Betina Krahn (19 page)

So potent was that accusation, that when Bentley took her hand and pressed an ardent kiss on it, she made a point of spotting an Asiatic lily with a rather unique luminosity. Exhibiting true sportsmanship, he released her with a glimmer of disappointment in his handsome blue eyes. For some reason, all she could think about was the strange quivery feeling she got in her stomach whenever she stood this close to the irascible Titus Thorne in the moonlight.

T
HERE WERE FISH
all around him: big fish, small fish, brightly colored fish, fantastically shaped fish. They darted in to peer at him with scowls on their faces, then, seeing it was him, turned tail and swam furiously away … some giving him a swat with their tails in the process. Then suddenly a very large fish tail appeared in the water before him … luminous, multicolored, feathery … shimmering as if lighted from the inside. Beautiful tail. Remarkable. Like nothing he had ever seen. He reached out to touch it as it swayed and undulated, and at the moment of contact, their
watery surroundings dissolved into the operating theater at the medical college, and he suddenly had his arms wrapped around that huge specimen and was wrestling it onto his dissection table.

When he finally plopped it onto the table, it stilled and he was able to back away and give it a look. Even out of the water that magnificent tail shimmered with extraordinary colors, as if each and every scale were a tiny prism that focused a light inside that fish into brilliant rainbows outside the creature. He stood in awe for a while, then gave in to the urge to touch it. The surface felt smooth and sleek and it seemed to glow especially bright wherever he touched it. Such magnificent colors. Such beautiful light.

A fish with a light in its tail? His scientist mind jolted back into operation. He had to investigate this. Determinedly, he picked up a scalpel and started to make an incision. But the tail flipped up powerfully and knocked the blade from his hand. Then the curvy fish sat up, glared at him, and gave him a resounding smack in the face with its—

Titus lurched up in bed with his heart pounding and his face stinging on one side. When he finally registered the sight of his room in the light of early dawn and got his bearings, he slid from the bed on unsteady knees and staggered to the washstand to splash his face with water.

Fish tails
again
.

Damnable dreams.

A
T THAT VERY MOMENT
, Celeste was making her way down the cliff to begin calling her dolphins again. Every step was compelled by the knowledge that her time was most certainly running out. If she couldn’t produce a specimen or two in the next day or so, Titus Thorne would have every right to pack his bag and head for Oxford, proclaiming the falsehood of her research every step of the way. If that happened, she knew, she would never see him again.

Then her impatient publisher would hie himself back to
London, wash his hands of her and her “fraudulent” work, and she would be left in her crumbling house, disgraced, an academic pariah … coping with an increasingly decrepit household, struggling to find a way to pay the butcher and grocer.

Halfheartedly, she began to pound her tin, hoping against all odds that somewhere, somehow, her dolphins were hearing her call and responding.

“W
ELL
,” C
HERRYBOTTOM DECLARED
, shifting his portly frame up from the side of the listing boat, “this is all quite fascinating.” He meant “boring.” He turned to Celeste with a frown and handed her back her mallet. “Perhaps I don’t do it properly … that’s why they haven’t come.”

“No, truly, you did it all just right,” she responded, her heart sinking a bit more with each restless sigh and guarded look from the portly publisher. He tapped his knee repeatedly with his fleshy fingers and scanned the watery horizon. He was a man used to brisk activity and instantaneous results and he was stuck on a leaky boat in the middle of nowhere, just sitting and waiting … endlessly waiting.

Across from Celeste, Bentley gamely tried to keep up a conversation by asking her to recount experiences that hadn’t been recorded in her published work. She complied, but produced somewhat spiritless narratives that quickly lost their appeal. Eventually the gentlemanly Bentley quit asking.

The only positive aspect of the entire morning was the fact that Titus Thorne hadn’t been there to nettle her already sore spirits with his prickly skepticism. He had given up his place on the boat to Mr. Cherrybottom, and now she couldn’t help wondering if that meant he was giving up expectations of ever seeing her dolphins, as well.

When she finally brought the boat in, there was Titus Thorne waiting for them on the dock, standing with his feet braced apart and his arms crossed, looking like the embodiment of Final Judgment.

He confronted them with a cool smile. “Well? Did you see them?”

“Not so much as a tail fluke,” Cherrybottom said with disgust.

“Contrary beasts must be hiding somewhere,” Bentley said with a sympathetic glance at Celeste. “Sooner or later they’ll appear. I’m sure of it.”

Cherrybottom was apparently less convinced, for as they headed for the beach and the path up the cliff, he cleared his throat and began a litany of all the projects awaiting his attention in London.

“… working on a marvelous new edition of Homer, an anthology of heroic sea stories, some new volumes on home economy and hygiene … also preparing a bid to publish Professor Dobson’s latest work. His ‘Alice’ books have been a raving success … every edition a sellout. I really must be getting back.”

Celeste felt as if someone had just pulled the dock from beneath her feet. “But you only just arrived, Mr. Cherrybottom.”

“I know, my dear, but I do have other obligations. Probably shouldn’t have come on such short notice. Next time I’ll write ahead … so you can have your dolphins on hand for …” He tugged at his collar and gave her a guilty bit of rationalization. “Besides, I shall be able to read it all in the professor’s report.”

Titus scowled at the publisher, who ignored him, gave Celeste a perfunctory tip of his hat, and headed for the beach at a quick pace.

“I suppose I should join him, Celeste,” Bentley said, taking her hand between his and giving her a look of such melodramatic longing that Titus, just outside her line of vision, rolled his eyes. “I fear our presence here has put you under considerable strain. And, my dear, I would not add one ounce to your burdens. Just say you will permit me to call upon you again, someday.”

