intend to have a good day’s sleep, at least!”
“I intend to make sure of it,” he said. “Come. You’re right. This road should lead us toward Verdun and Reims. There will be towns along the way if we run out of petrol.”
Lucilla planned never to forget that dawn, pink and orange like a dish of sweets, the light gently washing over fields of summer hay. She glanced at Pascal to share it with him, but in the few moments since they’d last spoken, he’d fallen asleep.
She yawned, and considered pulling to the side of the road for a small nap herself, but she wanted a bed. More than that, she wanted one last time to make love with Pascal, so the sooner they reached a place where she could have that wish, the better.
This adventure was drawing to an end. She could feel it like a doom advancing. They would be separated, by her own choice before it could be his, and she would go home, and if England went to war, she would go, as well, who knew where—she might be sent anywhere. For all she knew, she would be sent back to Germany—that would be ironic. And Pascal had been in the army, like all Frenchmen. He would not be able to escape some form of service, no matter how he felt about it. And he could easily be killed, or be wounded or so changed by a war that he would forget about her completely. And that would be that. She would spend the rest of her life alone.
She berated herself for being melodramatic. It would matter to her if he were killed, but so far as her life went, it would not matter, as she knew already she would not see him again. Clinging together in the midst of chaos was no solid basis for anything long-lasting. He was a young man, with a future ahead of him, whereas she was already past forty and had no wish for children or housewifery. If she planned, hoped, to see him again, she would be building castles in the air, as she had when she’d envisioned marriage with Clive, long and comfortable and filled with hours of quiet study, when she should have known what he really wanted was a helpmeet and someone to bear his children. He’d only wanted an educated wife so he could show her off to his fellow dons as she served them tea.
She had even less idea of what Pascal wanted. She’d only known him for…she was too tired to calculate the hours, and too dispirited to think on the future any longer. Oh, for a thermos of coffee. And now they were in France. She could really have croissants, with thick creamy butter and clots of strawberry jam.
Pascal woke when she slowed the motor on the outskirts of a sizable town. He squinted at the sunlight and growled in French. His stubbled face and shadowed eyes made him look particularly villainous and bad-tempered. Lucilla grinned because she felt much the same. “We’ll have coffee soon.”
“And a bath,” he said, scrubbing at his face with one hand. “And a bed. If such are to be had.”
They soon discovered that hotel lodging was difficult to come by here, as well, but a concierge directed them to a lodging house that still had a few rooms. Posing as a married couple, by afternoon they were ensconced in a large attic room, a bit warm from the sunlight that poured through a skylight, but clean and smelling of lavender and old wood, and enlivened by bouquets of bright poppies. Best of all, there was a shower, the prettiest Lucilla had ever seen, with brass fittings on three walls in the shape of lily blossoms, and tiled in green-and-white patterns like lacework.
Lucilla was nearly asleep in a borrowed linen nightgown when Pascal returned from his shower. He didn’t speak, but smoothed his hand over her wet hair, and stroked her face. She murmured, pleased, and reached her arms for him. He went into her embrace, tucking her close against him, before he said, “Lucilla. Please wake up.”
She blinked, her hand lazily curling on his shoulder. “Be quick about it.”
“The German army has crossed into Belgium. Your country and mine are now both at war with Germany and Austria.”
Lucilla closed her eyes again. She might not have forgiven him, had he spared her this news. They had little time left together now. She didn’t want to waste it in sleep. “Kiss me. And help me remove this gown.”
They woke in the wee hours of the morning and coupled once more, in a feverish and sweaty tangle of limbs that, in her fatigued haze, felt like a dream, even when their bodies struck together with enough force to shake the heavy iron bedstead. It was the sort of dream that is brighter and more vivid than reality, and that upon waking is so engraved in memory that it feels as if it were real. If only it were a dream, then she would not suffer the inevitable grief of their parting. Lucilla clamped her thighs on Pascal’s hips and locked her arms about his torso, hiding her face in his shoulder as she silently urged him on with her hips and fingernails; his fingers and cock, meanwhile, drove her higher and higher until she screamed her pleasure into his skin. After, he turned onto his side and kissed her for an interminable interval, his hands tracing over her skin as if to imprint her body on his perfect memory. They broke apart only to gasp for breath before joining their mouths again. Lucilla thought that was to be the end, but hadn’t reckoned with Pascal’s vigor. In a quarter of an hour, he rose to the occasion again, and this time she took him from above, silent and fierce and angry that this had to end.
It was less than an hour until dawn when she dragged herself from his arms and tugged him down the hall into the bathroom, luckily deserted at this hour. She inspected his injured arm once more, then pulled him into the shower with her, where they soberly soaped each other, and washed each other’s hair. When her gentle, soapy handling brought Pascal erect again, Lucilla backed him against the shower door and took his cock in her mouth. She’d never done such a thing before, but they had no condoms with them, and she feared, besides, that coupling would be unsafe on the slippery floor. He tasted of clean flesh and his cries, even muffled by his teeth in his arm, were the sounds of someone torn apart with pleasure. The hard pressure of his cock’s head against her palate reminded her of having him deeply inside her sex, except that she was more in control of this and could lick and scrape and tease and pull on his cock and scrotum to such an extent that his knees failed him and they sank to the floor of the shower in a heap.
They’d intended to leave at dawn, but her vision blurred with exhaustion. She wouldn’t allow Pascal to reciprocate the pleasure she’d given him when they returned to their room. Together they made up the bed with fresh sheets she’d found in a closet, and tumbled into an exhausted heap, her head pillowed on his chest.
She slept until the afternoon. This time, Pascal woke her with aromatic coffee and rolls and an omelette on a tray. Unshaven, wearing a severely crumpled shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and with his bruised arm all the colors of the rainbow, he still looked delicious enough to make her mouth water. She tasted raspberry jam on his lips.
“Café au lait,” he said, placing a cup into her hand. He ripped a roll apart and buttered it for her. “The trains are running. Not often, but perhaps the train would be better than the motorcar. We can get to Le Havre by way of Rouen.”
Lucilla swallowed coffee and closed her eyes for a moment, in bliss at the smooth sweet milkiness. “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,