Betina Krahn (33 page)

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were jealous,” she chided when he brought the float back into range. She grabbed for it, but he threw it purposefully into the center of the cove, where it bobbed tauntingly on the water. And then he laughed.

Ha ha
…
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
…

“Why, you—” Now roundly irritated, she headed for the float. He raced past her, grabbed it, and plunged beneath the water. “Give it back!” she yelled, smacking the surface with a hand. The other dolphins apparently thought she was calling them and arrived in a heartbeat to begin a mad game of keep away. “Stop this, right now! I have work to do!”

The dolphins raced and splashed and suddenly began a contest to see who could leap the highest and make the biggest splash upon reentry.

“Stop!” Awash in spray, heaving waves, and confusion, she had to struggle to keep from inhaling water. “Stop—stop it!”

They ignored her demand, continuing their raucous play until she yelled in frustration, “Stupid dolphins—maybe you really are dumb brutes!”

She swam hard for the beach and, as soon as she reached
waist-high water, stood up to walk. But she was trembling so that she halted before she reached the edge of the water. Sinking to her knees in the surf, she felt her anger and frustration bursting through the walls of self-sufficiency she had built these last several days. A wounded cry worked its way up from deep inside her and she dropped to a seat in the water and let it come. The incoming waves washed around and over her … as if the sea were embracing her … absorbing her tears.

Those first explosive waves of emotion gradually subsided and she began to feel the comfort of the water around her, seeping into her awareness, reaching into her in ways too deep and complex to put into words. With a shuddering breath, she finally looked up and wiped her eyes.

Prospero lay not far away in the shallows, watching her. There was a dark, almost troubled aspect to his eyes.

“I’m sorry, boy.” She sniffed and wiped her cheeks, looking at his strangely baleful expression. “I didn’t mean to get angry with you. It’s just that I’m so … so …”

He opened his beak and uttered some odd sounds, things she had heard only once or twice before. He went over the sounds again and again, as if he were trying hard to communicate something to her. She trapped those plaintive sounds in her head, alert now, listening with every particle of her being. And suddenly she heard it.

Cele. Cele. Play? Cele play?

“No,” she responded, her heart beginning to pound. “Cele no play, Prospero. Cele is sad. Cele is very
sad.”

Aad. Cele aad. Cele sad. Sad. Sad
.

“Yes,” she said in a whisper. “Cele sad.”

Rolling up onto her knees, she went to him and wrapped her arms around him, laying her cheek on his cool, sleek surface, drawing solace from his presence. He nodded again and again, then rolled slightly to loosen her grip and rubbed his beak against her arms and shoulders, stroking her as he would one of his own kind.

“Saaad,” he said in his peculiar crylike voice. “Cele saaad.”

A chill suddenly raced through her at the recognition of what was happening. It was a long, electric moment before she released him and lurched to her feet, staring at Prospero, realizing the words she had heard weren’t just interpretations in her own head. “You talked! Prospero, you talked!” She staggered back and forth, laughing, shouting to the world at large,
“He talked!”

Her delirious first impulse was to hug Prospero, but when she sprang at him, he seemed confused by the abrupt change in her mood and shot off toward the center of the cove. She laughed, twirled around in the hip-deep water until she was dizzy, and was seized by the impulse to share her amazing discovery. She headed for the beach and dragged her towel frantically over her dripping body.

Sweet Heaven, it was wonderful! No, not just wonderful—
miraculous!
She couldn’t wait to tell—

She froze. Who? Who could she tell about talking to a dolphin and understanding what a dolphin said in response? Nana? She thought of her grandmother’s eccentric notions about her and her dolphins. Only half an hour ago, she was regretting that she had ever even listened to Nana’s beliefs.

Then she thought of Titus, wishing he were here to hear it and to tell her what he thought of it. In his stead, she resurrected his opinions from memory. “
That is a great deal to believe on the word of a young woman who has no scientific training” … “it is impossible to separate reality from your romantic imaginings” … “the possibility of dolphins speaking of anything at all is exceedingly remote …”

Icy reason poured over her, chilling her excitement. She halted in the middle of pulling on her smock. It sounded crazy. The very sort of “crazy” that Titus had fled Ashton House to escape.

She looked out over the cove, spotting a dorsal fin here and there, and an occasional dolphin floating at the surface, resting. What had she truly heard, just now? She recalled the
sounds and pieced them together, concentrating, trying to make them clearer. Imbedded deep within the familiar dolphin caws and cries, she still heard sounds that approximated human words.

Were they real, meaningful communication, or had she constructed them out of her need for comfort and companionship? The more she tried to analyze those memories, the more elusive they became. There was only one way to be certain of what she had heard. She hurried back into the water and called her dolphins again.

Three hours later she collapsed on the blanket and wrapped her arms around her knees, staring at the water. Not a word. Not a single meaningful syllable. If Prospero had spoken to her before, he wasn’t talking now. Perhaps she
had
just imagined it all.

Climbing the steps up the cliff, she felt more empty and isolated than ever before. Two weeks ago, she would have rejoiced to hear even a hint of meaning in Prospero’s vocalizations. But now all she could think about was how isolated she was … professionally as well as personally. There was no one to help her test her hypotheses, no one to help her examine her conclusions or temper her enthusiasm with reason. Perhaps she was just imagining things.

Without the grounding that came with an honest “collaboration,” how could she possibly be certain that what she saw and heard were true?

C
ONFUSED AND DISTRAUGHT
, she spent the next afternoon helping Nana clean the flower garden. Several times she considered telling Nana about hearing Prospero speak. But each time she thought of the disaster unleashed by the Atlanteans’ beliefs that night on the beach and kept her experience and her doubts to herself. There was no telling what they might do if they thought she and Prospero had actually had a conversation.

