Betina Krahn (17 page)

“Are you?” he said, his voice now low and resonant.

“Am I what?” she whispered, swaying ever so slightly toward him, her head tilting up.

“Their Virgin?”

She ran her tongue over her reddening lips as her eyes slid to his mouth.

“I’m … not … sure.”

“About which part?” he whispered huskily, lowering his head. “ ‘Their’ or ‘Virgin’?”

For a moment the question hung on the night air around them, unacknowledged. He watched her responding to the heat rising in him, and felt himself equally drawn to her warming. Mere inches and he would feel her soft, pliant lips again. A simple contraction of muscle and his arms would
close around her supple, shapely form. A small relaxation of control and he would again experience the pleasures that had made mincemeat of his self-possession only hours before.

It would be so easy to make that first motion, just a fraction of an inch, just a hint of movement.

So very easy.

Then the sense of his question finally struck her.

“Are you asking if I am a—a—”

She raked him with a look of outraged dignity, and headed straight for the house.

As he watched her stalk down the garden path toward the hulking outline of the house, he wondered what the hell was the matter with him. He rubbed his hands down his face, then shoved them into his trouser pockets. Then, he forced himself to continue around the rest of the oval garden path.

Asking her if she was a … What would possess him to ask her something that idiotic? He paused, glaring at a patch of lilies glowing serenely silver and white in the moonlight. Curiosity, he realized with some alarm. He asked because he wanted to know. Wanted? Hell, he was consumed with the need to know.

A moment later, his intellect justified his desire. Of course he had to know. His entire objection to her work, his view of her work as a coy parody of scholarly writing, and his expectation of being seduced into approving her scheme had all proceeded from his assumptions about her worldly, calculating character. It never occurred to him that she could be anything but a clever, contriving female with a wealth of sexual experience … who obviously had used her own exploits as the basis for her eroticized accounts of dolphin behavior. Her personal sensuality had been there in every blessed line, every titillating phrase of the book.

How could she possibly be a
virgin?

He sat down on a large rock at the turnabout in the path, determined to think this through.

What did he truly know about her? He counted off her
attributes on his fingers. Clever, literate, determined, knowledgeable, resourceful, and unafraid to jump into the blessed ocean at a moment’s notice.

Annoyed, he tried again.

She was bright enough and brazen enough to stand before some of Britain’s finest scientific minds and insist that she—a totally uncredentialed female—had done creditable scientific work, and was competent enough and courageous enough to sail a boat by herself and to dive unassisted in the open ocean.

He gave a huff of disgust and tried a third time.

She was infuriatingly opinionated and self-possessed for a young woman of … what? twenty? twenty-two? … and she made a point of flashing him a peek of her blessed “flukes” whenever possible.

Flukes
. He pressed fingers against the inner corners of his eyes, trying to massage away the memory of her wriggling feet.

The
truth
was that she lived in a decaying old manor house at the seaside with a dotty grandmother who wandered about half dressed and dreamed of resurrecting the culture of a mythological civilization. The truth was, she had lived here for years and there probably wasn’t a human male capable of providing her with unbridled sexual escapades within twenty miles of the place. The truth was she was desperate for money … not for luxuries and fast living, but for bread and eggs and a few new tiles to patch a rotten roof.

The disturbing truth was that she was no longer a faceless huckster in a fish tail or a lurid caricature in a newspaper. In the past two days she had become a living, breathing woman to him, a person with virtues as well as faults, strengths as well as weaknesses. She was a young, intelligent, attractive woman with a passion for the sea, more than her share of pluck, and a fierce and compassionate loyalty to her grandmother.

His tension melted into a much warmer feeling as he
thought of her standing in the moonlight … a loving granddaughter … willing to forfeit his approval and risk his censure to protect the old lady’s dreams.

Whatever deception she had practiced, he now understood, it hadn’t been out of greed or a desire for notoriety. More than likely, it had been done out of an honorable but misguided desire to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps, or the need to hold her crumbling household and dwindling family together.

He stood up, gave the gravel in the path a thoughtful kick, and started back to the house himself, sensing that this bit of revelation had just made his task here all the more difficult. How was he going to tell the truth about her and her “research” without destroying her in the process?

