The Moonlight Mistress (18 page)

Lucilla smacked his arm. “If only that were true.”

He grinned at her. “I
am
willing to do your bidding. Truly. I will speak to your Frenchman.”

Lucilla blew out an exasperated breath. “Thank you.”

Ashby leaned in and kissed her, lightly, on the mouth. “Thank
you
. Just let me know if you change your mind about future biting, all right?” Then he was gone.

Noel crawled forward a few more inches. He and his two companions were now fifty yards into this wide stretch of no-man’s-land, the closest they were likely to get to the enemy without being seen. He lifted his field glasses again, wedging them beneath the brim of his uniform cap. Sharp bits of rock dug into his hip, where the fabric of his trousers was not quite thick enough for protection, and newly deployed coils of wire atop the German trench obscured his view. Forcing himself to ignore the distractions, he murmured his estimates of the enemy manpower in the trenches a hundred yards away, doing so more by smell than sight. To his left, Lincoln scribbled the numbers in a dirty notebook. To his right, Denham’s beefy hands restlessly caressed his rifle.

If one’s nose could ache, his did, from too long spent crammed together with too many men, all of them in desperate need of a bath and a good night’s sleep; the sour tang of exhaustion exuding from their skin was worse than the stench of sweat. The Germans, from what he could gather
on the wind, were in a similar state, their individual scents muddled together with layered masks of weariness and fear. Only their food smells differed. If all humans could smell with the acuity of wolves, he pondered for the millionth occasion, would they be able to go to war with each other?

He was thankful for the burial details that had gone out earlier in the day, under a flag of truce. Otherwise, this duty would be unbearable.

“Sir,” Denham rumbled. “I could pick a couple off from here. Just give me leave.”

“And we’d be peppered before we drew another breath,” Ashby said. He encouraged his men to think and always be ready for the main chance, but some of them were idiots. He scrubbed beneath his nose with a gloved finger, trying to take advantage of his momentary freedom from confinement to enjoy a few clear breaths. Or as clear as he was likely to get—the dirt here between the trenches was impregnated with sharp reminders of metal and old blood. He handed the field glasses to his left and said, “Lincoln, start back. Denham, you follow.”

“I’m supposed to cover you, sir. I should go last.”

“Nobody’s shooting anybody, so you may as well go. I want a closer look.”

“Not safe, sir.”

“From you, Denham, that is quite amusing.” Noel reached over and patted the larger man’s elbow. “Keep an eye on Lincoln. I’ll be along shortly.”

“Sir.”

The rustling of uniforms and soft breathing retreated. Noel closed his eyes and rested his chin on his forearms, making himself a smaller target. He wished he could change and go for a run. Broad daylight was not safe for that, and at night
the trench became a beehive of activity that he was required to direct. The brief shift he’d made for Lucilla Daglish was the last time he’d been a wolf.

He wondered if the Frenchman, Pascal Fournier, was a werewolf, as well. Nothing of his scent had clung to the folded paper; the carbolic stench of Miss Daglish’s apron pocket had obliterated every trace. Once they met, Noel would know for sure. If he could manage it. He wouldn’t have the opportunity to use a telephone capable of reaching Paris for another three days. Obtaining leave would take at least another day, probably more if Major Harvey was feeling particularly obnoxious.

Perhaps if Fournier was a werewolf, he would also have an unmarried sister. Or know a wolf who did. Noel had decided Miss Daglish didn’t need to know that portion of his motivation for meeting with Fournier. His desire for a wife and children was frivolous in his current setting. A child or two would not be much of a return for the wanton destruction of several nations at war.

Time to return to the crowded trench. Perhaps he would spend a little time inspecting the advance trench before returning to the company, and exchange small talk with Southey, who would be on sniper duty there. He gathered himself to crawl backward and stiffened.

The wind changed, and brought a new scent, thick and chemical. Noel lifted his nose to the breeze and inhaled. Immediately, he sputtered and coughed, his nostrils throbbing hotly. It didn’t smell like the residue of explosives. He couldn’t identify it at all.

His curiosity warred with a keen sense of danger. If he was in danger, so, too, were his men. He needed to investigate;
no one else would have detected such a scent at this distance, or be able to find its source.