It was late afternoon, nearly time for tea, when a horse
and rider turned up the lane and headed for Ashton House at a fast clip. Surprised, Celeste shed her apron, smoothed her hair, using Nana’s approval as her mirror, and then ran for the front of the house. But when the rider dismounted and removed his hat, it was a blond head and a fair face that greeted her.

“Mr. Bentley. How lovely to see you again.” She was surprised by the depth of her pleasure at his return. It
was
good to see him. When he pressed gentlemanly kisses on both her hands, she felt an unexpected surge of pleasure at the arrival of a friendly and understanding presence. She found herself saying: “You’re just in time for tea.”

Nana was pleased to see him, of course, and they chatted amicably all through tea and Maria’s cucumber sandwiches and apple-raisin tea cakes. By the time tea was cleared away, Peter Bentley was an invited guest for the night … given the room recently occupied by Titus Thorne.

After a cold supper that evening, Celeste led Bentley to the top of the cliff overlooking the cove, where the standing stones kept their silent vigil. Together they watched the moon rising up out of the sea, crimson at first, gradually more golden, then cool silver. Bentley quoted some of Blake’s and Shelley’s poems. And when she shivered in the rising breeze, he removed his elegant coat and placed it around her shoulders, using it to pull her close.

She looked up into his face, feeling his warmth surrounding her, invading her tension, touching her need for companionship and closeness.

“I confess,” he said softly, “I expected to find Thorne still here.”

It was a question as much as a statement, she sensed. He was inquiring about the state of affairs between her and the professor.

“Professor Thorne completed his work here and returned to Oxford …” After almost ten days, the mention of Titus’s departure still caused a contraction around her heart. “… where he belongs.”

Bentley broke into a captivating smile and used the excuse of tucking a strand of her hair back into place to touch her face.

“I cannot see how he could bear to leave,” he murmured. “What could there possibly be in Oxford to compare with the sight of you in moonlight?”

She was so busy trying to cope with the sudden emptiness she felt, that it was a moment before she realized his head was bending. When his lips touched hers, it was a mild surprise. His kiss was so warm and firm and gentle, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. Just now she desperately needed warmth and strength and gentleness.

“Ah, Celeste. How I’ve longed to be here with you again.” With a smile warm enough to thaw even the frostiest feminine heart, he put an arm around her to urge her farther down the path.

And she couldn’t help wondering what he would say if she shared with him the fact that she had heard Prospero talk and had actually understood him.

“
THORNY, M’BOY … SO
, you are here,” Sir Parthenay stood just inside the paneled lecture hall, wearing his black academic gown and a look of confusion. “Milton said you showed up this morning and insisted on taking back your lecture. I didn’t believe it. I thought you’d be in London for at least another week.”

Titus dismissed with a nod the students who had stayed after the lecture to ask questions.

“I decided there was no need to stay in London just to finish up a bit of writing.” He began to collect his lecture notes and drawings into his briefcase, avoiding Sir Parthenay’s perceptive gaze. “And I was eager to get back to my laboratory work and lectures.”

“Oh? How did it go?” Sir Parthenay asked. He smiled but his lively gray eyes searched Titus with an air of concern. Behind him a number of black robes suddenly appeared and filled the doorway, bumping and jostling at first, then drawing back adamantly to defer to each other.

“Oh, for God’s sake—” Sir Mercer finally thrust himself through the pack with a grunt of impatience and led them into the room. “By all means, my boy … how did you get on with that frisky little mermaid creature?”

“Did you manage to tickle her fins a bit?” Sir Isaac asked with a grin.

“Well, I have to say …” Titus was more than a little annoyed. He hadn’t a clue what he had to say. He’d been trying his damnedest not to think about any part of the experience since he arrived back in Oxford, three days ago. “It was a most …
educational
…. experience.”

“Details, boy, details!” Sir Isaac demanded, tottering over to the lectern and grabbing hold to steady himself.

“By all means, the sum
and
the particulars,” Sir Harold Beetle demanded, joining the group forming around Titus.

It was precisely those “details” that Titus had fled London to escape. But before he could think of a way to squirm out of this command performance, Reggie Witherspoon, Sir Milton, and Sir Eldred Harvey barreled through the door, crowded with the others around the lectern, and insisted he wait until Sir Benedict Bush arrived so they all could hear “every fascinating detail.”

Titus reluctantly complied, hoping that when this lecture and the damnable article he was still struggling to write were both finished, he would never hear the word “dolphin” again as long as he lived. When old Sir Benedict arrived and the old boys were seated, he delivered a neat, dispassionate, and largely juiceless account of his experiences. The group quizzed him on his opinions of Celeste’s work and he answered as objectively and noncommittally as possible. Afterward, he excused himself to his laboratory, saying that he was afraid his assistants might have let things go to rack and ruin in his absence.

The old boys sat for a moment, staring after him in bewilderment.

“What in blazes happened to him down there? He looks awful.” Sir Mercer broke the silence.

“Liverish color—eyes all bloaty!” Sir Isaac said, loud enough for even himself to hear. “Th’ boy needs a good physic!”

“Looks as if he hasn’t slept in days,” Harold declared, scowling.

“Didn’t seem to think much of sea air. You don’t suppose he ‘caught’ something down there, do you?” fastidious Reggie Witherspoon asked, putting a handkerchief over his nose, just in case.

“He’s wound tight as a watch spring,” Sir Milton said, shaking his head.

Sir Parthenay rose and began to pace. “I had such hopes for this little adventure. I was so certain that Miss Ashton and her dolphins would loosen him up. But he seems more rigid and narrow-focused than ever. What are we going to do with him?”