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a second he looked vulnerable. Imogen pushed herself to her feet, reaching for him, but Vaelen drew back, his face a harsh mask she shrank from, his eyes the dark green of an angry sea, the hunger in them unmistakable.
    Vaelen’s smile was a snarl. “You see, forgetting me would be much the wiser course. Do not wish for me again.” Then he was gone.
    Imogen stood alone, staring at the space in which he had been. Something momentous had occurred, though she couldn’t understand what. Splinters of meaning shattered as she tried to grasp them. The room was empty, but she could not recall his leaving. Shaken to the core, she collapsed back onto the chair.
    Eventually, she composed herself enough to totter to the ladies retiring room and collect her cloak and gloves, sending a message to the dowager that she had the headache and had gone home early. Catching a glance of herself in the mirror, Imogen saw a spectre, all dark shadows and clouded blue eyes. She looked like a wraith. The pearls on her breast were dull, like a string of stones.

Chapter 4
    She lay wide awake long into the night, reflecting on the evening’s events. So little they had said, but so much. So many things he had said which she could not understand.
    Who was he?
    Why had he come to her?
    What was the force which drew them to each other?
    What was it that made him so determined to ignore it?
    Vaelen was no figment of her imagination. Imogen knew she should be shocked by the liberties she had granted him, but she was not. She should be embarrassed, mortified at their meeting again, horrified by her wantonness, but all she desired was to be more wanton still. When he was a dream, Vaelen was her dark fantasy. Now he was no longer a fantasy, her secret self longed for him even more. She desired him, and she knew he desired her, though he would deny it.
    Vaelen. She said his name, and conjured his image, so clear it felt real.
    Vaelen. A twisting ache of need.
    Vaelen. Her missing self. She wanted him. She wanted the freedom he could give her to be herself. Without him she would be a prisoner, living half a life with half a soul. All her life had been a waiting room, though she had not known it. She could not bear to return to that grey gloom. Vaelen had liberated her and she could not go back, but without him she could not go forward.
    All this from two encounters? Far-fetched, outrageous, madness, foolishly romantic, but true all the same. As if by magic, she had conjured him but it was he who had put a spell on her.
    Vaelen. The man she loved.
    â€œI love you, Vaelen,” Imogen whispered into the dark, hugging the gift of her new-found knowledge close. Love. Not some pleasant, gentle emotion at all, but a ripping, tearing, inexorable force that arrived like a whirlwind. Love. “I love you, Vaelen,” she said, louder this time. “I love you, and we were meant to be.” She felt it in her bones, her heart, her blood. Enchanted. Entwined. Beguiled. Possessing and possessed.
    Love.
    Imogen slept. A sleep too deep for dreams. She awoke both drained and elated with an unusual sense of complete certainty. It would take all her courage, but she knew what she would do.
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    It was a long week, waiting for the next full moon, her mood swinging between ecstatic certainty and panic. What if she was wrong? What if he did not come? What if…
    Now it was finally time. Imogen crept out of bed and huddled into her wrapper. Cautiously opening the door of her bedchamber, she listened for signs of life in the household, but all was still. The dim glow of an oil lamp burned at the head of the staircase. With Allegra following at her heels, she made her way downstairs, through the green baize door to the servants’ quarters and, after a struggle, released the bolts on the side door which led out to the small garden at the back of the town house.
    Careless of her bare feet, she followed the little path to the statue of Diana at the