The car lurched violently to the left, and Jean woke in the darkness to her shoulder crashing into the car door. Pain shot down her arm and she heard herself cry out, her voice almost drowned by the screeching of brakes. Then the road fell away beneath them and the car stopped with a sickening crunch, resting at an angle and throwing Jean back against the door.

"Are you all right?" she asked, trying to sound calm. "What happened?"

Lucien ran his hand through his hair, disorientated for a moment. He turned the engine off and glanced at Jean through the gloom.

"I think a tyre blew out, but it was so sudden I can't be sure. Are you hurt?" His stomach tightened at the thought.

"I'm fine, but the car door won't open." The angle she was sitting at didn't seem right either.

They scrambled out through the driver's door, Lucien offering Jean a hand as she swerved around the gear stick.

Once they were standing on the roadside, the reason for the stuck door was very obvious. They had ended up in a shallow ditch, with the side of the Holden hard against the far side of the ditch, and the base of a telegraph pole. It would be impossible to move the car without help.

In the quiet darkness Lucien contemplated the problem. They were miles from home, on an isolated country road he didn't know well, and there were no lights to indicate houses anywhere in sight. They couldn't wait in the car because of the danger of the car slipping further down into the ditch, but it was too cold to wait out in the open.

There were no cars in sight, and none had passed them for quite some time. The only sound came from the metallic ticking of the cooling engine.

The glow of the headlights shone on the scrubby grass of the verge, and more distantly showed a building, some sort of shed or small barn, perhaps a hundred yards up the road.

"Let's have a look at that building, then I'll take a walk and see if I can find help."

Jean merely nodded. She was beginning to shiver. The evening was chilly, but she also wondered if the shock of the accident was part of it.

Lucien fetched the travel rug and torch from the boot, and then carefully opened the rear door of the car and retrieved Jean's handbag and the string bag she had brought out on the trip with them. Finally, he turned off the headlights.

They set off towards the shed, with Lucien carrying everything except the handbag. He didn't hold out much hope that the building would be much use, but by the light of his torch they found the door, and were relieved to find it unlocked.

Inside, it was less than lovely: dark of course, damp, and the corners seemed to be filled with old boxes and rusty tools. The torch light picked out some sacks of animal feed, and more encouragingly, a few bales of straw. A little moonlight leaked through the cracks in the wooden walls.

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Since Mei Lin had left, Jean had started going out on cases with Lucien. That day they had driven over an hour out of Ballarat to an abandoned farm. Lucien had suspected it was being used to hide stolen goods, by a gang of men who were wanted for theft by the police in both Ballarat and Bendigo. At their last burglary an old man had been knocked to the ground and killed for the sake of a few bits of jewellery, so now they were also wanted for murder.

However, despite their best efforts, Lucien and Jean had found no signs of life, and there were certainly no stolen goods in the house or barns there. Disappointed, they had left at dusk, realising it was too much of a risk to stay longer.

As Jean watched Lucien trying to clear a space in the shed, she turned over the case in her mind. She was usually pretty good at working out where to hide things safely; she just needed to put herself in the shoes of the thieves. Where the goods were, hopefully the thieves would be too.

Caught up in these thoughts, she failed to notice that Lucien had finished. He retrieved his coat from Jean's shoulders, where he had left it while he worked.

"You might as well sit down and get comfortable," he said. "I'll be back soon; just going to see if there are any signs of life around." He kissed Jean swiftly on the cheek and slipped out of the door, leaving her with the torch.

Jean was secretly rather glad of that. She didn't much like being alone in a damp and dirty outbuilding in the middle of nowhere. How much worse would it be in the dark?

She buttoned her coat right up to the neck, and sat on the straw, leaning back against the stack of feed sacks, and pulling the blanket around her. Her shoulder was aching and her stomach was rumbling. She considered turning the torch off to save the batteries, but decided against it.

Jean thought with regret about the stew she had left in the oven, with the gas turned right down so it would cook all afternoon. At this rate it would be ruined, and she was hungry. A cup of tea would be welcome too.

When Lucien returned she knew immediately that they were staying for the night. His frustration was only too obvious.

"There's nothing for miles around that I can see, and it's starting to rain. I think we'll have to make the best of it here."

Jean nodded. "Are you hungry? There might be some biscuits left." She had brought a thermos of tea and some food on the trip, but they had eaten most of it while at the farm. She rummaged in the string bag for the packet and held it out to him.

He looked in disappointment at the three remaining biscuits, but broke one into two pieces and handed the packet back to Jean. They shared them, bickering good-naturedly about who got the bigger piece, and finished the lukewarm tea left in the flask.

