in his hair and let them drift down to his shoulders, stroking him absently as she tried to bring herself under control instead of nuzzling into his chest and tasting him with lips and tongue. She pulled away and clenched her hands in her lap, staring down at her whitened knuckles. Her desires fought her, and she had a difficult time remembering why she could not set them free. “I will miss you when this is over.”

He reached for her again, then let his hand fall. “I will help you to get home,” he said. “I have cousins who work in Le Havre.”

“Thank you,” she said. For the first time in years, she wanted to weep.

“We should go,” he said.

Lucilla started the engine and released the hand brake. She concentrated on the road for several minutes, then said, “Tell me about Herr Kauz.”

The noise of the motor and the wind necessitated he face her as he spoke. Lucilla focused on the road ahead rather than risk glancing at him. What did she think she would see in his eyes, anyway? They were brown. That was all. Her own were the same, and just as subject to bits of blown grit. She had sand in her eyes now. Her own fault, because she had not looked for Kauz’s goggles. She blinked furiously.

Pascal said, “Kauz first wrote to me over a year ago.”

“Why?” She swallowed, and gave the motor a bit more petrol.

“Long before I was born, he was married to my great-aunt.”