Under Her Uniform

Isobel Hailey has disguised herself as a man so she can fight in the British Army in WWI. Only a few people know the truth, including her two officer lovers—so why can’t she stop thinking about handsome Corporal Andrew Southey instead? Isobel has to keep her wits about her and her erotic fantasies hidden so she doesn’t blow her cover. But when she and Andrew find themselves working closely on a mission, their attraction—and the truth—is impossible to deny…

A sequel to Victoria Janssen’s The Moonlight Mistress, now available in ebook from Spice Books.

Under Her Uniform

Victoria Janssen

www.spice-books.co.uk

Contents

Under Her Uniform

Spice Briefs

Copyright

Under Her Uniform

Isobel “Bob” Hailey was unaccustomed to the weight of an Enfield rifle, but Captain Meyer had been insistent. She had a long trek to carry new orders to Private Mason and Corporal Southey, currently toward the far end of their thin defensive line, the end currently being pounded too hard for its actual defensive worth. She didn’t think the rifle would be anything but a burden. Better to be prepared, Meyer had said. Men liked their guns, felt safer with them in their hands.

Hailey was sure Meyer had not been so cautionary before he’d found out she was a woman in disguise, before they’d been lovers. But he was her commander. She took the rifle. It would not protect her from shellfire; but she didn’t want to waste time arguing. She liked Mason, and she especially liked Southey, who never cheated at cards, and had been kind to her at a difficult time. She didn’t want them to get blown up through any fault of hers.

Her boots shuddered the slimy duckboards as she trotted through the section of the trench some wag had nicknamed Sweet Sally’s Skirt. The Christmas quiet was long over. Blythe, Isaacs and Jones clustered around the fire step, taking turns playing tag with German snipers across the way. Bullets puffed into the parados above and behind their heads. Hailey checked her helmet and squeezed past, glad she wasn’t very tall.

Southey was stationed a good two miles down the way, past a maze of half-constructed communication trenches and false alleys. He was supposed to pretend there was a whole squad down there with him; Mason’s duty was similar. These trenches were therefore fairly empty, barring the occasional stick with a helmet on top, and stray bits of canvas hung to mimic occupation.

The traverses kept her from moving too quickly; she had to keep changing directions, like walking a giant maze. It was easy to fall into a sort of trance of boot heels thumping and webbing equipment clanking and everywhere the smell of dirt; dirt beneath her and dirt to either side of her and dirt reaching over her head. Dirt on her boots, dirt on her uniform, inside her collar, dirt on her exposed hands and face. The late afternoon sky overhead seemed an unlikely blue, as if it ought to be dirt-colored, too.

She was sweating with the walk, and beneath her uniform tunic and gray shirt, the bindings she wore tight around her breasts chafed as they grew damp. It felt queer to be away from the usual crowded conditions. She hadn’t had this much privacy in weeks. For a distraction, she stopped for a swig from her canteen, leaning against the trench wall and staring up at the sky, dreaming. She could spare a few moments for that, while she caught her breath.

Usually, if she had a moment to herself, Captain Meyer would come to mind; she’d remember the last time she’d been on leave, together with Meyer and Lieutenant Daglish, maybe going through what they’d done together, a step at a time, trying to remember each sensation, or maybe imagining what she’d like to do with them the next time they were together. The physical crowding in the trenches, and the related necessary intimacies of personal hygiene, left her craving time to herself. At the same time, she would crave removing the distance that, of necessity, one had to keep from her fellows. Those times of true intimacy with the two men, when she could be her own self, were thus a great relief, unfolding something in her that normally was wadded up tight inside. Fantasy was the next best way to remember herself.

Today, to her surprise, her mind went to Corporal Southey, not in a general way but specifically his fine rear end. She’d been working with him a great deal more lately, and he’d been more on her mind. She’d had to be careful not to let her interest show, because her interest would be sure to be misinterpreted. Or not misinterpreted; interpreted exactly as it was. A thrill of unease rushed down her throat and into her belly, but it wasn’t really unease, not quite.

She shouldn’t be thinking of him, pretty face or not. She had to work with the man nearly every day and keep her wits about her so as not to betray herself. That was her rule, how she’d kept her secret for this long: she was always conscious of her pretense.

Southey’s image came back, insistent. She shivered a little. She really shouldn’t, but that was why she was thinking of him, she knew.