Betina Krahn (11 page)

It was
her
, calling her dolphins again. The sound was drifting in through the open window.

After breakfast in the dining room with an inquisitive Lady Sophia, he found himself ushered through the house and out the kitchen door, his hands filled with food and drink for Celeste. When she was on the trail of a discovery, Lady Sophia had declared, her granddaughter could be forgetful of her health and well-being. Thus, he had to make his way down the stepped cliff, across the soft beach, and along the rocky path to the dock while juggling a covered metal bucket, a cloth-draped basket, and a plate of warm scones.

“Miss Ashton!” he called, from the edge of the dock.

Her head popped out the boathouse door.

“In here!”

When he ducked inside, the far wall swung open and he nearly dropped the things in his hands. He located her several feet below dock level, standing in a sailboat somewhat larger than a dinghy, struggling with the boathouse’s other door. One final heave sent it swinging back, where it banged against the outside wall and set the entire structure vibrating.

“Come on, get in,” she called, ducking under a boom draped with canvas.

“You cannot mean now, this minute,” he said, feeling his chest contract about his lungs as he eyed the modest craft. “Your grandmother sent your breakfast down with me.”

“Good, I’ll eat once we’re under way. Hand it down and climb aboard.”

A moment later, she was balancing against the mast, in the bow of the boat, and reaching up to take the food from him.

“I thought you said you could call the dolphins from here, Miss Ashton.”

“I called again this morning and they still haven’t arrived. If we go and meet them, it will save considerable time.”

“I am in no hurry,” he said.

“Are you not?” She used the dock to pull herself and the boat closer to him. “Well, I am.”

He looked down at the dark algae-filled water beside the boat, then at the weathered boards of the hull and the cracked planks that formed the seats. With paralyzing alarm, he realized that the boat was likely of the same vintage as the boathouse itself, and probably in the same dire need of repair.

“Well?”

With effort, he focused his eyes and found her standing with her hands on her waist, looking up at him with a scowl.

“I—I’m not a sailor,” he managed to get out.

She folded her arms. “Well, I am. This is my methodology, Professor. You publicly questioned the plausibility of
my going out in a boat, alone, to dive and swim with dolphins. I must insist that I be given the chance to prove myself.”

Her chin was up and the gauntlet was down.

He had no choice.

WITH EVERY STEP
down the rickety ladder, Titus expected to hear the crack of the wood giving way, to feel that dark water closing around him. It took a supreme act of will to tear his gaze from that ominous water and lower himself onto a splintery seat in the middle of the boat. He gripped the wood of the seat with one hand and the boom with the other. He tensed, shutting his eyes, feeling the air around him suddenly chill and knowing—dreading—what was coming.

The boat began to rock, and the rocking grew until the craft was heaving and bucking wildly. He was frozen; his hands were so icy he could scarcely feel the ropes or the railing in his grip. There was fierce noise and violent water everywhere, lashing him, stinging his eyes and face as it slammed in giant waves over the boat. Everything was filling with water—he could feel the cold rising around his legs, the treacherous waves pulling at him as he struggled to remain upright—

“You’re not sitting there?” Her voice penetrated that storm of memories. He managed to pry one eye open and looked up. She stood near his shoulder with her hands on her hips … warm and clear-eyed and reassuringly real. “You’re too tall. If I have to tack, you will be knocked into
the water. This is only a catboat … mast in the bow, sailed from the stern. The sail has to have room to swing.” She suggested the motion and range of the sail with a hand. He looked back at the mast, then at the height of the boom in relation to his shoulder, and promptly lowered himself to a seat on the very bottom of the boat.

Maneuvering the boat out into the cove with practiced ease, she took the wind direction and, with a graceful economy of movement, hoisted the triangular sail. When the breeze filled the canvas, she wrapped the lines around a cleat on the rail beside her and settled into the stern seat, propping a foot against the tiller.

The professor sat in the damp bottom of the boat, staring at her unladylike pose and struggling to maintain his own rigid posture. He flinched at every roll of the boat or errant splash of water. As they left the cove and encountered the larger waves of the open sea, his hands grew white on the seat at his back and the rest of him turned a ghastly shade of green.

Sick, she realized with mild surprise. He was prone to seasickness. No wonder he’d been so reluctant to go out with her in the boat. She offered him a bite of a jam-slathered scone and grinned when he closed his eyes and wrenched his face away. She poured herself a mug of tea from the earthen jug in the bucket, and sat back in the stern to enjoy the rhythm of the waves against the bow, the play of the wind in the sail, and the arrogant professor’s seagoing misery.

As the land shrank behind them, she turned the boat to follow the coastline, pointing out familiar houses and landmarks that he refused to turn his head to see. When they reached the place she intended, she struck sail and pulled a pair of mallets from the tack box under the stern seat. As the boat rocked gently, she rapped out her dolphin call on the hull and paused periodically to scan the bobbing waves for a dorsal fin or leaping dolphin.

After an hour of intermittent rapping, the caw of gulls
and the swoop of terns were still the only signs of life outside the boat. There weren’t many signs of life inside the boat, either. She looked at Titus Thorne’s braced form and tightly shut eyes and at the water collecting in the bottom of the boat around his rear quarters and outstretched legs. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on a seat, Professor?”

“I would not.” He opened his eyes to a narrow squint.

“I thought you might feel warmer if you weren’t sitting in a puddle.”

He looked down at the pool he was sitting in, apparently perceiving it for the first time. He scrambled up and grabbed the boom, struggling against the pitching of the boat—which he himself was causing. “Water—we’re taking on water!”

