Page 82 of An Unexpected Pleasure

MEGAN DREAMED that night.

She was in a cave, a vast, cavernous place with rough walls of stone. It was lit by torches shoved into iron braces spaced regularly around the walls. Torchlight flickered on the stone, uneven and gleaming with a dampness that had an almost satiny look. The ceiling of the cave was high, and if she looked up, she could see the faint glitter of rock that seemingly dripped down from the roof, barely touched by the light from the torches.

In the center of the room was a large stone, waist high, and so flat on top that it seemed almost a table. On this slab of rock lay a man. A sheet of white cloth covered his legs and torso, extending midway up his chest, which was bare. His hair was thick and black, shaggily falling almost to his shoulders, but swept back now from his face and spread over the gray rock.

His eyes were closed; she could not see their color. But she could see the handsome features—the full lower lip and high, wide cheekbones, the firm thrust of jaw and chin, the straight nose, the thick black sweep of eyebrows and eyelashes. His skin was darkened from the sun, but she could see the flush of blood beneath the tan. His flesh, damp with sweat, gleamed in the dim light.

There was a woman standing beside him, a small woman with delicate features and velvet-brown eyes. Thick black hair fell in a sweep down her back. She wore a white gown that fell straight from her shoulders, belted at the waist with plates of gold fastened end to end. A wide band of gold encircled her head, cutting across her forehead, and above it rose more narrow plates of gold, shorter at the ends and tapering to the longest plate in the center. Fastened behind the plates was a small fan of feathers, long, bright sweeps of yellow, red, blue and green. A gold armlet banded one upper arm, one end of it the stylized head of a snake, the body zigzagging to the other end, which was its tail.

She held her arms out, palms up, over the man on the slab, and her eyes were closed, her face raised. She chanted in a strange tongue, her words nonsense to Megan. A bowl lay on the table in front of her, beside the man, and next to it lay a cloth and a golden goblet. At either end of the table sat metal bowls, and in them incense burned, its pungent smoke curling up toward the ceiling and perfuming the air.

Megan was looking down upon the scene as if she were floating above the man and his companion. She stared, fascinated, as the woman ceased her chant and picked up the cloth, dipping it into the bowl and mopping his face and chest with it. The man stirred and muttered, then coughed, a long, wracking cough that shook his large frame.

The woman put her hand behind his neck and lifted his head a little, bringing the goblet to his lips and pouring some of its contents into his mouth. He drank a little, and she laid his head back down. Picking up his hand, she slipped something into his palm and curved his fingers around it. She inclined her head, her lips moving in prayer or incantation; Megan was not sure which.

Megan moved closer, drawn to the man, floating down from the heights to stand on the rock floor. It was cool beneath her feet, and she realized in that instant that her feet were bare. She glanced down at herself. She was wearing one of her nightgowns, a simple, straight, white cotton shift with a rounded neck and one frivolous row of ruffles across the bosom. The air was chilly on her skin, but it did not bother her.

She walked closer, and the woman on the other side of the table lifted her head and looked straight into Megan’s face. She smiled slowly, with satisfaction, then turned and walked out of the cave into the darkness beyond, leaving Megan alone with the man on the rock slab.

Megan went to his side and looked down at him. The heavy incense filled her nostrils, the smoke stinging her eyes. He moved restlessly on the stone, coughing again. His face was flushed, and she could hear the rasp of his breath in his lungs. She touched his forehead, and his skin was searing with heat. He was dying. She knew it as certainly as she knew that she loved him.

“You can’t die!” she exclaimed, her voice cracking with emotion.

His eyes flew open at her words, and he stared at her. His eyes were dark in the dim torchlight, and he seemed to gaze deep inside her.

“You cannot die,” she repeated. “I won’t allow it. I am waiting for you.”

She slipped her hand in his. His palm opened to her, revealing the clear crystal that the woman had laid there. Megan curled her hand around his, the crystal trapped between them, and squeezed, holding onto him fiercely.

“Live!” she whispered. “You are mine.”

The crystal between them flared with heat, sending it shooting up Megan’s arm and into her body. She trembled with the intensity, her gaze locked with that of the man before her. For an instant they were melded together; her veins, her nerves, her flesh connected to him, humming with the same piercing vibration.

Then the moment was gone, and she went limp. She had to grab the edge of the stone table to remain standing. She looked at the man. He gazed back at her for one long moment, then placed the crystal in her palm.

Megan closed her hand around it tightly, not caring that its edges bit into her flesh. She laid her other hand upon his forehead. It was noticeably cooler, and she smiled. He would live now, she thought.

Reaching up, she took the chain she always wore out from beneath her nightgown. She slipped it off over her head and kissed the medal, warm from lying against her skin. Then she put the medallion and its chain into his palm, replacing the crystal, and curved his fingers around it. She lifted his fist to her mouth and brushed her lips against his knuckles.

“Remember me.”

“Always.” His word was a mere breath on the air, but she heard it.

He smiled.

Theo.

CHAPTER 17

MEGAN SHOT BOLT UPRIGHT in her bed. She stared into the darkness, her heart racing. The man in her dream had been Theo.

She had had the dream before. She remembered it now, with that eerie sense of reliving a moment.

She had dreamed it when she was sixteen, a few weeks after Dennis had left on his expedition. It had been erased by time—and, she thought now, by a certain reluctance to recall it. It had been too piercing, too vivid, too at odds with the world she knew, to be retained.

But now she remembered. Remembered each word, each movement. A shiver ran through her.

Megan slipped out of her bed and hurried to her dresser. Lighting a candle, she opened the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out her little box of treasures.