An Unexpected Pleasure. Candace Camp

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      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      PROLOGUE

      New York, 1879

      The shriek cut through the night.

      In her bed, Megan Mulcahey sat straight up, instantly awake, her heart pounding. It took her a moment to realize what had awakened her. Then she heard her sister’s voice again.

      “No. No!”

      Megan was out of her bed in a flash and running through the door. Theirs was not a large home—a narrow brownstone row house with three bedrooms upstairs—and it took only a moment to reach Deirdre’s door and fling it open.

      Deirdre was sitting up in bed, her eyes wide and staring, horrified. Her arms stretched out in front of her toward something only she could see, and tears pooled in her eyes before rolling down her cheeks.

      “Deirdre!” Megan crossed the room and sat down on her sister’s bed, taking Deirdre’s shoulders firmly in her hands. “What is it? Wake up! Deirdre!”

      She gave the girl a shake, and something changed in her sister’s face, the frightening blankness slipping away, replaced by a dawning consciousness.

      “Megan!” Deirdre let out a sob and threw her arms around her older sister. “Oh, Megan. It was terrible. Terrible!”

      “Saints preserve us!” Their father’s voice sounded from the doorway. “What in the name of all that’s holy is going on?”

      “Deirdre had a bad dream, that’s all,” Megan replied, keeping her voice calm and soothing, as she stroked her sister’s hair. “Isn’t that right, Dee? It was nothing but a nightmare.”

      “No.” Deirdre gulped and pulled back from Megan a little, wiping the tears from her cheeks and looking first at Megan, then at their father. Her eyes were still wide and shadowed. “Megan. Da. I saw Dennis!”

      “You dreamed about Dennis?” Megan asked.

      “It wasn’t a dream,” Deirdre responded. “Dennis was here. He spoke to me.”

      A shiver ran down Megan’s spine. “But, Dee, you couldn’t have seen him. Dennis has been dead for ten years.”

      “It was him,” Deirdre insisted. “I saw him, plain as day. He spoke to me.”

      Their father crossed the room eagerly and went down on one knee before his daughter, looking into her face. “Are you sure, then, Deirdre? It was really Denny?”

      “Yes. Oh, yes. He looked like he did the day he sailed away.”

      Megan stared at her sister, stunned. Deirdre had a reputation in the family for having the second sight. She was given to forebodings and premonitions—too many of which had turned out to be true for Megan to completely dismiss her sister’s “ability.” However, her predictions usually ran more to having a feeling that a certain friend or relative was having problems or was likely to drop in on them that day. The more pragmatic side of Megan believed that her sister simply possessed a certain sensitivity that enabled her to pick up on a number of small clues about people and situations that most others ignored. It was an admirable talent, Megan agreed, but she had her doubts whether it was the otherworldly gift that many deemed it.

      Deirdre’s looks, she thought, contributed a great deal to the common perception of her. Small and fragile in build, with large, gentle blue eyes, pale skin and light strawberry-blond hair, there was a fey quality to her, a sense of otherworldliness, that aroused most people’s feelings of protectiveness, including Megan’s, and made it easy to believe that the girl was in tune with the other world.

      But СКАЧАТЬ