The Book of the Seven Delights (29 page)

It seemed like heaven to Abigail as she scrubbed the dirt from her hair and broken fingernails and cooled her sunburned skin. Never again would she take simple bathwater for granted.

After a meal—at which Haffe dazzled Cousin Topsel and the family with tales of his adventures—Abigail excused herself to her room and Smith soon followed. He found her sitting on her bed, staring at the amphora lined up on the floor nearby.

"You did it," he said, watching her pensive mood. "Right there you have proof that a remnant of the Great Library existed and that you found it."

"I know." She arched her back and rubbed her neck, unable to enjoy the success for the weight of loss and disappointment. "But there was so much more. Thinkers and authors that shaped our world with their words, and might have reshaped it with a few more words." Her usually square shoulders rounded. "And that beautiful temple… and Idera and Hathor and old Mercredes… I can't bear the thought of them lying beneath a mountain of sand and rubble."

"It was what they chose, Boston."

"I know. I just can't help feeling… we lost so much."

He sat down on the bed beside her but refrained from touching her.

"But we also gained a great deal." He nodded to the amphora. "Aren't you curious?"

"Yes. Of course." She looked at him and then at the seven scrolls. "But we can't open them. They have to be treated for preservation the moment they're opened and conserved and studied under the most pristine conditions." She shook her head. "Not to mention the fact that the seals need to be intact to authenticate them. I guess we won't really know their contents or their value until we get them back to London."

"Yeah?" A faintly wicked smile crept over his face. "Well, like it or not—one of them has already been opened. Don't you want to see what it is?"

She stared at the scroll lying on top of the other amphora. He was right. The seal was gone; the manuscript was already exposed to the hazards of air and heat and whatever moisture and pests might lurk nearby. Her heart beat faster.

At her fingertips lay one of the seven texts the keepers of wisdom had chosen to preserve specially and return to the world. Something for the ages.

"I could unroll it for just a few minutes." She chewed her lip. "It would probably give us a glimpse of what to expect in the others." She retrieved the scroll and carried it gingerly back to the bed. "Light another lamp."

She knelt by the bed and he quickly joined her, holding the second lamp aloft. Her hands trembled as she drew out the scroll and unwrapped the soft leather covering. The document was written on parchment of excellent quality, still surprisingly supple. She could scarcely breathe as she untied the binding and watched the wisdom of the ages unroll.

"Greek," she breathed out, "thank heaven."

"What does it say?" he asked, barely able to contain his excitement.

"It says…" She pointed with her finger along the large letters inscribed at the top of the first column. "The Book of… the… Seven… Delights." She frowned and retraced the words. "The Book of… the Seven Delights."

"What is that? A bit of philosophy? A play? A treatise or an epic?" When she didn't answer, he tried something simpler. "Who wrote it?"

"It says: 'From the priestesses of the Temple of Athena… to the lovers of Greece and of the entire world.'"

"What? The old tarts wrote their own book?" he said with a grin. "What would they have to write about?"

Alarmed by what came to her mind, she bent over the manuscript with her finger flying along the beautiful script, fitting letters into words and words into sentences that sent a slow current of shock through her. Her face drained.

"What? What is it?" Smith watched her reaction as she sampled various parts of the manuscript, then he tried to parse out a few of the words himself. "I can speak it, but I never really learned the written—it all looks like Greek to—"

She, on the other hand, was having no difficulty reading. It was the content that stunned her:
pleasures
of the flesh and spirit… eyes that beckon… soft breasts… adoring tongue… a stallion rearing… in
a most pleasant position… with limbs flung wide and body yielded… rake the nails of the fingers
along the inner thigh
…

She couldn't breathe. She gasped and her mouth opened but no air entered. She lurched up and backed away from the manuscript in horror.

"The 613s!"

"What's wrong?" Smith looked between the scroll on the bed and Abigail's shrinking posture. "What do you mean? Six hundred thirteen what?"

"It's… it's… about men and women and…"

"And?" he prompted.

"Being together… like in… marriage." She could see he wasn't taking her meaning and uttered just above a choked whisper: "It's about
sex
."

