Free The Moonlight Mistress by Victoria Janssen

She took a deep breath. “What happened next? With Madame Jacques.”
    The motor purred. “It progressed in the usual way,” he said.
    Lucilla cast him a glance. “That’s vague. I thought you remembered everything.”
    “I don’t think I can speak on this anymore, unless my hands are on you,” Pascal said.
    Her stomach twisted a little, as if hungry for him. “Finish the story, at least.”
    “The smell of baking bread is, to this day, a reminder.”
    “So if I brought you a baguette, you would—” Imaginingthe lewd appearance of a baguette, Lucilla began to laugh. Pascal joined her. To her surprise, the rest of their journey, all through the night, became a blur of laughter and shared memories, but now only memories of safe things, such as her childhood experiments with vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, and his first dish of ice cream, which had been strawberry.
    She told him of when she’d been a girl, and imagined that she could easily dress in boys’ clothes and run off to have adventures, just like the boys in the illustrated stories that Tony and Crispin pored over. She’d had to read those stories in secret, sneaking them into the garden shed to avoid her mother’s lecturing on what was appropriate for a young girl and, at much greater length, what was not. “But now,” she said with great satisfaction, “I am on an adventure of my own.”
    “Am I required to be your assistant in this endeavor? Or may I be the intrepid scientist?”
    Lucilla grinned at him and deftly swerved around a hole in the road. “I stole the motor. I think you’d better be the girl. Only no swooning, I beg you.”
    “Only if you ravish me at the end,” he said hopefully.

INTERLUDE
    BOB HAILEY’S SISTER WAS NOT IMPRESSED WHEN told the regiment was mustering.
    “You can’t leave,” Agnes said. “The water closet’s got a leak. It makes a terrible drip all night, and keeps Mother awake.”
    “I’ll have a look before I go,” Bob said. “Captain Wilks is expecting me early.”
    “You care more about that old man than about your own family!”
    “It’s my duty.”
    “We’re your duty! And what do you think will become of us if you get sent who-knows-where to be killed?”
    “Haven’t I done enough already? You’ll get my pay, same as you’ve been getting,” Bob said. “I’ve asked Mrs. Tollis upstairs to look in every few days. She’s happy to do it.”
    “She doesn’t care two pins for me, she just likes to gossip with Mother.”
    “You’re able to take care of yourself,” Bob said. “You had a factory job before I went into the service. If you need to, you can do it again.”
    “And then who’ll take care of Mother, I ask you? She can’t stay by herself any longer, and you know it. Yet I don’t see you here but once in a fortnight.”
    Agnes was convinced the army was like a holiday camp, enlisted in for the adventure of it, much as their father had signed on with the merchant marine. Though of course he’d never been seen again.
    “If I’m killed, will you still blame me for not mending the leaks?” Bob asked wearily. “I’m off.” To my other life .

5
    LUCILLA DID NOT REALIZE THEY HAD CROSSED the border into France until she stopped the motor so they could relieve themselves. The night sounded unusually quiet; she’d grown used to the motor’s vibration and the mournful baying of dogs, and she stood for a moment, listening to the engine tick. She heard Pascal’s returning footsteps, then a curse. He’d stumbled into a stone milepost. She backed the motor enough for the headlamps to illuminate it. The distance it marked was worn illegible, but it sheltered a gaily painted plaster Madonna, her feet pinning at least twenty scraps of paper, their penciled prayers inscribed in French. Lucilla was tempted to leave an offering of her own, she was so glad to be free of Germany, but at the same time, she realized her journey’s end would mean the end of her affair with Pascal. She