Betina Krahn (34 page)

Sir Mercer dragged out his pipe and clamped it between his teeth, offering sagely: “Not much you
can
do with a boy who fails a course in ‘beautiful mermaids.’ ”

H
E HAD THOUGHT
it would be easier here in Oxford, back in his own element, back in his own Spartan bed, back in the hallowed stone walls that had always seemed to resonate reason, and integrity, and truth. He had left London hoping to immerse himself in his work and his sane and sensible life and recover his sense of self and his sense of truth. But the floor of Titus’s living quarters was littered with crumpled paper and the bed was piled with rumpled sheets. He had scarcely written a coherent page since he arrived back at Oxford and he was still barely sleeping at night. If only he didn’t have this cursed summary of his experiences at Ashton House to write, he could put all of this nonsense behind him and return to normal.

For more than two weeks, he had grappled with the problem of how to unpack his volatile memories, one thought, one sentence at a time. He had tried letting impressions re-form briefly in his mind, then quickly slamming the lid on them again, before any of the emotions attached to them could visit themselves upon him. But it was a tedious
process that required far too much self-control and quickly exhausted him.

Worse still, he was once again plagued by those “fish” dreams he dreaded so. For the last two nights he had awakened in a cold sweat to the sound of sobbing, and was relieved to find that it was not his own. It was that fish with the glorious tail; sometimes with legs, sometimes without. Again and again he wrestled it onto his laboratory table and was confounded by its sad, accusing eyes and by his own reluctance to pick up a scalpel and do what had to be done. Increasingly, he found himself moved to comfort the creature, and last night he went so far as to take the damnable thing into his arms to rock it and pet its drooping fins and sadly lackluster scales.

When he reached his laboratory on the ground level of the college quad, he opened the narrow ceiling-level windows to air the dankness and disperse the preservative alcohol smell, and then cleared a space on his worktable, in the midst of the jars and beakers and drying racks and wax-filled dissection pans. He pulled the report he was trying to write from his briefcase and sat down to look it over. He shook his head at the huge blanks he had left under every topic heading. His gaze was gradually drawn to the words themselves.

He had really done such things? Gone to sea in a boat? Learned to swim? Explored life at the bottom of a lagoon? Swam with dolphins?

It didn’t seem possible, except for the fact that he had a wealth of powerful, compelling memories of such things. That was all they were, he admonished himself yet again—
memories
. It had been a brief and absorbing encounter with the power of primal human urges and the seductive lure of emotionalism. For a few short days he had been transformed into someone else.

But the truth of it was that who he had been, who he was now, didn’t matter. What he had to do was write the truth about her and her dolphins. And just how did he do that?

Again and again Celeste’s words to him in the garden
came back to haunt him: “The truth wears many faces, Professor.” Now he saw how accurate an observation that was. In this situation alone, it wore at least three faces: the truth of what he personally had observed … the ultimate, objective “scientific” truth of her work with dolphins … and the “truth” that would be assigned to her work through his writings.

But, when he reached this point, he realized that his troubles with
Truth
had only just begun.

Truth, he was beginning to see, was an alarmingly subjective commodity, even in the supposedly objective world of science. The powers of the Royal Zoological Society viewed her work and the outcome of his observations through a set of assumptions and attitudes that had nothing whatsoever to do with science or logic. And they had made it clear that their assumptions and attitudes must prevail. In his conversation with them at the club, even the barest facts of his experiences had been seen as subversive to the established order.

If he wrote his real opinion of her work—that she had done substantial and even potentially groundbreaking work—he would pay a price for it. The old boys at the Athenaeum Club had made it clear that his credibility and career were on the line as well as hers. He had always prided himself in being a rational and devoted servant of scientific truth. How could he tell their twisted and contorted “truth” and still be true to his own intellect and reason, his ethics, his heart?

It was at this point that he always remembered that group of sexagenarians on the beach, wearing bedsheets and waving torches, singing and swaying and blowing on shells. Then he remembered that startling dolphin ballet and being asked to interpret dolphin speech because he had just been anointed the “new Adam” because he had made love to a “sacred virgin.”

