She stared out at the slowly passing shapes of trees and hedges, all blue-white and black under the rising moon. Not for a long time had she thought about her father's carriage as anything more than the convey ance that she and Hermione, and now Lord and Lady Shelford, mounted inside to drive to church. But tonight, in a different carriage, with the thought and scent and touch of Trevelyan d'Augustin all about her, that other memory rose vivid and inescapable.

It was Trev who had first perceived the commo dious possibilities of the coach. It was not something Callie would have considered. But then, she had not been considering anything very rationally at the time. She had been so in love, and so besieged by the sensa tions he could evoke just by glancing down at her with that faint perceptive smile at the corner of his mouth—one of the peahens in the yard would have been more likely to hold a sensible exchange on the matter of where they might safely meet.

His kisses she had already experienced. She was an authority on the topic. Trev said so. He said her kisses made him feel as if he were dying, which she had taken as a compliment, because his made her feel exactly the same way, and it was indeed a great deal like dying, or disintegrating, or falling down some infinite well that had no name but led somewhere that she was sure she had to go.

It had led, in fact, into her father's carriage. Even now, years later, she moistened her lips and closed her eyes and put her gloved fingers to her mouth at the thought of the dim coach interior, lit only by a thin line of daylight that fell down from some high window and through the curtains, a streak of brightness across the red velvet seats. And silence, but for his breath at her ear and throat, and the little noises she made as he touched her. Protest and pleasure and fear almost to panic that someone would discover them, but when he had kissed her there and even there, his tongue and teeth on her breast, tugging through her gown, she had gasped and clung to his shoulders and begged with tiny whimpers.

He'd sat up a little, his hair all mussed in the dusky light, looking as if he could not remember who he was. Then he had freed the buttons on his trousers and guided her hand, kissing the side of her neck. When she touched him, he shuddered and bruised her skin as he closed his teeth. A low sound in his throat seemed to make sparks shower down through her whole body.