She nodded woodenly. “You will always be welcome, Mr. Bentley.”

The American pressed a kiss on her hand, then turned reluctantly away.

Titus watched them go through a haze of rising anger. The wretches. They’d been here all of one day and they were deserting her. He on the other hand had spent four interminable days enmeshed in her fruitless search for dolphins and growing steadily more enmeshed in the puzzle of who and what she was. And as he stood there, watching her disappointment, he finally understood.

She had sailed and swum and dived for most of her life. The sea held a special allure for her, afforded her a special link with her dead parents and grandfather. Once caught up in its mystery, she must have begun to embroider glimpses and observations of marine creatures into full-blown experiences. Deception was probably the furthest thing from her mind, at first. An honest glimpse of a dolphin somehow grew into the story of a close encounter with one while diving. An encounter became an intentional meeting and eventually personal interactions. With a fertile imagination and a great desire to emulate her beloved grandfather …

He watched her square her shoulders and rally her sagging spirits, and wanted to pull her back into his arms and hold her until her disappointment passed. He wanted to tell her that he understood … that she needn’t pretend any longer … that he would find a way to make his report as benign as possible. He wanted to protect her from the censure and legal consequences her overactive imagination might bring down on her.

An aching hollow opened in the middle of his chest. He pressed his hand over the spot, alarmed that she had the power to affect him so.

Anxiety crept up his spine and shortened his breath. His unwavering principles, the very cornerstones of his academic life, were caving in at an alarming rate. For the first time in his entire academic life, he was actually considering
ignoring
the truth. He was allowing his passions and his messy, irrational emotions to dictate the content of his scientific decisions.

How in bloody hell had things gotten to such a state?

Panic set in. He watched Cherrybottom and Bentley trudging toward the cliff and felt an overwhelming urge to flee with them. Every moment he spent with her jeopardized his ability to maintain his intellectual and moral integrity. He turned back to her and felt a strange ache spreading through his chest at the look on her face.

He could no longer deal with her on a rational, scientific basis. And he had no idea how to deal with her on any other basis.

“Well, Miss Ashton, I cannot say my time here has not been educational.” He intercepted her as she started along the path and she stopped dead, staring at him. “I’ve seen quite a bit already, and I doubt my continued presence here would serve any constructive purpose.”

“You’re leaving, too?” She paled.

“If you like, I will draft my statement for the Oceanographic Society before I leave tomorrow. That way you will be able to see what I have to say. I can promise you, it won’t be accusatory. I intend to stress that I was able to verify your sailing and diving abilities, but that the time and season didn’t permit me to stay long enough to duplicate your work with the creatures themselves.”

“But you can’t. You can’t leave before you’ve seen Prospero and the others. I told you it might be several days or even a week or more. You haven’t been here a full week yet—you have to stay—”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Miss Ashton.” The pain visible in her face made him feel like the world’s biggest cad. All the more reason for him to pack it in and head for Oxford as fast as he could go. “I have a number of obligations at the university and I cannot see that my lingering here would serve either of us.”

He struggled with the temptation to say something personal,
something more reassuring, but knew there were pitfalls along that path. After a painful silence, he extended his hand to her. When she placed hers in it, he felt her trembling and couldn’t keep himself from looking up. Moisture had collected in her eyes, making them into luminous blue prisms that tugged at that empty spot in the center of his chest. And her lips … slightly reddened, full and soft … lips that would taste of salt and honey …

“Perhaps if it had been another time, another circumstance …” He released her and, allowing himself one last indulgence, ran his knuckles down the side of her cheek. Then he turned away.

Stunned, unable to respond for the crushing weight of emotion in her chest, she watched his long legs and the rigid set of his shoulders as he strode across the beach. All she could think was that she would never see him again. Titus Thorne … her prickly professor … her tantalizing skeptic with the tender hands and wicked wit and sardonic smile. She brought her hands to her middle, trying to find and assuage the void she felt.

She managed to put one foot before the other, feeling mercifully numb as she followed the departing source of her womanly awakening.

The sun was no longer warm, the sky was no longer blue, and the sea had ceased to rush and roar. Failure and heartache deadened all her senses. But as she trudged, head down, along the gray, flat, textureless sand, she still somehow managed to hear the sound of that splash.

She froze, fighting her way through the fog settling over her being. And as she strained to listen against the sudden pounding of her heart, it came again.

Splash!

CELESTE WHIRLED AND
rushed to the water’s edge, her senses at full alert, straining for a sign of a dolphin. Her knees trembled, but her gaze was bright and steady as she held her breath and scanned the waves.

Suddenly a cylindrical form broke the water at the center of the cove and vaulted through the air in a graceful arc, followed by an ephemeral trail of spray and foam. By the time it pierced the water’s surface again, a cry was working its way up her throat. Half a shout of triumph and half a prayer of thanks, it split the somber peace of the cove like the joyous peal of a bell.

“They’re here!” She spun about, waving and calling, “They’re here!” Then she began to run toward the center of the beach, her arms open wide, leaping into the air as she ran. “Look, Professor—they’re here!”

Titus was just starting up the cliff, Bentley was halfway up, and Cherrybottom was just disappearing over the edge when her cries halted them in their tracks. Each turned, searching both the disturbed water and Celeste’s buoyant form running along the beach below. Each watched in astonishment as a glistening, silver-gray dolphin launched from the water in the center of the cove, spun lengthwise in
a graceful spiral, and dove back into the water with a tremendous splash.