It was at this point that he began to distrust his own senses and judgment and sanity.

And it was at this point that he began to feel a terrifying emptiness that reached all the way down to his bones.

S
UNDAY MORNING
C
ELESTE
and Lady Sophia invited Bentley to join them for services at the village church in Cardamon. He declined, saying he was not a religious man, but he insisted on escorting them. It would do him good, he said, to visit the local pub and see what was happening in the London newspapers.

That afternoon, Celeste took Bentley for his first swim with dolphins. He seemed most enthusiastic at first, wading straight into the water and scanning the surface for signs of dorsal fins. Celeste called the dolphins with her whistle and two or three arrived and swam around and around. She managed to corral the female, Echo, to let Bentley meet and investigate her. He stroked and touched her, brushing her sensitive eye with his hand, causing her to yelp and shoot off toward the center of the cove.

“You have to be very careful of their eyes, Peter,” Celeste told him, looking after the dolphin. “They’re very sensitive.”

“I’ll remember. I’m terribly sorry—I certainly didn’t mean to hurt her.” He was the very picture of contrition.

She led him into deeper water and gave him a pair of goggles to let him see how they swam beneath the surface. Then she whistled again and four or five dolphins answered her call to meet Bentley. As he began to touch and explore them, Celeste felt Ariel nudging her, bidding for attention, and turned to pet her. A shriek and sudden violent thrashing broke out behind her, and she whirled in time to see the young male named Charlie thrashing and struggling to get away from Bentley, who had his fingers over Charlie’s blowhole.

It was as if a lightning bolt went through the other dolphins; they raced to rescue Charlie, churning the water vigorously, obscuring his escape with foam and spray. Bentley
lurched toward Celeste, and she rushed to grab his arm and pull him out of the way.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“All I did was touch the top of its head,” he said with great dismay. “It let out a howl and started to thrash.”

“They’re extremely sensitive about their blowholes,” she said, with an anxious look out at the cove. “I’m sorry … I thought I had warned you.”

It took some time to coax the dolphins back into the shallows, and this time Prospero came with them. When he was introduced to Bentley, he spat a stream of water in Bentley’s face. Celeste laughed. Bentley didn’t. Not even after Celeste chided Prospero and made him come and offer a flipper in peace.

She tried to get baby Titan to come and meet Bentley, but Ariel always intervened and sent Titan sulking away. Celeste frowned. That wasn’t like Ariel. When she finally managed to get Titan alone to introduce him to Bentley, Prospero leaped and fell with a smack just behind Bentley, sending a wall of water over the American that knocked him facedown into the water. He came up coughing and furiously wiping his face.

“Damned beast—” he growled, then caught sight of Celeste’s shock and checked his reaction. “Sorry. The thing just caught me unawares.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Prospero made it his mission to catch Bentley off guard again and again, whenever, however possible. He began to bump Bentley over, to surprise him by leaping and crashing into the water next to him, and to swim at him at full ramming speed and turn aside only at the last second.

Celeste watched in distress as Prospero and the others not only rejected Bentley’s overtures, but harassed him until he declared through clenched teeth that he had “learned” quite enough for one day and stalked from the water.

That evening, Celeste kept going over and over the afternoon’s events in her mind. She had never seen her dolphins
react to anyone the way they reacted to Peter Bentley. Again and again, she recalled her glimpse of Bentley ‘s hand by Charlie’s blowhole. It bothered her because she had brushed and even grabbed that sensitive region on numerous dolphins and had never gotten such a pained and frantic reaction. Had Bentley actually stuck his fingers into Charlie’s blowhole and interfered with his breathing? Surely he knew better.

Nana was quieter than usual that evening and retired early, suggesting Celeste do the same. But Celeste chose instead to do some needlework in the drawing room and keep their guest company for a while longer. Nana scowled, but withdrew. After a few moments, Bentley deposited his cup on the coffee tray and transferred to the settee beside her.

“I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to meet your dolphins and be in the water with them today.”

