"Oh." She stared at him.
"I've had one adventure too many, I'm afraid."
"But… I don't understand. You must leave Shelford now?"
"Perhaps you'll understand tomorrow, or the next day."
She remembered suddenly that she had written to Major Sturgeon, giving him permission to call on her tomorrow if he wished. She opened her fingers. Trev let her go.
She had thought, while she was penning her stiff invitation to the major, that Trev would be certain to hear of it eventually. Without precisely hoping that he would be angry or jealous, she had indulged in a lengthy reverie in which the news had brought him rushing to Shelford Hall to propose to her, perhaps after knocking Major Sturgeon down at the door.
Now Trev said he was leaving. And while it would have been rather pleasant to imagine this had something to do with her—that he had heard she was entertaining a f lattering proposal, and was withdrawing his presence forever because of a broken heart, that was not only preposterous but clearly would be far more devastating in reality that she could have imagined. A sense of quiet panic rose in her.
"You can't leave your mother now," she said. "I can't believe you must leave now."
He made an unhappy sound. "Will you tell her that I was called suddenly to Monceaux? Or London. To my agent there. Tell her I'll be back soon."
"But you said you aren't coming back."
He did not answer. Callie stared at his profile in dawning comprehension.
"You want me to lie to her," she said.
"No." He sat back and gave a slight laugh. "No, I misspoke myself. I shouldn't have asked such a thing. A gentleman should tell his own lies."
Callie stood up. "Something terrible has happened." Her voice quivered. "What is it?"
He rose with her, so close that she could smell the damp scent of his skin. "Nothing terrible has happened yet."
She felt his arm slip about her waist. It seemed unreal, as if she stood in a dream where nothing made sense. "Yet?" She felt close to tears. "You're going back to France?"
"It doesn't matter." He leaned his forehead down, resting it against hers. "Would you let me steal a kiss before I go?"
"Why?" she whispered, her voice breaking.
"Because my mother says I love you." His lips grazed her temple lightly.
Callie made a small painful sound. "Oh, of course." She stood back, holding her chin up. "The way the chaperones say I have a very nice smile, and can't understand why I never took. Why do you have to go away?"
His arms tightened, drawing her back to him. He bent his head and kissed her lips, his skin warm and a little rough against hers. "Callie, do you remember this?"
She was breathing deeply, poised between anger and weeping and disbelief. But the brush of his mouth on hers made her close her eyes, all the daydreams of years past coming real. This was Trevelyan, the only man who had ever touched her this way, who had ever made her want to be touched this way. It had all long ago faded into reverie, deep and dangerous and hidden in a secret corner of her mind, as far away as if she had only imagined it.
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."
"Yes," she said, biting her lip. "I think you do if you leave Shelford now."
He slid his hands down to her waist, following the shape of her. "You'd better go back, wicked Callie in your boots and nightclothes, before I do something to deserve worse than that."
She knew what he meant. She thought of her room and her bed, warm and dry and safe. It was only a brief walk through the wind and rain, and a million miles away. Her whole body seemed to glow under his touch.
He drew her hard to him suddenly, opening his mouth over hers with a rough invasion. For an instant she was full of the delicious, smoky, sandalwood taste of him. She was seventeen again, and she was dying again, that infinite plunge into his kiss and his body pressed to hers, so familiar and so unknown.
He set her away as abruptly as he had kissed her. "Enough," he muttered. The f licker of the candle shadowed his eyes. "Give me a few hours' sleep now, and then I'll be on my way."
Callie gazed at him. As unlikely as it seemed to believe he was here, it was more impossible to believe that in a moment he would be gone from her life again. She hugged herself, shaking her head slowly, as if to clear her brain.
His lip curled. "You didn't suppose I'd be any less a cad than the rest of them, did you?" he said harshly. "Your father was right. You're well out of a connec tion with me, Lady Callista. I assure you it won't be long before you thank him for the second time."
She stood numbly, unable to summon any words amid the welter of feelings. She turned away and then turned back for a moment, as if to ask a question, but she could think of no question that he had not already answered with perfect clarity. In the dimness, all she could see was his rigid face, with that same expression of bitter disdain that he'd worn when her father hit him.
