Betina Krahn (38 page)

Suddenly he knew the source of that voice in him and focused on her face as he continued to breathe, feeling her presence strongly, trusting her words and her warmth. The terror eased; that oppressive, smothering weight began to lift.

A powerful new sense of peace stole over him, an emphatic sense of direction. He knew just what he had to do.

When he reached the Bolton Arms, it took only a few minutes for him to pack. He stopped by the desk to retain his room and reserve another, then caught a hansom cab and headed for the Paddington Station and the last train of the day to Brighton.

E
VERYTHING WAS DISMAL
at Ashton House, including the weather. It had done nothing but rain since her dolphins disappeared and everything was so waterlogged that now even the gravel path in the garden squished underfoot. The clouds that had rolled in thick and low made it feel like dusk at midday, and forced them to light lamps to read in the early afternoon.

Celeste’s spirits had slid to a new low. Hours dragged by as she sat in the window seat of her room, peering through the trickles on the glass at the cove below … wishing she could see Titus, wishing her dolphins would come back, and disappointed on both counts.

Finally, the rain stopped and the clouds shredded and blew away. She hurried down to the dock to call her dolphins again. Sophia and the brigadier saw her from the drawing-room windows and looked sadly at each other.

“They’ve been gone a full week now,” Sophia said. “She’s so miserable.”

“Breaks my heart to see her like this,” the brigadier said, tucking his chin. “Ought to go after her. See she’s safe.”

Sophia nodded and went for her shawl. Shortly, they were making their own way down the cliff to the beach. By the sound coming from the dock, they realized she was pounding the tin, calling her dolphins. They paused to look at each other regretfully and shake their heads. Moments later, as they reached the dock, Celeste came rushing around the side of the boathouse, her face flushed and her eyes alight.

“They’ve come back—they’re here!” She pointed excitedly to the center of the cove. Sure enough, there were the fins and beaks of several dolphins. They rushed down to the beach, and soon she was stripped to her swimming clothes and running into the water. When she swam toward them, they didn’t swim away. They let her swim among them stroking them, welcoming them the way she always did.

She swam to the dock and brought out a cork float for them to play, but when she tossed it, not one dolphin went to get it. She treaded water, watching the thing bob along untouched. She tried a second time without success, and then swam in toward the beach and called to Nana and the brigadier.

“Something’s wrong. They’re behaving oddly … as if they’re upset.”

As she spoke, little Titan swam up and bumped into her. Recovering her balance, she stroked him and asked him where his mother was. His cries and vocalizations sounded strangely plaintive. Scowling toward the others at the center of the cove, she realized that she couldn’t recall seeing Ariel.

“Come on, I’ll take you back and we’ll find her,” she said, sensing as she said it that something was wrong. Dolphin babies seldom ventured far from their mothers. Under the water, she couldn’t locate Ariel, and finally had to surface. When she went down again, she saw Titan go to Echo
and nudge her underside. The nursing female stilled and permitted Ariel’s baby to nurse.

The sight shocked Celeste. She had never seen a dolphin nurse a baby that wasn’t her own. But Echo was allowing little Titan to nurse and that could mean only one thing; Titan’s mother wasn’t around and Echo knew it.

She dived with them one last time to take attendance and see who was there. Thunder, Echo, Edgar, Charlotte, Henny, old Adelaide, and two juveniles she knew as Sassy and Rollo. No Ariel. And no Prospero.

She swam to the beach, where Nana and the brigadier waited. “Ariel isn’t here and neither is Prospero!” She waded out and wrapped up in her shawl. “I’m worried. Ariel wouldn’t have gone anywhere without little Titan. I’m afraid that something has happened to her. If so, that might explain why Prospero isn’t here.” She looked out toward the sea. “Where could they be?”

There was no answer to her question or to the puzzle of the dolphins’ doleful mood and lackluster behavior. It was the first time she had seen a group display what she had to call “sadness” … behaving as if they were mourning their missing members. If only Prospero were here, Celeste thought miserably, perhaps he could
tell
her what had happened.

Celeste, Nana, and the brigadier set up a vigil on the beach that afternoon, that continued into the evening. Other members of the Atlantean Society came to join them, and Maria sent their dinners down to them on the beach. Periodically, Celeste would climb out on the dock and rap out her dolphin signal on her tin drum, searching the responding heads for Prospero and Ariel.

The next morning they resumed their vigil, calling and waiting while Celeste spent as much time as possible with the motherless little Titan. By dusk, the group of humans was as dispirited as the group of dolphins.

“We may as well go in,” Nana said, putting an arm
around Celeste who was seated on a boulder. Celeste looked up at her and smiled.

“You go on. I want to sit here for a while.”

The sky was purple, the night gulls were making their first round of the evening high above, and the waves lapped rhythmically against the beach. In the center of the cove the smooth gray shapes of resting dolphins broke the regular pattern of the waves. She had seen the cove like this a thousand times.

But for all its comforting familiarity, she sensed that something was different tonight. She thought about it for a while and produced a pained smile as she realized that the sea was probably the only thing at Ashton House that hadn’t changed in recent weeks, the only thing that would never change. Dolphins would come and go, boats would sink, lovers would leave … but the sea would still be here, calling to her …

Celeste
—

She straightened, hearing her name, so lost in the depths of thought that for a moment she wondered if the sea truly were speaking her name. She stood up with her eyes widening, listening hard. It came again, from behind her.

“Celeste!”

