'How's Frances?' she changed the subject, and Byron smiled, his rugged features softening at the mention of his wife's name.
'She's fine, considering that she's in the last stages of pregnancy, and she was wondering if you'd remembered that you promised to spend this weekend out on the farm with us.'
'That's what I came to tell you, Byron. I'm driving down to Johannesburg in the morning, so I'm afraid I'll have to put my weekend visit to Thorndale on hold.' Megan smiled ruefully as she explained. 'A publishing company has commissioned me to do a batch of illustrative work for them, and I might be away for a week or more.'
Byron nodded with understanding, and they talked for a while longer before Megan returned to her shop, but she was in a strangely disturbed frame of mind for the rest of that day.
The rain was beating softly against her bedroom window that evening while she packed her suitcase, and she had to admit to herself that, on this particular occasion, she was actually looking forward to getting away from Izilwane for a while. The past six weeks had been tense and strained, and the long drive down to Johannesburg would give her time to think and get her life back into perspective.
She was walking towards the open suitcase on her bed with a neat pile of clothes in her arms when there was a loud hammering on her bungalow door. She dumped her clothes into the suitcase and, almost at once, the loud hammering was repeated with an unmistakable urgency.
'I'm coming!' she called out, racing across the lounge, and, flinging open the door, she found one of the restaurant waiters standing on her doorstep. His eyes were wide and frightened, and Megan's heart lurched with anxiety. 'What's wrong, Isaac? What's happened?'
'It's the doctor, Miss Megan,' he explained, his voice rising a pitch higher with concern and water dripping from his raincoat to collect in a puddle around his feet as he gestured a little wildly with his arms. 'I was told to take the doctor's dinner to his bungalow because he wasn't feeling well, but he's lying on his bed, and he's sick, Miss Megan. Very sick.'
Megan did not wait to hear more. She shrugged herself into her raincoat and, snatching up her keys to lock the door behind her, she ran the short distance through the rain to Chad's bungalow with Isaac in tow.
Chad's bungalow was in darkness except for the bedside light in the bedroom, and her breath caught in her throat at the sight that confronted her. Chad was naked except for black jogging shorts, and his magnificent frame was covered in a sheen of perspiration. The sheets were crumpled beneath his restlessly moving body, and he appeared to be unaware of her presence until she reached out to brush back the dark strands of hair which were clinging untidily to his damp forehead.
His skin was so hot it seemed to burn her fingers, and his heavy-lidded eyes were bloodshot and feverishly bright when he finally turned his head to look up at her. Recognition tautened his features and, brushing her hand aside impatiently, he tried to sit up, but he failed in his attempt, and sagged back weakly against the damp pillows.
'What the hell are you doing here?' he demanded, his voice slurred but angry. 'I asked Isaac to call a doctor, not you!'
Megan shrank inwardly, hurt by the knowledge that her presence was unwanted, but circumstances dictated that she should ignore his outburst.
'Chad…' she began, her voice too choked with anxiety to raise it above a whisper. 'This isn't an ordinary fever, and I'm going to make arrangements for you to be admitted to hospital.'
'No! No hospital!' he growled, rejecting her suggestion and becoming increasingly agitated. 'It's malaria. I picked up the bug on a trip to Maputo last year. I thought I'd shaken it off, but I was mistaken.'
Malaria! The word slammed an icy fear into her heart that chilled the blood in her veins.
'I'll get a doctor,' she stated resolutely, turning to the black man who was standing silent and seemingly petrified at the foot of the bed. 'Stay with him, Isaac, and I'll be back as quick as I can.'
She switched on the reading lamp in the lounge before she left and, taking a short cut across the lawn in the darkness, she dashed towards the well-lit entrance of the main building. Her breath was rasping in her throat and her heart was thudding against her ribs when she reached the telephone in the foyer. She snatched up the receiver with a hand that shook, and the switchboard responded almost immediately, giving her the outside line she requested. She punched out her home number in Louisville and waited, shivering as the water dripped from her hair into her neck and trickled down her back.
