He was very real now. Very masculine, scented of drink and wood smoke and sweet tobacco like the gentlemen when they returned from hunting or supper at a club. And more than that—the special, particular scent of Trev himself, different from anyone else, fixed in her mind with a certainty that she had not known she possessed until she recognized it again.

He kissed her. She began to feel that sensation he had always made her feel—as if she would lose herself in some sweet, aching fall toward oblivion as long as he held her this way. He made a sound low in his throat, an echo of intense pleasure. It seemed so implausible, so impossible to believe that he could feel it too. Yet he kissed her deeply, pressing her to him. She could feel the stiff binding round his fingers, just touching the back of her neck, a strange reality of starched cotton amid the dreamlike dimness.

He leaned his shoulders against the great wheel of the carriage, drawing her off balance to him, kissing her throat and her temple and her hair. Through the oilskin coat and thin protection of her night rail, her whole body touched his. She felt wildly outside all bounds of decency and civilization. All her forbidden daydreams were concentrated in Trev, in this shadow love and outlaw fancy, waiting just beyond the fence of her everyday life. She reached up and put her hands to each side of his face. It had been no more than memories, never something to depend upon or believe could come true. Only this was true—that she stood here in the dark with a man who was going away, as he had always been going away, always receding into remembrance and dreams.

"Wicked Callie," he said against the corner of her lips. "You shouldn't consort with drunken Frenchmen in the middle of the night."

She made a small whimper as he grazed her ear with his teeth. She gripped her fingers in his hair and pulled him closer.

His mouth hovered over hers. "I dream about you all the time," he murmured, his voice a little slurred. "Do you know that?"

"About me?" She slipped her hands down and held his coat, squeezing it in her fingers. "I don't believe you."

"I know," he said. "Damn it all."

"You say these things—"

"I know. I know I do. But some of them are true."

She forced herself to stand back a little, trying to be composed. "I don't even think you're real. I don't think this is real."

He let go of a sigh and stroked his bandaged finger tips lightly across her hair. "If only it weren't. Maybe then my hand wouldn't feel as if a camel just stepped on it."

It was almost a relief to recall his accident. "You think the horse trod on you?"

"The horse should have kicked me in the head," he said. "I deserve it."