"What?" He blinked and looked back to the scroll opened on the bed.

"Sex." She managed to say it louder and with a less sibilant "s."

"You're joking."

"I would never joke about such a thing," she bit out, feeling betrayed and more than a little foolish. "It's a book of instructions for… the act of…
procreation
."

He looked stunned for a moment, then brightened.

"The old girls wrote a pillow book?"

"A what?"

"In the Orient, books meant to educate the reader on sexual practices are called 'pillow books.'" He bent closer to the suddenly tantalizing script. "Why on earth would the old priestesses have written such a thing?"

"Because that was the purpose of their cult of Athena." She stared at the scroll, seeing in a disturbing new light Idera's disappointment that she had never taken a lover. She couldn't believe their bizarre preoccupation with sexual proficiency—both hers and the rest of the world's—was becoming the focus of her discovery. "Idera and Hathor said their sect believed that the portal to true wisdom was the joining of male and female in the procreative act. Some notion of rejoining the separate halves of mankind and making things whole again."

"Ah! Like the Tantric beliefs." He smiled. "Hard to imagine the old girls—"

"Like what?"

"Tantrism. A Hindu philosophy and practice aimed at attaining enlightenment through the joining of male and female in sexual pleasure. Ravi told us about it." He produced a lopsided grin. "Being in
a foreign
legion is a very broadening experience." He leaned over the scroll, staring at the letters, frowning. "Damn.

My old language master
said
I'd be sorry if I didn't study my declensions."

"You don't understand," she said angrily, grabbing him by the sleeve to pull him away from the book.

She didn't know which was more infuriating: the old priestess's prurient notions, the fact that they weren't alone in such beliefs, or the fact that
he
seemed to know all about them! "I can't take that scroll back to the British Museum. I'd be made a laughingstock."

"You can't help it that the old girls wrote a book about 'the procreative act.'" His grin faded as he glimpsed the genuine turmoil in her. "Look, it's only one of seven. And they thought it was important enough to preserve it for posterity. It may seem a bizarre notion—sex as a path to wisdom—but you have to remember that a lot of the great thinkers seemed pretty outrageous. Like Plato with his philosopher kings… Rousseau with his noble savage…"

Struck suddenly by a second punch of horror, Abigail turned to the other amphora that were lying with such deceptive innocence along the wall. Instead of priceless treasures, she suddenly saw them as bombs waiting to explode and rain humiliations down on her.

"Of all the priceless works… of all the great thinkers they had to choose from, why on earth would the-ey…" Her voice and self-control both broke. The tensions, fears, and anxieties of the last few weeks collided with extremes of fatigue and disappointment and an overwhelming sense of responsibility.

"We came all this way and found a whole library of irreplaceable ancient works." Her anguish rose with each word. "We discovered a beautiful ancient temple and the descendants of a whole community of knowledge keepers. And then lost them all. They're all gone." Angry tears burned her eyes and she balled her hands into fists, "We risked life and limb—I almost got you and Haffe killed—and for what?

To gain the approval of a bunch of hateful old men who will never really accept me or allow me to do the work I want to do! What kind of madness is that? Worse—I spent almost every penny of my mother's legacy… so now I'll never have a house of my own or any real security… All I have to show for months of planning and expense and misery and hazard is a book I can't show anyone and six pig-in-a-poke jars that will probably turn out to be the world's biggest archaeological joke!"

"Come on, Boston." He headed for her. "You're not responsible for their contents."

"You don't get it, do you?" She swiped at her tears as she backed away, refusing to let him touch her.

"I'm a
woman
."

"Ohhh, but I do get that, sweetheart. Believe me. I get it all the way."

"They
hate
women scholars. They hated my mother—made my father take her name off the work they did together. And they hate me—just because I was hired by the museum. They'll use any excuse to discredit these books, whatever is in them, because they weren't found by a man."