She lowered her gaze, struck by the disparity between his annoyance that afternoon and his professed pleasure tonight. But then, she chided herself, he truly might have enjoyed
some
of what they had done with the dolphins.

“Since this afternoon, I have thought of little besides those graceful and noble creatures of the sea. I share your great admiration for them and your desire to present them to the world. I have given it some thought, my dear Celeste, and I’ve just had the most splendid idea.”

He smiled warmly at her surprise and plucked her hand from her lap to hold reverently in his. As he spoke he began to drop kisses on her fingers.

“The greatest barrier to understanding our beautiful sea creatures, my dearest, is simply distance.” He paused and raised to her a gaze filled with heated admiration. “People cannot remove to the seacoast to encounter sea creatures … but they would be more than willing to see and learn if the creatures were brought to them.”

She frowned, mulling that over, and he tightened his grip on her fingers and used them to draw her closer.

“I can see it so clearly, Celeste,” he said, pressing a passionate
kiss on the inside of her wrist and edging closer to her on the settee. “An educational exhibit. A chance for people to encounter and experience dolphins and possibly other sea creatures.” He pressed the palm of her hand against his chest so that she could feel his heart pounding. She looked up into his handsome blue eyes and saw there a light she recognized. Desire. It rattled her so that she had difficulty concentrating on his next words.

“We could do it, Celeste. You and I. We could build a place—say, in London—to house and exhibit Prospero and the others. You could show people the tricks they can do and talk to them about dolphins. If you’d like, you could even climb in the water with them … show people what they can do.”

She realized his arm was around her when he began pulling her against him. The heat of his chest beneath her hand and his moist breath along her cheek stirred in her the memory of another’s heat, another’s passion. Titus. Peter Bentley’s loving seemed strangely cool and mechanical by comparison.

“I shall never forget the spectacle of you being borne up out of the water on the dolphin’s head.” He closed his eyes as if to hold and savor that image, then opened them to look down at her with passion rising red under his fair skin. “I want everyone to see you like that. And everyone who comes will be touched by the magic of you and your dolphins, as I have been. You have touched me deeply, sweet Celeste … deeply.” His mouth closed over hers.

She was suddenly pressed back against the arm of the settee with nowhere to retreat. He pressed himself against her and kissed her with extravagant passion, taking her stunned lack of response for permission. He slid his hands feverishly over her sides and waist as she braced her arms between them, against his chest. She was so busy thinking about whether she should put a stop to his rampant adoration, that she scarcely gave a thought to what he was saying.

“Will you join me?” he murmured earnestly. “Will you help me to share our mutual love with the world?”

“Peter … I … I really don’t know … I need time …”

He paused and searched her, his breath hot, his body insistent against hers.

“Then you shall have it, sweet Celeste,” he said with a husky, sensual laugh that defused the tension. “But be warned. I am determined to win you over completely.”

He released her with a seductive smile, helped her extinguish the lamps, and escorted her up the steps, where Nana stepped out into the hall and bumped into them on the way to the kitchen for a warm posset.

Celeste had the strangest feeling that Nana had purposely waited for the moment when they would arrive at the top of the stairs, to go for her sleeping aid. The dark look Nana gave her lingered in her thoughts as she lay in her bed some time later. Her meaning was as plain as if she spoke it aloud: Celeste had no business accepting P. T. Bentley’s attentions … not when she was already joined to the society’s Man of Earth.

Joined, Celeste thought, with tears welling. How could that be so, when she’d never felt so alone in her life?

Bentley was all attentiveness and blue-eyed smiles the next morning, and when Celeste suggested taking the boat out he readily agreed. They had a lovely morning of sail and sea, of watching her dolphins play in the open water. Twice Bentley tried to broach the idea of what he now called “our collaboration,” and twice she spotted something—a fishing pelican and then a cliff filled with nesting terns—to divert the conversation. She could see him struggling with his disappointment and felt a twinge of guilt at her reluctance to discuss his ideas. But she couldn’t help being a little annoyed by his persistence in the matter, when she had already indicated she was undecided about her work and her future plans.