'Hurry! Oh, please hurry!' Megan whispered agitatedly, and seconds later she heard her mother's calm, familiar voice.
'Vivien O'Brien speaking.'
'Hello, Mother. Is Dad at home?' Megan demanded without wasting time on platitudes.
'He walked in a few minutes ago. Is something the matter?'
'It's Chad,' Megan explained hurriedly, not caring at that moment how her mother might interpret that note of breathless anxiety in her voice. 'He's burning up with the fever. It's a recurring bout of malaria, but he refuses to be taken to the hospital, and he needs a doctor badly.'
Vivien O'Brien had been a doctor's wife long enough to grasp the urgency of the situation, and she ended their conversation with an abrupt, 'Your father's on his way.'
Megan felt choked with emotion when she arrived back at Chad's bungalow and left her dripping raincoat draped over a chair on his stoep. Tears had mingled with the raindrops on her face, but she was unaware of this as she combed her fingers through her damp hair and went inside.
'Thank you, Isaac, you may go now,' she dismissed the waiter when she entered Chad's bedroom. 'I'll stay with him now.'
Isaac nodded without speaking and, casting a last, sympathetic glance at the man thrashing about feverishly on the bed, he turned and left quietly.
Megan approached the bed with more caution than before, but Chad seemed to be hovering somewhere between consciousness and oblivion as she touched his forehead and flushed cheeks tentatively with the back of her fingers. He was burning up with the fever, as she had explained to her mother, and the need to do something while she waited for her father to arrive sent her in search of a basin of cold water and a small towel.
'Megan…' Chad's voice was halting and slurred, but his thrashing body had stilled beneath her hands while she sponged him down with a cool, damp towel. 'Why are you doing this… for me?'
'Given time, you may discover that this is the way we are here in the bushveld,' she answered him evasively but truthfully. 'We never turn our back on someone who needs help.'
'Even if it's… someone you hate?'
Her hand stilled its action across his taut, flat stomach where his dark chest hair trailed into the elastic band of his shorts, and her fingers curled spasmodically into the damp towel.
'I don't hate you, Chad,' she contradicted him, her heart beating painfully against her ribs as she forced herself to sustain his feverish glance.
'You just don't… approve of the way I… choose to live, is that it?' he persisted with a suggestion of mockery in the tired smile that curved his mouth.
'You're talking too much when you should try to get some rest,' she rebuked him gently, disposing of the towel and straightening the sheet beneath him before she drew the top sheet up to his waist.
She slipped an arm beneath Chad's shoulders, and his dark head fell sideways to rest heavily against her breast when she lifted him slightly to flip the pillow on to its dry side. She lowered him on to it, and her arm was still beneath his shoulders when he raised his face to hers to capture her glance with his bloodshot eyes. His hot breath mingled with hers, and an odd weakness assailed her. It filtered into her limbs and clouded her mind to everything except the desire to lower her mouth on to his, and the feeling was so intense that she actually dipped her head a fraction before she came to her senses.
'My father is on his way, and he ought to be here any moment now,' she said, her voice stilted and a pitch higher than usual as she slipped her arm out beneath him and stood up.
'Coward.'
Megan's heart was drumming so loudly in her ears when she stooped to pick up the basin of water that it took a moment for her mind to register Chad's mocking accusation. She decided to ignore it, to pretend she had not heard, but her flaming cheeks bore witness to her embarrassment, and she left his room hurriedly before she could be subjected to yet another mocking rejoinder.
Coward? No, she was not a coward, Megan remonstrated with herself while she rinsed out the basin in Chad's kitchen and wrung out the towel. There was no sense, however, in playing with fire when she knew she would burn her fingers. Was there?
Chad was lying with his eyes closed when she returned to his room a few minutes later, and she pulled up a chair quietly to seat herself beside his bed. He was restless, moving his head from side to side on the pillow while he muttered unintelligibly, and she sighed despairingly when she saw his tanned skin glistening with a layer of fresh perspiration.