"Don't look at me as if I've swindled you," he snapped. "It's a dream. It was always a dream. Go back to the house." He took a step toward her. "Get out of here, you silly wretch, before we both regret it."
She turned and ran, her face and body hot with emotion, the way she had run before.
He was right, of course. It was a dream and always had been—another castle in the sky, dusted with just enough reality to make it more vivid and persistent than the rest of her foolish daydreams, her fanciful visions of being beaut
iful or adventurous or admirable in any number of highly unlikely ways.
Callie realized she had worn her muddy boots into her bedchamber and kicked them off. Being right about dreams did not buy Trev any gratitude from her. She tore off the wet oilskin and threw it on the f loor. She hated gentlemen. She hated every single one of them, the ones who had jilted her and the ones who had not. They were useless, hopeless, impossible, and mean. He said he was a cad like all the rest, and she heartily agreed. Doubtless he had a wife already, or perhaps a dozen, and mistresses by the score back in France, all of them beautiful and charming and never at a loss for words. Women adored Trev, all sorts of women threw themselves at him, she had no doubt, and the least of them would be more appealing than Callie on a good day.
She lay facedown on her bed, not quite sobbing into her pillow, but huffing rather brokenly while she envisioned herself running them all through with a hay fork. She would have nothing more to do with gentlemen, or any other people for that matter. She would go and live with her animals, so that she wouldn't have to speak to anyone ever again. Residing under a hayrick in the fields, with only the cattle for company, would be a perfectly blissful existence in Callie's view. She could not imagine how she had ever considered any other arrangement.
She plumped up her pillow and beat at it. Indeed, she really didn't like people at all. She didn't like to make conversation or be looked at or have friends. It was all painful and hopeless, and it would be worse when she lived with Hermey and everyone pitied her the more because she was a useless spinster sister who had been jilted three times.
No—she loved Hermey—but she couldn't bear it. She refused to do it. She would become a hermit instead, or possibly a witch, and frighten little children by haunting some dark wood with her moans. She would adopt a large-brimmed black hat, the more out of fashion the better, and encourage a great number of cats to hang about her.
No one would wonder at this in Shelford. Everyone here would perfectly comprehend that she preferred animals to people. Particularly to gentlemen. Most particularly to French gentlemen. They could all join Bonaparte on that island of his at the ends of the earth, and very happily she hoped they would be there, drinking good claret and singing "La Marseillaise," while she lived out her life under a stump.
She fell asleep contemplating these joyful plans, her pillow soaked in tears.
Major Sturgeon stood very stiff ly beside the mantel piece in the lesser drawing room. Instead of his uniform, he had worn a dark green coat with exceptionally high collar points, so that his entire jaw was swathed in linen. Even so, his clothing could not obscure a great bruise and swelling that made his mouth and left eye appear oddly crooked.
Callie sat beside the garden window, as distant from him as was possible, which was not very distant in the modest chamber. She should have received him in the more formal atmosphere of the pink drawing room, but there was no fire laid there before Lady Shelford's afternoon calling hours. Major Sturgeon had answered Callie's invitation with unnerving promptness, appearing at an hour of the morning that her father would have called encroaching. Taken by surprise, Callie had managed to clutch Hermey and pull her bodily to join them in spite of her sister's whispered protests.
They had entered in a rather clumsy stumble, but Callie managed to give the major a brief curtsy and introduce her sister. He bowed, with a narrowing of his eyes that could have been a wince of pain or an expression of delight. After the exchange of greetings, Callie and Hermey seated themselves. They all three fell into an awkward silence.
Callie found that it was difficult to ignore his swathed and swollen jaw. She racked her brain for some polite conversation, but all she could think of to say was, "Do you have the toothache?"
Hermey gave her an exasperated glance and broke the uncomfortable moment herself. "I'm very pleased to meet a longtime acquaintance of my sister's," she said.
"I'm grateful for the honor, Lady Hermione," he said, sounding as if his tongue were not quite working properly. "Your sister extends me more favor than I deserve." He bowed again toward Callie, with something that would probably have been a warm smile if it had not appeared to cause him considerable discomfort. "I apologize for my appearance. I took a fall from my horse."
