Even as he came up with the logical explanation for the odd occurrence, Theo knew that it was not so. That dream was as real, as vivid to him, as it had been ten years ago. He had only to close his eyes and he could remember the slab of stone hard beneath his body, and the sweat slicking his flesh and dampening his hair. He had been burning up with fever, his mouth constantly dry and parched no matter how much they poured that drink down his throat. The air had been stifling, heavy with the smoke from the incense burners on either end of the slab on which he lay. He remembered the low, rocky ceiling that arched over him, the rough walls, damp with the moisture of the cave.
He remembered, too, the dark, silent girl who had tended to him, wiping the sweat from his face and urging the drink on him, the metal of the goblet cool against his fevered lips. Her low voice had chanted in some foreign tongue. Dennis had been there, too, most of the time, talking to him, urging him to return from the netherworld in which he floated.
But neither Dennis nor the black-haired maiden had been there when the woman had come to him. His fever had been burning more hotly than ever, and he had been assaulted by hallucinations—visions of animals and birds and strange, monstrous people had danced around him. And he had sweated and shivered, aware deep inside that life was slipping from him.
Then she had appeared at the end of the slab, a wondrously normal, heartening sight in his confused world. A plain white gown had fallen straight from her shoulders, and her hair had tumbled down around her shoulders, soft and riotously curling, a warm reddish-brown, slightly darker in the flare of the torchlight than it had looked today in the sun of the rose garden. She had been young, her cheeks pink with the blush of youth.
He had gazed at her then, having never seen her before, yet somehow viscerally knowing her, with an awareness that went much deeper than mental understanding. They were connected in a deep, intense way that he could not have explained yet he understood with every fiber of his being.
“You must not die,” she had said to him, and walked around to stand beside his head.
He had looked at her, unable to speak, too weak even to raise his head. She had smiled down at him then, a wonderful, inviting smile that brought out the hint of mischief in her sparkling brown eyes.
“I won’t let you,” she went on. “Do you understand? You cannot die yet. I am waiting for you.”
Then she had bent and softly kissed his lips. He could still recall the butterfly-soft flutter of her mouth.
Theo had spoken of his vision to no one, not even Dennis. It had been too real and at the same time too bizarre to share with anyone. He could not explain his certainty that he knew the woman even though he had never seen her before. Nor did he want to share the intense flash of hunger that had darted through him at the sight of her.
It was the same stirring of desire that had arisen in him today when he first saw Megan Henderson. There was something about her, something that went beyond all notions of beauty or desirability, to an attraction so deep and elemental that it seemed a part of him. He had not felt anything like it with any other woman.
He remembered what his brother Reed had told him about the first time Reed saw Anna, the woman who would eventually become his wife. It had been like a blow to the chest, Reed had said, and Theo had thought the description overly dramatic. Yet today what he had felt had been as strong as that, as intense, though it had been more of a jolt all through him rather than a blow to his heart.
He had to wonder what that meant about the twins’ new teacher. Not, he felt sure, that he was going to marry the woman. He had realized some time ago that he was apparently missing the romantic streak that seemed to run through the rest of his family. His parents, his brother, his sisters—even his twin—all had married for love. Theo, however, was sure that he had never felt the emotion. He had been attracted to many women over the years, had even indulged in affairs with those who were free and willing to engage in such relationships, both here in London and in some of the other places he had traveled.
There had been one woman—the clever, ambitious owner of a millinery store—with whom he had kept company happily every time he returned to London. That relationship had lasted almost three years, off and on, and had ended amicably when he’d returned from his trip to China to find that she had entered into a more permanent relationship with a man who stayed home. He had enjoyed her company, had found pleasure in her bed, yet he had never felt the sort of heart-thudding joy upon seeing her that he had witnessed on Kyria’s or Olivia’s faces when they saw their husbands.
He would have dismissed such happiness as a feminine trait had he not seen the same sort of besotted expression on his father’s face every time he’d looked upon his duchess during the last thirty-four years. The fact was, obviously, that the Morelands loved deeply and for a long time—except, apparently, for him.
So he felt sure that what he had experienced today was not love at first sight. No, it was more likely astonishment at seeing his long-ago dream suddenly come to life in his mother’s rose garden.
Still…whatever it was, he knew it was something that he had to explore. He had to know why this woman was here in his life ten years after his “vision” of her. He had to understand that strange, intense feeling that had gripped him.
Theo remembered his reluctance to leave London despite the restlessness that had plagued him, as well as the odd sense of waiting that he had experienced. Was Miss Henderson the reason he had been “waiting”? And how the devil had he known it?
Theo stood up, shaking his head slightly, and started back into the house. In the midst of all these speculations, there was one fact he knew for certain: there was no way he would be leaving London any time soon.
He trotted up the steps to the terrace, unaware that he was whistling a merry tune.
*
MEGAN WENT TO CALL on Andrew Barchester the following day, accompanied by her father and sister. She would have preferred to conduct the interview alone. Much as she loved her father, she was accustomed to doing her work by herself. Her father was all too likely to take control of the interview and send it shooting along some strange pathway. Nor did she really think that Deirdre was likely to be able to give them any pertinent information derived from the “feelings” Frank Mulcahey was sure Deirdre would receive on seeing this man, who was one of the last to see their brother alive. She would have liked to spare Deirdre the pain of hearing firsthand about Dennis’s death. Megan was accustomed to hearing and seeing gruesome things in the course of her work; Deirdre was not.
Her father, however, had been insistent on accompanying her. And Megan could not deny that it would appear more natural for him to be the one making inquiries of the man who had told him of his son’s death. Nor could she keep Deirdre from going along, as her sister seemed determined to do.
She would simply have to work around her family’s presence, she decided, and hope that Deirdre did not hear anything that would disturb her.