The fever was sapping his vitality before her very eyes and leaving him drained while she sat there watching and waiting. She was listening to the rain pelting the windows and dripping down the gutters, but she was praying silently that her father would arrive soon. She might not approve of Chad's life-style, and she might be repelled by his distorted opinion of women, but she could not bear to see him so completely at the mercy of something which he could not control. Her compassionate heart bled for him, but it was something infinitely stronger than pity which was rising from the depths of her soul in a quest for recognition, and Megan had neither the strength nor the will to suppress it at that moment.
A tired sigh escaped her, and she passed a shaky hand over her eyes as she sagged back into the armchair. It was senseless trying to deny those feelings which had been pounding inside her these past weeks. She had labelled them with everything except the truth, but she had to face up to it now.
She was in love with Chad. It was a hopeless love without a future, but trying to curb it had been as futile as trying to curb the rampant flow of a river in flood.
Megan groaned inwardly. Why did it have to be this way? Why did she have to fall in love with a man like Chad McAdam who would never have anything to offer her in return?
Her vision blurred with angry, despairing tears, but she dashed them away with the back of her hand, and rose from the armchair with a thankful sigh on her lips when the lights of an approaching vehicle flashed across the window before it came to a crunching halt at the entrance to the bungalow.
CHAPTER SIX
Megan left Chad's bedside and crossed the lounge with its sturdy pine furniture and colourful rugs. She opened the door and, staring out into the darkness, saw her father's tall, lean figure sprinting through the rain from his parked car on to the thatch-covered stoep where she stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the inside lights.
'I'm sorry I took a bit long to get here, Megan, but I was in the shower when you called,' her father explained briskly, shedding his wet raincoat before he entered the bungalow.
Megan nodded without speaking, her throat too choked to utter a sound, and turned quickly to lead the way through the lounge into the bedroom.
Chad was moving about restlessly on the bed when they entered the room. His body glistened with perspiration, but he appeared to be shivering, and Megan felt the burning dampness of his skin against her palm when she placed a calming hand on his shoulder. 'My father is here, Chad.'
He turned his head on the pillow in response to her voice and, lifting his heavy eyelids, focused his feverish eyes first on Megan and then on her father. 'Goodness knows I'm sorry you had to be called out in this filthy weather, Dr O'Brien, but I feel lousy,' he muttered hoarsely.
'If it's malaria, as you say, then I don't doubt you feel lousy.' Peter O'Brien's smile was sympathetic when he put his medical bag on the armchair beside the bed and opened it. 'Let's take a look at you and make sure.'
Megan moved out of the way and watched in silence while her father examined Chad, and she had never admired him more for his calm professionalism than at that moment. It inspired her confidence, but it did not ease her anxiety in this instance. Chad was slipping into a state of semi-consciousness, and it frightened her.
'I'm going to give him a double dose of darachlor to start off with,' her father enlightened her when he had finally completed his examination. 'And I'm sure Chad won't need to be told that he'll have to take a daily course of these tablets for the next six weeks.'
'Yes, I know, and… it's a… confounded nuisance,' Chad responded unexpectedly to Peter O'Brien's statement, and his slurred, halting voice was tinged with irritation.
'I imagine it is a nuisance,' Peter agreed, producing a phial of tablets from his bag, 'but it's the only way you're going to rid yourself of this malaria bug.'
Megan poured water into a glass from the carafe on the bedside cupboard, but it was her father who helped Chad take the tablets, and, after lowering him on to the pillows and making him comfortable, he gestured that Megan should follow him out of the room.
'He shouldn't be left alone, Megan,' he said, seating himself at the small writing desk in the lounge and producing a prescription pad and pen from his bag. 'I'll arrange with the hospital to send someone out to special him through the night.'
Megan shook her head. 'That won't be necessary.'