"I'm so sorry to hear it," Hermey said. She looked at Callie expectantly.
Realizing that she could not avoid her turn, Callie said, "The horses seem rambunctious of late."
"Do they?" Hermey smoothed her skirt. "It must be the weather."
Another silence stretched to painful proportions. Hermey maintained a tranquil smile as she gazed into the distance, making it clear that she would offer no further aid.
"The gentlemen appear to have taken a consider able mauling too," Callie added, at a loss for any other subject.
"Merely a scratch," the major said, an understate ment of substantial proportions. "I wished so anxiously to see you, Lady Callista, that I allowed myself to imagine my appearance was not so shocking as I fear it must appear."
Callie looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. He must be in great need of money. And since Trev, in spite of kissing her and informing her that his mother said he loved her, had shown more inclination to f lee to France than to propose, the major seemed to be her only remaining hope to avoid either billeting herself upon Hermey and Sir Thomas for life, living out her days under the whip of Lady Shelford's sharp tongue, or residing permanently under a pile of hay.
She was quite certain that Major Sturgeon intended to sacrifice himself on the Altar of Mammon and offer for her hand again. There was no other discernible reason for him to call on her. Heiresses must be thin on the ground in London this year.
The new Earl of Shelford appeared at the open door. Callie jumped to her feet, startled to find her cousin abroad and fully dressed at this hour. She performed introductions again, vexed to discover a slight quiver of apprehension in her voice. She hoped he would not ring for his wife. If anyone could drive Major Sturgeon off, it would be her ladyship. Though in truth, Callie wouldn't have been ungrateful for that. Caught between wishing to be rid of him and the apparent necessity of marrying him, Callie subsided into confusion and sat down again.
Lord Shelford was eagerly cordial to the major, as he was to everyone. He rang for coffee, complaining that Callie had overlooked this obligatory aid to any gentleman's comfort. The officer apologized again for his appearance and informed Lord Shelford of his spill from the horse. While his lordship expressed dismay and sympathy, Callie mused on the coincidence of two gentlemen, out of the very small number of gentlemen of her acquaintance, falling from horses within the same few hours. Perhaps they had collided with one another.
"Ah, I'm charged with a message from Colonel Davenport to you, sir," the major said in a slurred voice to Lord Shelford. "That bull of yours has got loose from its paddock. He asks you to keep a lookout. He thinks it may have an idea of wandering home."
"Hubert, do you mean?" Callie looked up. "Hubert is loose?"
"I don't know how he's called," the major said. "The bullock that Davenport won from his lordship in a wager, as I understand."
"Oh yes," Lord Shelford said uncomfortably. "That bullock. He's wandered off? Dear me. I suppose he will come here, yes. Nothing more likely." He cast a nervous glance at Callie.
"How long has he been out?" she asked sharply, standing up.
"Only since last night." The major turned toward her, keeping his neck stiff. "The lad fed him in the evening and found the fence broke right through when he went out at dawn. Davenport's put out several of his men to search. He's a little apprehen sive, since he had an inquiry from some low fellow the other day to purchase the animal. He turned it down f lat, of course, but the man was offering an enormous sum."
"A low fellow?" Callie frowned. "What sort of fellow?"
Major Sturgeon cleared his throat. "I don't know if you are aware, Lady Callista, of the men they call sharpers. The colonel is slightly concerned, since he's had word that som
e celebrated fighting dog has come into the county in the past week. It's unlikely, of course, but with the sort of sum the fellow claimed to be offering, undoubtedly he had some idea of arranging a match for the betting crowd."
"A match?" Callie exclaimed. "Dear God, do you mean a baiting?"
"Nothing of the sort," the new earl cried. "Nonsense! Davenport's the magistrate; he won't allow any of that sort of thing hereabouts. Calm yourself, my dear. Oh please, don't look so frightened!"
"I am frightened!" Callie started for the door. "We must discover him. John, never mind that." She passed the footman carrying a tray of coffee. "Leave it here; my horse is to be readied instantly. I'll be down in five minutes."
"You're going to search, my lady?" Major Sturgeon was a step behind her. "May I have the honor of aiding you?"
"Yes, yes, of course," she said distractedly. "The more eyes the better. Are you mounted?"