She focused on the open scroll through the tears burning her eyes, seeing its dismal future and feeling despair closing around her. "Especially when they see that one. They'll say it's immoral or indecent or an out-and-out fraud. 'The classical masters would never have produced such a thing,' they'll say, or 'It doesn't belong in a muse—'"

She broke into sobs she couldn't stop, and the frantic shushing of her inner librarian only seemed to make her cry harder. Covering her face with her hands, all she could think of was getting out of the room, out of the house… away from all the evidence of her colossal failure and her humiliating reaction to it.

But after only two steps toward the door she bumped into Smith, who corralled her in his arms.

"No—no—"

She tried to pull free but he only held her that much tighter. Realizing he didn't intend to let her go, she stopped resisting and gradually melted against him, burying her face in his shirt.

Her turbulent emotions slowly calmed and her sobs faded. Surrounded by his presence, she was finally able to wipe her burning eyes and drag a deep, shuddering breath. She found herself seated on his lap, on the bed, wrapped snugly in his arms. He was holding her, resting his cheek against her temple, letting her purge the accumulated tension of weeks of danger and uncertainty.

She pushed back to look at him. His eyes were islands of tranquility… earthy green and gold and brown… with dark, luminous centers that seemed oddly warm and comforting. His arms around her felt strong and unexpectedly gentle. It occurred to her that the worst had happened—her lofty ambitions were now probably forfeit—and she felt strangely better than she would have expected. In fact, sitting there with him, she was feeling almost relieved. And when she looked into his eyes, she knew what it was that made the difference. In finding the library and losing it, she had found something that made her feel more vital and glad to be alive than a bunch of scratchings on parchment ever could.

"You make me crazy, you know," she said quietly.

Apollo smiled.

"I know."

"Mostly because"—she drew a fortifying breath—"I'm crazy about you."

His smile broadened.

"I know that, too."

His lips closed over hers, warm and soft and welcoming. When he turned slightly and slid her back onto the bed with him. she reached up to cradle his face between her hands and closed her eyes to focus on the changing sensations of his mouth on hers. Desire flared into the space created and then vacated by more volatile emotions. She sensed what was coming… wanted it… needed it…

"What the devil is that?" He ran his hand up her side and over her breast. He pulled back, blinked, then went for her blouse buttons. "What on earth'"

She swallowed hard against the grip of desire on her throat. "Idera gave it to me in the temple, after you left that first evening."

His gaze fixed on the bumps at the tips of the golden orbs.

"It looks like a woman's…"

"Breasts," she finished for him.

"Made of…"

"Gold." She gave a certifying nod.

"Good Lord."

As the impact of the sight registered, his voice lowered a full octave.

"Take it off."

Moments after the metallic garment hit the floor, he sank back onto the bed and pulled her beneath him.

Murmuring half-coherent endearments into her skin, he covered her body with kisses and caresses from trembling hands. Gradually, she released her own curiosity and began to explore beyond kisses and nibbles, tracing his body with eager hands. And as tension and pleasure rose apace, she molded her half-bared body against his, seeking that mysterious combination of position and pressure that could assuage the burning in her breasts and the hot ache between her legs.

The rest of the world melted into a darkening blur of shade and color as her awareness shrank to the boundaries of the bed. Sensation bathed the underside of her skin and trickled through her body to pool in her loins. She was suddenly possessed by the urge to hold him closer, to feel him with every part of her hungry skin, to feel him around and even inside her.

As the last barriers of propriety and custom were removed, night-cooled air flooded over her heated skin and she shivered. He gave a soft laugh as he braced above her, staring at her tousled hair and glowing body nestled in a whorl of abandoned clothes. His eyes glinted as he lowered his mouth to hers and whispered against her lips:

"I'm crazy about you, too, Boston."

With a laugh, she pulled him over her like a blanket and gave a ragged sigh of pleasure as he satisfied her desire to be closer to him… and in so doing, created another desire, even more compelling.

Then another.

And another.

Later, she lay in a steamy tangle of bedclothes and limbs, watching the painted ceiling of the room come back into focus and thinking she'd never be the same again. The thought was not nearly as frightening as it would have been only a few hours ago. The innocence lost seemed more like ignorance shed. And wisdom gained. The thought astonished her.