He crept forward instead of back, his nose half-tucked into the collar of his woolen tunic in a futile attempt at protection from the invisible thread of painful scent. The ground dipped and surged with shell holes, and his progress was slow. Denham and Lincoln would be wondering why he hadn’t returned yet.

Noel was halfway up the side of a hole when he heard the distant whistle of the first shell and, closer, a murmur of voices speaking German. He wasn’t going to make it back in time. If he made it back at all.

DARKNESS WAS FALLING LIKE A CURTAIN OVER bare and broken trees, and Crispin knew they had to get back, whether they’d found Ashby or not. His whistle was muddy. He grimaced and stuck it between his lips anyway, breathing out lightly. Pittfield’s head lifted cautiously. Crispin signaled him toward the trench, noting that Denham followed Pittfield, and Lincoln was on their heels. Crispin hesitated before scrambling to follow them. He didn’t want to see Meyer’s face when he returned with no news.

Perhaps no news was better than dragging Ashby’s corpse. Though the cap in his pocket might be worse. He could feel the wolf badge digging into his chest as he scrambled through clods of mud and scraps of metal.

All too soon, the twists and turns became familiar. With half his attention, he took note of fallen revetments, the sacks leaking chalk; sunken, rotting duckboards awash in soupy mud; a wall melting around its wooden supports, all of it needing repair. He passed tight clumps of men, pressing to
the sides of the trench to allow him passage, and could not bring himself to look at them or speak. Meyer waited for him in front of the dugout. What could he say? What should he say? All he wanted to do was fling himself into Meyer’s arms to hold him and ease the blow of the news he brought.

By the time he’d drawn close enough to speak, he didn’t need to. Meyer must have seen it in his face. His blue eyes widened behind his spectacles, then squeezed shut. He turned abruptly and shoved past the curtain blocking off the dugout. Crispin was left standing, one boot in the mud, throat too tight to breathe.

Bob handed Daglish his mail. He’d received a letter from his mother, and several from teachers at the school where he’d worked, and even more from his former students; she recognized all the names, now, after so many months. It was a good haul, the best in the company. He only looked at her forlornly.

Bending close to him, she whispered, “Buck up. You’ll get some choc next time.”

She surprised a brief, sweet smile out of him. “Thanks,” he said.

On her way to Meyer, she detoured around the fire step, currently occupied by Mason with a pair of binoculars and his rifle, and then trotted along the duckboards laid in the bottom of the trench, her boot heels no louder than the rattle of the chilly November rain. Lyton and Southey and Lincoln, hunched over a pail of burning coke, chaffed her as she passed; she tossed remarks back, but didn’t stop to chat. The mud beneath the walkway was already thin as soup and considerably less appetizing. The men shoring up a wall with sacks of chalk were standing in slop to their calves, and cursing it
dully every other breath. She could only imagine what the muck would be like in a day or two, especially if the rain kept up. Though perhaps the rain would stop. She could smell snow in the air.

She thanked Providence that she would be sleeping in a dugout, not in one of the makeshift holes the other enlisted men had scraped out of the trench’s walls. She couldn’t imagine that mud wouldn’t seep into their blankets, no matter the oilcloth tarps or how much scrap wood and paper they crammed in for insulation, and the winter cold would only grow worse. There would be chilblains aplenty, if not frostbite. If they were lucky, the war would end soon, and they wouldn’t have to worry about spending winter in holes in the ground.

The officers’ dugout didn’t have a door yet, only several overlapping layers of heavy canvas. She ducked through, startling Lieutenant Meyer, who hunched over a makeshift table studying a heap of miscellany in the light given by a single stub of candle. She brushed past the coats hung on the dugout’s central support pole and said, “Sir.”

Glancing down at the table, she realized the miscellany had belonged to Ashby—his cap still bore a stain of mud from where Daglish had plucked it from the battlefield. She recognized his penknife, with its silver plate engraved with the regiment’s running-wolf device, and his favorite deck of cards, the ones with photographs of buxom women on the backs. Some of the women wore ribbons in their hair, or perhaps a single garter or a necklace, but nothing else. A hard way to make a living. At least soldiering wasn’t as bad as posing naked in front of a camera, or maybe they didn’t think so. At least a photography studio would be warm. And less likely to explode.

Meyer looked away from her. He rubbed the side of his
hand beneath his nose and sniffed. “Is there anything else I should send to his mother? I think—I think he was wearing his wristwatch.”