"Our dinner will be burned," Jean sighed, as she turned out the torch. She hoped Charlie would have the sense to turn the oven out when he came home.

"Are you cold?" she asked. "Come under the blanket."

He didn't argue, but slid across, moving under the edge of the blanket and into her arms. He wrapped his arm round Jean's shoulders. She swallowed a gasp as he brushed her bruised arm, but snuggled down against his side. They each smiled secretly at the familiar relief of the hug.

"We should try to get some sleep," Lucien murmured some time later into the darkness.

"Mmm," she hummed, acknowledging him but no more.

He untangled himself from her hold round his waist and switched the torch back on.

"Come on, up you get." He grasped her hand and pulled her up, and this time she could not hide the jolt of pain.

She staggered for a moment, half falling against him.

"Your arm...let me see, Jean."

She turned away impatiently.

"It's fine, Lucien, I've told you. It's only a bruise." He kissed her forehead gently, wanting to smooth away the frown.

Despite her words, he ran his hands over her shoulder and arm, squeezing gently, feeling for anything amiss through all the layers of her clothes. Apparently satisfied, he began pulling the bales of straw apart, breaking them down and making two body-sized heaps of straw on the earth floor.

"We've only got one blanket," Jean said. He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "You'd better push those together.

Lucien did so, not straightening up to look at her until he was happy with the result of his work.

"I didn't want to presume," he said with a grin. His teeth flashed and she wondered for a moment if this was wise. Then she smiled at him and nodded, and wrapped her hand around his fingers, pulling him closer.

"I think we'll cope. Now, how are we going to do this?" She tried to sound as matter of fact as she could. Sharing a bed at home was unthinkable; out here she knew it was the only sensible option.

Lucien spread his coat over the straw bed, lining uppermost, and indicated where she should lie with a theatrical flourish. Jean laughed, and his stomach tugged with the familiar pull of longing, quickly suppressed.

"I'll just go outside," Jean said, in a near whisper, and when she returned Lucien slipped outside to relieve himself too.

By the time he came back in, rubbing the rain drops from his hair, Jean had taken her coat and shoes off and was lying on his coat, with the blanket pulled up to her chest. She lifted the corner of the blanket up, in a gesture of invitation that he could not resist. Her eyes glinted in the gloom.

He draped Jean's coat over the top of the blanket, added his jacket to it, toed off his shoes, and lay down on his back next to her. His mind was unsettled, with too many thoughts flitting through his head.

It was so cold on that floor that they would have to hold each other; anything else would mean a freezing, sleepless night. But he knew she had been keeping him at arm's length for months now, and perhaps she wasn't ready for this. Whatever this turned out to be.

She turned onto her side, lying against the smooth wool of his waistcoat, and his arm slid under her shoulders. So far so good.

Lucien could hardly remember the last time he had lain with a woman curled like this against him: Mei Lin, before Singapore fell. Since then he had grown a tougher shell, which it seemed only Jean could crack. He shifted so he could see her face more easily in the sliver of moonlight from around the door, and wondered if she had at last truly left Christopher behind. She had none of the hard exterior he had grown; her look was all softness and welcome, and his chest ached for her.

He pressed his lips against her hair and closed his eyes. It made almost no difference to what he could see, but it focussed his mind on Jean. Freed of the unconscious effort to see in the dark, he breathed her in: a trace of perfume, the smell of home, the scent of tea on her breath - all these let him shut out the stink of damp and straw all around them.

He swallowed a sigh of pleasure and shuffled down to kiss her. He caught her mouth, slightly open and tender, with his lips, brushing his beard across her cheek. Their first gentle kiss led to another, then he could sense her longing matching his.

Jean's hand was on the back of his neck before she knew it, holding his mouth against hers. He certainly didn't seem to be objecting, if the progress of his hand down her spine was anything to go by.

She hadn't expected to spend a night with him on the dirt floor of a tin roofed shack, but now they were here, and her body was making the decision for her. At home, she had avoided getting this close, taking things very slowly towards a marriage that was still likely to be months away.

As Lucien ran his hand over her bottom, she rolled her hips towards him, smiling as she felt the rather obvious bulge in his trousers. They paused for breath, as if by agreement, and he held her tight against his chest.

"Jean." He kissed her gently. "I don't want to do this."

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She froze, horrified. She tried to push him away, but could hardly move, as he still had his arms around her. He kissed her forehead.

"I mean, I do want to do this, but not here, Jean. Our first time, I want to be able to see you properly. I'd like to undress you." Slowly she started to feel less rigid in his arms. "I wouldn't say no to a bed, either." He hoped she could hear the smile in his voice.

Jean let her head fall against the curve of his neck and shoulder.