Her trip to Johannesburg would simply have to wait. She would have a message sent to the publishing company first thing in the morning, and if this delay resulted in the loss of the commission they had offered her, then so be it. She was not going to leave now while Chad was so ill.
'The fever will have to take its course, Megan,' her father warned, 'and there'll be chills and possible delirium.'
'I'll manage,' she insisted, squaring her slim shoulders and holding her father's troubled glance with a resolute expression on her face.
'Very well,' her father sighed resignedly, lowering his gaze to write out a prescription before he reached into his medical bag for a phial of tablets. 'I'm leaving Chad with a few darachlor tablets which should last until he can have this prescription filled,' he explained and, delving into his bag, he produced yet another phial of tablets. 'There's no way of knowing how long it will take for the fever to break. It could be anything from one to three days, but it should help if you give him two of these tablets at four-hourly intervals.'
Megan's face was suddenly pale and pinched as she picked up the phials and studied the labels. She now had a clearer vision of what lay in store for her, and she dared not make an error with the medication her father had prescribed for Chad.
'I'll call in again first thing in the morning,' her father promised gravely, snapping his medical bag shut and rising to his feet to tower over her. 'If you should need me during the night you only have to call. You know that, don't you?'
'Yes, I know,' Megan murmured gratefully. 'Thank you, Dad.'
She raised her glance to find her father observing her with a look of deep concern in his blue eyes, and she tried to conjure up a reassuring smile, but failed. The tears were much too close for comfort, and she looked away again, fighting a desperate, silent battle for control.
'I'm sure you've given a thought to the fact that your actions might be misinterpreted by the family.'
Megan nodded in reply, her throat too tight to speak. She had considered the implication of her actions, but she had chosen not to dwell on it. There would be time enough later for her to face the consequences and to find a way to deal with them.
'Don't worry, Megan.' Her father put an arm about her shoulders and gave her a comforting hug. 'Chad's going to be all right.'
A few moments later Megan was watching the tail lights of her father's Mercedes disappearing into the dark, rainy night. Hot tears stung her eyelids, but she blinked them away as she went inside and closed the door behind her to shut out the cool, damp air.
She remained at Chad's bedside through that night and on through the long, stifling hours of the following day, but her fathe
r and Byron gave her all the moral support she needed. The restaurant staff constantly plied her with food, but she could not recall eating any of it while she nursed Chad tirelessly throughout those long hours while his body was racked alternately with fever and chills.
The day stretched into night again, and it was some time after midnight, when Megan had dozed off in the high-backed armchair beside the bed, that Chad lapsed into a bout of delirium, and the sound of his throaty voice, raised in anger, made her sit up with a guilty start. She had never encountered anything like this before, but her natural instinct was to comfort him, and, when he flung out an arm in her direction, she rose at once to take his hand between her own.
'Chad, what is it? What's wrong?' she demanded anxiously, but he did not hear her.
He was breathing unevenly, and the expressions flitting across his unshaven, sweat-drenched features alternated between extreme anxiety and anger as he tossed about in an agitated frenzy. At times he gripped Megan's hand so tightly that she had to bite down hard on her lip not to cry out with the agony of it while he rambled on incessantly, the pitch of his voice rising and falling according to the level of his distress. Much of what he said made no sense to her, but a few disjointed sentences filtered through which she found enlightening.
'They said you'd never come back… Should have believed them… Never trust a woman… You're right, Father… Women are all the same… Bed them, don't wed them… Shouldn't have gone away, Mother… Trusted you… Let me down.'
Megan swallowed hard and fought back the tears, her fingers tightening about Chad's when she felt the anguished tremors flowing from his body into her own. He had given her an unexpected glimpse of the past, and she suffered his torment as if it were her own.
'Megan…' Chad's feverish eyes searched her face, but she could not be sure that he actually saw her. 'Can I…trust you?'
She felt too choked to speak, but she cleared her throat and made the attempt. 'You can trust me, Chad.'
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