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was tender, sitting her down beside him on the sofa, holding her close, stroking her hair as she nestled into the hollow of his shoulder. They sat thus for a long time, neither willing to break the spell. Later still he took her by the hand and led her to the bed chamber. They lay in the dark together under soft cotton sheets gazing without seeing.
    “Is Belle your real name,” Ewan asked unexpectedly.
    “Why do you ask?”
    “A feeling. At times—these times—you seem to beBelle. But in the day when I speak your name, you look at me as if I am talking of a stranger.”
    “You’re right in a way.” She felt as if their love-making had reshaped her. “Belle is a shocking creature. She has dark thoughts and dark needs. Isabella, my real name, the real me, knows nothing of them.”
    “Isabella. I like it—it suits you. We all have a dark side,” Ewan said softly. “It’s just that most people do not have a name for it.”
    “Some abuse it,” Belle said with a shiver.
    Ewan pulled her close. “Yes, some do. I have seen it in the aftermath of battle many times. But that is not what I meant.”
    “No, you meant what we have together,” she replied with growing understanding. “We clash because it enhances the defeat as well as the victory. Like tonight, there is as much pleasure in submission as there is in domination. Provided we both stick to the rules, of course.”
    Ewan ran a possessive hand down her spine. “That is it exactly. I knew when I saw you that you would understand me, though, I could not have articulated it so. And you knew, too, you will admit that now?”
    Belle smiled into the dark. “Why not? You won after all,” she teased.
    “Yes, I did. And I am not finished with you yet,” he said with a growl, pushing her onto her back.
    Afterwards, she slept deeply and dreamt she had been shipwrecked, drifting at sea alone. In the distance, at last, she could see safe harbour.

Chapter 5
    She awoke in the morning alone and feeling strangely contented, as if she had emerged from a dark tunnel into the light. New. Replete. For the first time, Isabella examined Belle cautiously in the light of day, like a scientist surveying a new-found species. Alien but familiar. Part of her, once caged, now set free by this game of theirs. Like an alchemist, Ewan had conjured something new from two separate elements.
    Something destined to be short-lived, she realised poignantly. After tonight it was a part of her which would forever go unnourished. Without Ewan, Belle would surely wither and die. The thought squeezed her heart, and she banished it. Plenty of time for pain on the morrow.
    After dressing, Isabella found Ewan in the library reading The Spectator . He held out his hand in greeting, looking much younger in the daylight, almost boyish. Welcoming. She remembered her dream. Here was a man to keep confidences. A man to trust. A man of integrity, so different from the dark soul she crossed swords with at night. And yet…
    Two Ewans; one for Belle, the other for Isabella. Opposite sides of one coin. Like her. Exactly like her. Like an animal with hibernation in mind, she stored up this comforting crumb for the bleak months ahead.
    Wandering aimlessly about the room, Isabella spotted a large map of America laid out on the desk. “Is this the New World?” she asked excitedly. “Tell me about it, Ewan.”
    He described cities and plantations, a land ofcontrasts and plenty. “But no words can convey the sense of space the sheer size of it,” he said with a sweeping gesture.
    Isabella ran her finger over the vast empty space to the west of New England. “The Frontier, they call it. Think what that could mean. The chance to start afresh, without the prejudices and constraints of England.”
    “That is precisely why the early settlers went there in the first place. But it is a life of hard work and many dangers, too,” he cautioned.
    “Think of the rewards, though,” Isabella said with a glowing