She flung her arms and legs against the sides to steady the craft. “All boats take on some water—we’re in no danger … unless you keep thrashing about. Sit down, Professor, or you’ll tip us over!”

He sat down abruptly on the center seat, still hugging the beam. “How can you go to sea in this—this—wreck?”

“One makes do with what one has, Professor.” She settled back onto her seat. “This is the boat I learned to sail in. My grandfather taught me when I was six or seven, and I’ve taken this boat out by myself since I was thirteen.”

“Six or seven?” he bit out testily. “You expect me to believe you’ve been doing this since you were little more than an infant?”

“I was practically born on the water. My father was an avid sailor—he and my mother were out in a boat and they barely made it back to land in time for my birthing. I’m told they taught me to swim before I could walk.”

“That explains a great deal,” he muttered. “Salt water has a notoriously corrosive effect.”

She studied his foul humor. “I take it you don’t like the water.”

“What is there to like?” he said, avoiding her gaze. “It’s wet, cold, deep, and treacherous. If the Almighty had meant
mankind to spend time sloshing about in water, he’d have given us webbed feet.”

She smiled defiantly. “He gave us
boats
and
sails
instead. Look around you, Professor.” She swept a hand around the glittering, sunlit expanse of water. “Isn’t this much better than being cooped up in a smelly little room somewhere, poking through fish entrails?”

A hint of color appeared in the gray of his countenance. “The air may be a bit better, Miss Ashton, but from what I can see, the
science
certainly is not. There is nothing informative or enlightening about sculling around out here in a leaky old bucket, hoping to catch a glimpse of a fin or a fluke. By your own account, six- and seven-year-olds can do as much.”

Stung, she shot him a glare. “Sailing is hardly child’s play, Professor.”

“Nor is it science, Miss Ashton. Science is meticulous, methodical, painstaking—sometimes backbreaking—work. It isn’t the least bit glamorous or exciting. True research requires slogging through the minute, often messy details of the natural world, and then piecing those bits and details together into a coherent picture.”

“But science is also about pushing back the limits of knowledge, taking risks, trying new things, combining ideas and experiences in fresh, new ways.”

“Is that what your grandfather taught you, Miss Ashton? That science is some grand and romantic quest?”

“My grandfather taught me a good many things, Professor, including open-mindedness … a lesson that
your
grandfather apparently forgot to include.”

Something flickered briefly in his eyes, but after a moment it was gone and he was again his acerbic, professorial self. “There you are wrong, Miss Ashton.” He smiled sardonically. “I never had a grandfather.”

She caught herself staring at him, wondering what lay beneath that casual, caustic tone. Unsettled by her incurably
personal interest in him, she forced her attention back to her dolphin call.

Half an hour passed before he spoke again, surprising her with a question. “What happened to your parents?”

She hesitated, but could think of no reason to refuse to answer. “They were lost on an expedition to Tibet, researching the religious and social customs of remote villages. My father was something of an anthropologist and my mother’s work complemented his. She studied women’s work and child-rearing practices wherever they went: Africa—the Gold Coast, Persia, India, Tibet. Adventure apparently runs in Ashton blood. Or maybe it’s just a contagion that we catch from one another. We’re always going somewhere and investigating something.”

She rose and busied herself unkinking a knot in the sail lines. “What about your family? What do they do?”

“Don’t have one.”

“But you must have had … at least parents.”

“They died. Long ago.” He looked decidedly uncomfortable.

“Well, what did they do before they died?”

“Breathed, I should imagine.” He shifted his glare to the mallets lying on her seat. “Shouldn’t you be calling your finny friends, Miss Ashton?”

Irritated by his dismissal of her question, she turned back to her calls and pounded the side of the boat with considerably more force.

After what seemed a small eternity, she peeled herself upright, rolled her aching shoulders, and stared at the unbroken waves around them. Under the professor’s accusing glare, she was forced to face the unpleasant facts. Her dolphins weren’t anywhere nearby.

She raised the sail again and headed for the cove with a gathering sense of doom. If this kept up, Titus Thorne would be publishing an account of her methods that would make a complete fool out of her and everything she’d been trying to accomplish.

She considered tipping the boat to give him a good drenching, but settled for turning the boat slightly more across the wind, so that the hull bumped as it cut across the waves. Noting his white-knuckled grip on the side and seat as the bow smacked the water again and again, she consoled herself with the thought that his churning stomach and wet clothes were probably quite uncomfortable.

Discomfort was the perfect description for Titus Thorne’s condition, on every possible level. The wool of his trousers had wicked so much water that his entire seat and legs were now sopping wet. His collar had absorbed moisture from the spray and lay drooping, the dampened starch in his shirt was sticking to him beneath his coat, and his hair was virtually standing on end. His limbs were aching with cold and the strain of keeping him upright, and his stomach was doing agonizing somersaults each time they crested a wave and sank again.

But those conditions, vexing as they were, could not obscure the fact that Celeste Ashton did indeed know how to handle a boat. Leaning against the sway, casually weaving her wrist in a spiral to take up the line as if she’d done that small maneuver a thousand times before, facing into the wind as if drawing energy and pleasure from it … she behaved as if she had indeed spent her whole life on the water. Even the way she was dressed—a pale blue skirt and simple peasant blouse, her hair pulled back into a single, utilitarian braid—seemed perfectly suited to seagoing adventures.

Despite his efforts to blunt awareness of this whole, wretched experience, he also had managed to notice that her cheeks were wind-kissed and rosy and that her eyes shone with delight at being on the water and sailing her own small boat. She belonged here. The insight disturbed him. Her claim of sailing and being out on the water alone was absolutely
true
.