His voice sounded thick. Lord. He’d been crying. She shouldn’t feel so surprised. Ashby had been Meyer’s friend since boyhood, after all, and today’s incident with a shell had probably reminded him that they would never find Ashby’s body, would never really know how he’d died. Bob couldn’t blame him; after she’d heard Ashby had been killed, she had cried a bit herself, first making sure no one could find her. He’d been so kind and funny, and she’d spent so much time taking care of him, that it was a hard loss to bear, especially when she first saw his things lying about, the little framed photograph of his parents and their dogs, and his shaving kit and such as that. But for her it was not as hard as it would be for someone who’d known him for a lifetime. She wasn’t sure quite what to do. Did she excuse herself, and leave Meyer to his grief? Did she pretend she hadn’t noticed? Or did she offer comfort?

Ashby would have offered comfort. She remembered the hard pressure of his arms around her after Captain Wilks had been killed, his palm holding her face to his chest so she wouldn’t look at the captain’s bloodied corpse anymore. She’d briefly felt his lips against her hair. At the time, she didn’t think he could have guessed she was female; he was simply doing his best for her. One really couldn’t ask for more than that.

She’d been trying not to think about Ashby’s bloodied corpse, or what was probably left of it by now. Having not seen his body, she was free to imagine the worst, as if all the horrors she’d seen up close weren’t enough. It wasn’t fair that someone like Ashby, so full of movement and grace, should be still, that someone so full of life should be dead. It was war,
and they knew when they took the king’s shilling that they might be going to their deaths, but she’d never signed anything that said she had to like it. And Meyer, he was a soldier now, but really he was only a bandsman.

Before she could lose courage, she moved in close to Meyer and put her arms around his shoulders, pulling him back so his head rested on her belly, and then held him as tightly as she could.

His breath hitched, and his eyes closed behind his specs. She could see the wet tracks on his cheeks, and his nose looked red. He sucked in a ragged breath, then another. “Sorry,” he said.

“S’all right,” she said. His golden hair looked like sunshine in the flickering light of the oil lamp, warm and honeysweet summer sunshine. She couldn’t resist touching her cheek to it, and once touching it, didn’t want to pull away. She wanted to rub her face against his hair, then against his skin. Her hands were big for a woman’s, but they would fit nicely into his open collar, and she bet herself that his skin was a lot warmer than hers.

It had been years since she’d touched a man’s skin, outside of the ordinary ways relating to her duties. She’d thought she was done with all that when she went into the army, had put it off like her skirts and her long hair. She’d thought about sex sometimes, mostly remembering the men whom she’d loved before she’d taken on men’s clothing: Johnny, who worked down at the pub, and Johnny’s soldier cousin that one time, and Ted, who’d wanted her to marry him though he spent eight months of the year at sea, and dear Rob, who’d died in India. It didn’t seem proper, or safe, to think that way about the men with whom she worked every day. It was better not to remember that she didn’t have a cock between her legs as they did. It was just that Meyer smelled so good,
bay and lime overlaying his skin, his skin that she knew would be warm and alive beneath her fingertips, the exact opposite of the cold mud that surrounded them on all sides. Knowing she couldn’t touch him twisted her chest with pain.

Then she thought,
Why not?

All her thoughts had taken only a moment. Before she could stop herself, she slipped her hand past the opened top button of his uniform tunic, past the loosened knot of his tie. The linen of his shirt was soft from many washings; she twitched it aside and eased her hand beneath his wool vest, laying her hand flat against his pectoral muscle. She’d been right, his skin was hot. She could feel his intake of breath. He didn’t thrust her away, though, which surprised her. Had Ashby told him her true sex? She hadn’t thought he would break a promise like that, after he’d risked his own life and career to protect her secret. Had Meyer somehow discovered it for himself?

Meyer reached up and covered her hand with his. Though his shirt separated them, she could feel his hand’s warmth through the cloth. He drew breath as if to speak, hesitated, and then said, “Noel told you, then.”

“Told me?” She flattened her hand just slightly, enough so her palm curved against his skin. She felt only the barest hint of chest hair. Blond men didn’t usually have much. Perhaps he had more, closer to the center of his chest. Or lower. She swallowed, trying to remember if she’d ever seen him with his shirt off. He was one of the most physically reticent men in the company. She’d never been sure if that was part of his religion or just part of him.