She whirled. Coming toward her, materializing out of the cliff shadows and just possibly her fevered longings, was Titus Thorne. She heard rocks crunching and then heard the soft
shush
of sand under his feet. Her heart began to beat erratically. Her knees went weak.

He stopped a few feet away, looking rumpled and windblown—much too disheveled to be a proper dream.

His expression spoke of strong emotions, tightly reined.

“Titus—” She could scarcely get his name out past the constriction in her throat. “What are you doing here?”

“Prospero is missing,” he said, searching her with his gaze.

“Y-yes. How did you know?” Her voice sounded small and breathy.

“I’ve seen him. In London.”

“London? How on earth did—” The fact that Titus had seen him there quickly collected other facts and knitted them into a chain of deductions. She knew who was responsible before he even said it.

“It’s Bentley. He’s somehow captured Prospero and another dolphin and has them in an exhibit near Covent Garden.”

The blood drained from her head and she swayed. “Peter Bentley. I hadn’t even thought of him.” She put a hand to her head, trying to steady it. “How stupid of me not to think of him …” She looked up at him with a pricking sensation in her eyes. Titus’s expression was grave and his bearing rigid. He was once again the detatched, deliberate scientist who had arrived at Ashton six weeks ago.

“You came all the way from London to tell me this?”

“Yes.” He stiffened visibly.

“Why?”

IT SEEMED LIKE
a small eternity passed before he answered.

“Because Prospero needs help—the sooner the better.” He paused and his shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. “And … I knew you would be worried.”

“I’ve been frantic—we all have.” She took a step toward him but stopped, reading in his restraint that he had more to say, some of which would be difficult to hear. “Dearest Heaven.” She clasped a hand to her mouth. “What has Bentley done to them? Are they hurt?”

“He has them in tanks of a sort and they seem to be miserable. I didn’t see the other dolphin, except at a distance. I’m not certain if it’s one of yours.”

“I think it’s Ariel—it must be. They’re both missing and they’re often together. Once Bentley had one of them, it was probably easy to take the other.” She took another step toward him, clasping her hands tightly. “You didn’t answer—are they hurt?”

He directed her back to the nearby boulder, indicating that she should sit. She did so, bracing for what was to come.

“Prospero has a few cuts and what look like bruises. The tank is fairly small and the water isn’t good. I haven’t a clue what Bentley is feeding them, but at least the place smelled like fish. I don’t want to upset you, Celeste, but I think it’s
important you know the truth about their situation and how urgently they need help.”

She looked down at her tightly clenched hands and then out at the dolphins resting peacefully in the light of the rising moon. Prospero should be out there with them … playing tricks on the youngsters … courting the females in the dark. Ariel should be with little Titan … feeding him … teaching him the ways of his kind and the ways of the sea …

She looked up at Titus, who stood a yard away with his coat back and his hands propped at his waist, looking toward the dolphins. He had come all this way to tell her about Prospero; he must care something about her dolphins. But she thought of the way he had withdrawn from her that night on the beach, not long after they had made beautiful love, and warned herself that this was a man who was not swayed by mere emotions.

“How did you know they were missing?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how did you find them?” she asked, aching to ask more important, but far riskier questions.

He glanced at her, then looked back out over the cove. “I was in London to collect some specimens … I went for a walk … and heard a street crier say something about seeing dolphins.” The words came haltingly at first, as if he were sorting through a much denser memory; condensing it, abstracting it, making it transferable.

“I took one of the boy’s fliers and saw Bentley’s name listed as an ‘impresario.’ I went immediately to the address given and had to stand in line and pay to get inside. Bentley wasn’t there … but I saw the dolphins … and they looked so pathetic …” His voice hardened in a way she had never heard before.

“He has no right to treat intelligent creatures that way. Dolphins belong in an ocean, not a tank. They belong in the sea, where they can swim and leap and play and explore … where they can eat what they want and mate whenever
they please.” He turned and strode back to her. “Dammit, Celeste—they belong with
you
. They need to be here with you, so you can observe them and teach them and learn from them and swim with them—”

“What did you just say?” she said, rising, searching his moon-shadowed form for evidence of what she thought she’d just heard.

“They belong with you—”

“Before that.” She took two steps toward him and stopped herself.

He scowled for a moment.

“I said, it’s not right to keep intelligent creatures …
beings
… locked up as if they’re freaks or curiosities or dumb brutes. Because they’re not dumb … and they’re not just beasts.” He produced a rueful smile and wrestled with something internally before continuing. “I’ve experienced their intelligence firsthand. They’re creatures with brains and courage and feelings … they communicate with language and they make attachments very like ours.”

He searched her face desperately. Was it for confirmation of his conclusions? Understanding? Compassion? Forgiveness?

“An old man recently said to me, ‘parts is parts.’ ” His voice lowered and thickened as new emotion boiled up in him … a starved wonder mingled with newfound conviction. “It took me a long time to see it—I must be the slowest man alive. We’re more alike than different, we living things. We breathe, we eat, we reproduce … we die. A shark’s insides don’t look so very different than a man’s, and there’s a reason for that. We’re made of the very same stuff.”

He gave a humorless laugh and ran his hands back through his hair. “I’ve spent my professional life poking around in other creatures’ guts, without the slightest clue what was in my own.”

The need to touch him was like an ache that began in her core and radiated all through her. He was a man who had changed … a man who spoke as if he had just seen himself
as being a part of the natural world, for the first time in his life.

He was a man who processed everything through his intellect first. The tremendous changes in him had begun in his ideas and concepts and had finally worked their way down to his values and convictions. But there was no evidence, as yet, that those changes had penetrated all the way to his heart.