"Yes," she agreed, "a bed sounds like a good idea." She giggled softly, relaxing. "But soon, Lucien. Let's not wait too long; we're old enough to know what we want."

Her hand was flat against his chest, feeling his heart beat quickly. She leaned closer, kissing his neck, then inhaling his scent through the cotton of his shirt. He breathed against her cheek.

"No reason we can't get better acquainted." Lucien's eyes glittered in the darkness, and Jean suspected he was near tears.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I love you." She could just make out the whiteness of his teeth as he smiled at her. "Just a few weeks ago I thought I'd lost you for good."

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Jean had fallen asleep with the sensation of his beard against the nape of her neck. She had lost track of time as they had 'got acquainted', and she'd had her first proper opportunity to run her hands over his chest and arms, and play with his beard, to her heart's content. Lucien slowly explored the curve of her hips, and kissed the rise of her breast through her clothes. Eventually he sighed and kissed her forehead.

"We'd better try to sleep a little," he said.

Jean turned away from him, and so the last thing she remembered was his breath in her hair, and some soft kisses to her neck.

But she awoke chilled as dawn was breaking. The barn looked worse, if anything, in daylight. Filthy and cluttered, but at least the rusty roof kept the rain out. Lucien was curved around her back, still asleep, and she pulled the blanket a little higher, so it almost covered their heads.

As she did so, she heard voices in the distance. She shook Lucien by the shoulder as she sat up, just as someone called outside the door.

"Doc? Mrs Beazley?" She recognised Bill Hobart's voice, and realised what was about to happen just a moment before he threw the door open.

Bill took in the scene in just a second or two. Two red-faced people emerging from a heap of blankets and coats, hastily straightening their clothes. Mrs Beazley seemed to have straw in her hair. He smothered a smile and backed out, calling out to his colleagues that he had found them.

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Charlie drove them home, leaving Bill to oversee the local garage recovering the car from the ditch.

Jean thanked him for coming out to find them.

"The boss thought you both might just have gone away for the night, but I knew you wouldn't have left dinner in the oven if you hadn't meant to come home. In the end he agreed Bill and I could go out at first light to look for you, and Bill knew you'd headed out to that farm. Once we found the car it was easy." Charlie paused. He sensed Jean's embarrassment.

"Bill won't gossip, Jean." He glanced in the mirror and caught her eye.

Lucien put his arm around her shoulders. "Nothing to gossip about, Charlie." Perhaps there was a trace of regret in his voice.

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Food was the priority when they got home. Within ten minutes the three of them were sitting down to bacon and eggs and a pot of tea.

Jean had removed the ruined stew from the now-cold oven, and scraped it regretfully into the bin. Still, that had been the clue that had saved them from a long cold walk for help this morning, so it hadn't been completely wasted.

She spread honey on the last slice of toast and took a bite. Another clue had been on the edge of her consciousness; now it became clearer.

"Lucien, do you remember seeing some bee hives at the farm yesterday?" He nodded slowly. She thought he seemed preoccupied.

"Well, I think perhaps we should have looked at them more closely. They might be the ideal place to hide something, don't you think?" She looked at Lucien, but it was Charlie who looked really interested.

"Maybe I'll go back and pick up Bill, and we can have a look round." Charlie stood, then swallowed the last of his tea and left hastily.

"More tea?" Jean offered to Lucien. "And then I must go and have a bath. That barn was filthy."

I'll make the tea and bring you a cup," he replied. He started to stack the dishes in the sink to be washed and Jean looked at him, a little puzzled by this domesticity, before she headed upstairs.

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Lucien tapped on the bathroom door, a cup of tea in his other hand. Then, before Jean had a chance to answer, he opened the door a crack.

"Tea," he said, and stepped into the room, carefully looking anywhere except at Jean.

"Lucien...?" she gasped, but then smiled. "Well, after last night I suppose there aren't many secrets left."

He balanced the cup and saucer carefully on the corner of the bath and crouched down beside her. He ran his fingertips gently over the bruise on her shoulder, now turning purple, and then kissed it. The steam rising from the water smelled gorgeous: something floral, but he couldn't say just what it was. He let his lips linger on her wet skin.

Jean had drawn her knees up defensively, not quite ready yet to be openly naked in front of him. But she guessed now where this was going.

"I know I said soon..." she began.

He did his best not to look hopeful.

"Lucien, it's 7 in the morning." She kissed his cheek, leaving a wet patch on his skin.

"I spent all last night thinking about this, Jean. I don't much care what time it is now." He found her hand just under the surface and lifted it to his lips.

"You seemed to be soundly asleep most of last night," she teased him, "so I'm not sure how much thinking happened."