She’d lost track of what he’d been saying. She startled when he spoke again, his voice vibrating beneath her hand. “About when we were boys. About—what he and I did together.”

His meaning took a few moments to sink in. “Oh!” she said. “No, sir.” She felt a blush heating her cheeks. She hadn’t thought Ashby interested in that sort of thing, nor Meyer, either; then again, boys would fuck anything, given the chance. It ought to have disturbed her, but it didn’t. If she thought about it a little more, Ashby and Meyer together, it wasn’t distasteful to her. She felt more curious than anything else. They’d been so fond and sweet with each other, as much as men showed such things. What had they been like as lovers?

Meyer sighed. “He didn’t tell you. It’s me, isn’t it? It’s something I do.”

“What is?”

“Perhaps I just imagine that I like women. It seems real at the time, but maybe I’m wrong.” As he spoke, his hand idly caressed hers through his vest. She wished he was touching her skin, perhaps lacing his fingers with hers. “Or is it that men like me?” He chuckled softly. “It’s not as if I turn them away. What, nothing to say, Hailey?”

She considered. He would find out soon enough that she wasn’t what she appeared, and in truth his concerns seemed a bit silly to her. She leaned over and kissed his mouth, upside down, a strange sensation given his mustache and the awkwardness of their positions, but sparking with electricity all the same. She flicked out her tongue to taste just inside his lips, and straightened, seeing spots from the awkward way she’d bent her neck. “’S good,” she said.

Meyer took a quick breath. “It’s not really permissible,” he said. “I’m an officer.”

She considered logistics, and nuzzled his temple, briefly tasting his skin. “You going to tell?”

“I would never do that to you.”

“Knew you wouldn’t. Me, neither.” She slid her hand a little farther down into his shirt, leaning against his back to do so. He did have a bit more hair toward the center. She circled her hand around once and found a nipple, hard as a fingertip. Her own nipples were well hidden beneath the layers of her tunic, her shirt, her vest and her cloth breast bindings, but she fancied she could feel his back muscles against them a bit. She’d like to have her breasts bare and rasping against that little scruff of hair on his chest. The very thought made her wet between her legs. It had been absolutely forever. Her body was yelling at her to get closer to him, and quickly. She tried a little persuasion with her fingertips. “You’ll feel better, after.”

Meyer breathed unsteadily. He said, “You mustn’t feel obligated to improve my morale. I’ve dealt with grief before. I’ll survive Noel’s death, and so will you. We can talk about it.”

“Don’t like talking,” she said. Talking too much was a fast way to betray far too much.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Not a virgin,” she said. She kissed his ear. “C’mon. Where’s the harm?”

“Fraternization?” he said. “Court martial?”

“Good way to get sent home,” she pointed out, grazing her teeth against the fine skin behind his ear. She was pleased when he shivered, tipping his neck toward her mouth.

“There’s another thing I should tell you—”

“After.” She didn’t like letting go of him, but it looked as though he wouldn’t move on his own. She grabbed his arm and towed him toward the cot shoved against the far wall.

“Wait!” Meyer tugged free of her grip and grabbed a
wooden sign from atop a crate. Daglish had made it. It read, Maestro at Work. Please Do Not Disturb. Meyer hung the sign from a loop of twine on the makeshift canvas door, then shoved his chair and a crate against it to make a flimsy barricade.

Bob nodded, approving. “Come on, then,” she said. She began to unwrap her puttees. She was damned if she would fuck a man while wearing boots.

Meyer halted in front of her. “You’re sure about this.” He paused as she sat on the cot, untied her boots and yanked them off. It felt wonderful to have her boots off. He said, “You look sure. You really want this?”

She tipped her head back and examined him. He looked befuddled. He reached out one hand slowly, and brushed her hair back from her forehead. He asked, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“You look a lot younger than that. Tell me the truth now.” His finger trailed down her cheek, which she knew was downy as a child’s.

“Twenty-four, sir,” she said. “Record says nineteen, though.”

Meyer didn’t ask why; usually, boys gave a false age older than their real one. Maybe he was starting to figure it out. He touched the corner of her eye. “I believe you,” he said. Bob grabbed his wrist and put his hand behind her neck. While his fingers played in her hair, she unbuttoned her tunic and the flap of her trousers.