Moonlight Mistress excerpt – the opening

This is the opening section of Moonlight Mistress, out December 2009 from Harlequin Spice.

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There were no trains to Strasbourg.

The hand lettered sign on the station wall might be wrong, or something might have changed. Lucilla Daglish clutched her single carpetbag more closely to her skirts, to more efficiently protect her scientific glassware from the anxious crowd, but also for reassurance. People jostled against her on all sides, all of them speaking in high-pitched, anxious tones that blurred into a babble conveying nothing but fear. Two different babies wailed, and a larger child screeched between gulping sobs. A fat man, reeking of stale pipe smoke, elbowed her sharply in the kidney as he pushed his way behind her.

Mentally, Lucilla cursed herself as she tried to explain her problem to the ticket agent. Had the man in the booth needed to know about titration or some other element of practicing chemistry, she could have explained to him at great length. However, her more basic conversational German was lacking. Perhaps she had misunderstood his meaning, or he had misunderstood hers. Perhaps her fear had led her to misspeak.

Summoning different German vocabulary, she phrased her question again. She was an Englishwoman. She wished to travel to Paris via Strasbourg. She had a ticket. Here was her ticket. Here were her papers, proving her nationality.

No, it was the Gnädige Frau who did not understand. There were no trains to Strasbourg. There were no trains at all. Germany had declared war on Russia. There would be no trains until further orders were received.

“I am not at war!” Lucilla exclaimed, in English, knowing the agent would not understand her frustrated outpourings. “Why can I not travel out of this country? Surely you have no use for me here?”

Read more at my website.

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c. Victoria Janssen 2009

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More excerpts.

More Snippet Saturday at the following blogs:

Beth Williamson
Cynthia Eden
Elisabeth Naughton
Eliza Gayle
Jaci Burton
Jody Wallace
Kelly Maher
Lacey Savage
Lauren Dane
Marissa Scott
McKenna Jeffries
Michelle Pillow
Moira Rogers
Sasha White
Shelley Munro
Sylvia Day
Taige Crenshaw
TJ Michaels
Vivian Arend

About Victoria Janssen

Victoria Janssen [she, her] currently writes cozy space opera for Kalikoi. The novella series A Place of Refuge begins with Finding Refuge: Telepathic warrior Talia Avi, genius engineer Miki Boudreaux, and augmented soldier Faigin Balfour fought the fascist Federated Colonies for ten years, following the charismatic dissenter Jon Churchill. Then Jon disappeared, Talia was thought dead, and Miki and Faigin struggled to take Jon’s place and stay alive. When the FC is unexpectedly upended, Talia is reunited with her friends and they are given sanctuary on the enigmatic planet Refuge. The trio of former guerillas strive to recover from lifetimes of trauma, build new lives on a planet with endless horizons, and forge tender new connections with each other.
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