"Perhaps I was dreaming then," he replied. "but I haven't slept that well for years. It must have been the company rather than the mattress."

Jean reached for the towel and her robe and shooed him away, stepping out of the water. As she turned away he glimpsed long legs and the curve of her bottom. Perhaps it was getting rather too warm in there.

"Leave the water in the bath, Jean," he said. "I need to clean up too."

She glanced at him as he spoke, not sure she liked the idea of him using her bath water.

"If you don't mind smelling of roses," she replied.

He was starting to undress: his waistcoat was already off and he was tackling his shirt buttons.

"It has to be better than how I smell at the moment." He grinned at her and pulled her in for a kiss.

She was wearing the horrible robe he hated, but there was nothing but a towel underneath, and she felt softer: no foundation garments, as Jean would call them. This was turning out to be a very good morning indeed.

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She lifted the covers again as he approached the bed, in the same gesture she had used the previous night. This was the moment when he knew it would be fine.

He twitched the curtain back a few inches, letting in some morning light and giving him a glimpse of what lay under the covers. His throat made a sound he couldn't control: half sob, half moan. His Jean, and naked.

He was straight into her arms in one fluid movement. Breathless, he held her tight against his chest and they lay there for a moment. Then his hands moved over her back and shoulders, first with gentle caresses, then more firmly. He was drowning in the skin contact, desperate for more but with his senses overloaded. One hand drifted lower, exploring the curve of her hip and hitching her closer still.

Jean hung on to his back, at first puzzled by the ridges under her fingers, but then she realised. Her throat began to ache with tears, but she mustn't let him see that; he would hate to think she pitied him. Instead she dropped her head to his shoulder and kissed his collarbone, all delicate and loving.

Then his sudden movement shocked her, as he threw back the blankets and knelt over her. She felt as though his eyes were everywhere on her.

"Let me look at you," he murmured, trailing his fingers over her hip and down her thigh. Her skin was pale and smooth, scattered with a few freckles, with the dark curls between her legs in stark contrast. Jean forced herself not to cover up again.

"You're lovely," His voice caught, wistful. He looked her in the eye and grinned, and she could see only love and desire, none of the disappointment she had feared. Her belly pulled with yearning and she curved towards him. This was her chance too, to see him clearly. She ran her palms over his chest, ruffling the sparse blond hairs in the middle, and tested his biceps with a squeeze. Then her hand dropped to his waistband.

"It's hardly fair," she grumbled, and tugged at his shorts. He pushed them off, and then felt the weight of her gaze in return. Her lips curved up just a little as he held his breath, then she grinned up at him.

"You're lovely too," she said, and he knew she meant to sound teasing, but the sheer pleasure in her voice came through. She stroked him softly, just once, and then her hand went to his shoulder, pulling him down for a kiss.

The next kiss, and the ones that followed, were deeper, open mouthed and urgent. When he eventually broke away to work on her breast, she complained wordlessly. Sucking gently on one nipple and brushing the other with his fingers, he persisted, listening for her irritation to turn into a moan of pleasure.

Then he slid his hand down between her thighs, half expecting resistance, but her legs fell open invitingly. He delicately, expertly, explored between her folds, and as she arched against his hand he ducked down and pressed a first kiss to her curls. The shock of this newness made her flinch away, but he carried on gently until he felt her start to shiver under his tongue. Jean's fingers gripped his hair, curling and tugging painfully, and so he lifted his head to kiss his way back up to her neck, whispering endearments against her skin.

"Lucien..." she gasped, begging him, and then he silenced them both with one quick smooth stroke into her.

For a moment neither of them dared move, or even breathe, until Jean giggled.

"That works," she said, relieved, and he set a rhythm, moving slowly, trying to savour it all, knowing he was losing that battle. He buried his face in the loose fragrance of her hair and slid his hand between them, trying to push her over the edge before him. He gritted his teeth as she cried out underneath him, and then surrendered utterly in her arms.

Jean listened to the unthinking joy in his voice as he repeated her name over and over. Had she ever heard joy like that from him before? Maybe not; and she resolved to hear it again, and soon. Trying to grasp his slick shoulder, she rolled him away before he crushed her too much and kissed him leisurely.

"How sound proof is this room?" she asked. "I think Charlie might be home again."

Lucien listened. He'd heard nothing before but now familiar footsteps were clear overhead.

"Not at all," he groaned, sated. His nightmares usually woke the whole house. "We may have to learn to be quieter." He could sense sleep tugging him down. He rested his forehead against Jean's and murmured something about the wedding. But he didn't see her smile or feel her kiss as he drifted away.