The Moonlight Mistress by Victoria Janssen

“You don’t have to go with me,” she said. “I could leave from Brest, or Dieppe.”
    “With a great deal more trouble, and knowing no one at those ports,” he said, putting down her roll and picking up another for himself. He paused, with the bread held in one long-fingered hand. “You don’t want my help?”
    “I don’t want you to feel you have to take care of me,” she said.
    “We have had this discussion before,” he noted. “We have fucked, and now you wish to part? Have you considered my faults and taken me in dislike? Because I know you aren’t in the least foolish, and I can think of no other reason. What is the point of, of rabbiting across France alone—”
    “Haring off,” she said. “Not rabbiting. I can take care of myself.”
    He flicked his hand dismissively. “You do not need to prove to me that you are capable of taking care of yourself. Truly, do you want me to go away?”
    His jaw was tight, and his brows drawn. Lucilla remembered tracing her fingers along the lines of his eyebrows in the night. “No.” She looked down into her coffee cup.
    “Good, then we will stop this pointless arguing. We go to Le Havre, and my oncle Marius will find a berth for you. Yes?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good,” he said, ripping apart his buttered roll and stuffing half of it into his mouth.
    Lucilla drained her coffee and cut herself a bit of omelette. It was dense with soft cheese and thin ham and fine herbs. For the next several minutes, they ate in silence. When she emerged from her troubled thoughts and glanced at Pascal, he was watching her, his fork lax in his hand.
    She said, “It’s very good of you to offer your help, and your family’s.”
    “You are welcome,” he said. He poked at the omelette with his fork. “I am not at all gracious. I do this because I’m selfish. I wish you to be safe. I would be unhappy if you were not.”
    Lucilla swallowed the lump in her throat. His gaze burned straight through her. “When does the train depart for Rouen?”
    The posted train schedule was overly optimistic, but the trains were running. One had only to be patient amid the tense, unusually large crowds. They bought tickets and drank coffee at the station as the sun set. Lucilla bought a pack of cards from an enterprising vendor and taught Pascal to play All Fives while they sat crammed onto a bench near the departures board. The snap of their cards vanished in the noisy clack of numbers being constantly changed on the board and the low roar of hundreds of conversations.
    On the crowded train, Pascal used his long legs to secure seats for both of them, and for all the ride to Rouen, though she’d intended to converse, Lucilla dozed with her head onhis shoulder, waking only when he waved a sandwich beneath her nose sometime after midnight. The paper-thin slices of ham and dark mustard might as well have been paper, for all she tasted; the fizzy lemonade burned in her stomach, which was uneasy with nerves.
    Pascal poked the crumpled sandwich paper into a pocket on the outside of his rucksack. “Sleep,” he said, his voice rough. “I will wake you at Le Havre.”
    “It’s your turn to sleep,” she said. “I can play Patience.”
    “I’m not tired,” he said. A moment passed, then he touched her cheek, tracing the shape of her cheekbone. Lucilla shivered. He said, sounding angry, “I would go with you if I could.”
    “I know you must stay here.”
    “I could leave. I have lived in England before.”
    “You will go back to the army,” she said. “I understand that you must. Just as I will do what I must.”
    Scowling, he turned his head toward the window. Lucilla slipped her arm into his and laced their fingers together, not caring if anyone saw. She would never see these people again. His hand tightened painfully. He did not speak again. Lucilla closed her eyes and fell into shallow, chaotic dreams.
    Despite the early hour of their arrival, Le Havre was even more overwhelmed with