F
ROM A DARKENED WINDOW
in the little-used morning room, the Atlantean Society peered down into the moonlit garden, watching the dim outline of Titus Thorne perched on a rock. In avid silence they concentrated on his figure, trying to make out whether he was rubbing his head or talking to himself. After a time, they saw him leave his seat and amble along the path with his hands jammed into his coat pockets, kicking gravel along the way.

“I tho’t he was gonna kiss her,” Hiram Bass whispered, scowling.

“Should have, the blighter,” the brigadier declared, drawing his chin back in annoyance. “Dashed waste of good moonlight.”

“He’s a gentleman,” Miss Penelope said, beaming approval. “He would naturally approach these matters with a certain gallantry and restraint.”

“ ’e’s a bit of a dry stick, I say,” Anabelle Feather declared, planting a hand on one ample hip. “Ye sure he’s the one, Sophie? I mean, he ain’t put th’ whole puzzle together, yet. Mebee he ain’t our Man o’ Earth.”

“Oh, he’s the one, all right,” Lady Sophia said, watching
Titus Thorne’s troubled form. “Even his name, Titus. A variation of Titan, of course. And you saw the way she looks at him, and the way he looks at her. They’re like dry tinder, awaiting a spark.”

“And when they finally get ’em a spark, wot then?” Bernard Bass asked.

Ned Caldwell elbowed the burly fisherman in the ribs. “Whaddye think, Bernie? You ain’t that old.”

“I believe he is referring to the prophecy, Nedwin,” the reverend put in, turning to Lady Sophia. “And a good question it is, too. What does happen after they’re bonded in eternal bliss?”

One by one, they turned to their “high priestess” as she stood by the window. She sighed and gave a rueful shrug. “The prophecy is regrettably vague on the specifics. But the outcome is perfectly clear. ‘When the Man of Earth and the Woman of Sea join in spiritual and physical union, a new era will be born on the earth. The sacred dolphins will speak and the spirit of Atlantis will be released in the world once more. From their union shall come a transformation that will renew the face of the earth and bring about a new life, giving union between land and sea.’ ”

“We know that Celeste and her professor will lead us into this new era.” The reverend came back to the question at hand. “My only question is, how will they know what to do?”

Miss Penelope gave a “tsk” and wagged her head. “Really, Reverend. The dolphins will speak and tell them what to do. While they are ‘joining’ we summon the dolphins by our Sacred Dolphin Ceremony. By the time they’ve finished ‘joining,’ their ears will be opened and they will understand the dolphins’ speech.”

“They will need help, of course,” Lady Sophia added. “That is our task. To render them whatever counsel and aid we can.”

There was a harumph from the brigadier’s direction.
“Still think we should write the queen. Dashed bad form, not informing one’s superiors.”

There was a chorus of disagreement, since they had long ago decided that issue. “We all agreed t’ let the ol’ gal find out about it like ever’one else.” Hiram spoke for the rest of them. “No sense worryin’ th’ dear ol’ thing.”

MIDMORNING, THE NEXT DAY
, Celeste trudged across the sun-warmed beach with her shoes in one hand and her thin cotton skirt held out of the way in the other. When she reached the steps up the cliff, she paused to brush her feet and don her slippers before starting the climb. She had just spent three long hours pounding a tin sheet, calling her dolphins, and all she had to show for it was a knot in her middle and a faint ringing in her ears.

It had been a relief, at first, that she didn’t have to face Titus Thorne’s smug skepticism at the crack of dawn. She had risen early, given Stephan orders to let the professor awaken by himself, and hurried down to the cove alone, intending to locate Prospero and the others before he appeared. But as the sun climbed steadily higher over a serene and empty cove, fresh worries rose with it.

The time was slipping by. What would happen if she couldn’t produce Prospero and the others in the next few days? How long could she keep Titus Thorne sailing around in the bottom of a boat and pounding a piece of tin? What choice did she have? As long as it took to find her dolphins.

She headed for the house, determined to insist that he join her in the boat for another dolphin-hunting foray. When she entered the kitchen she found Stephan sorting
table linen, and learned that Titus Thorne had last been seen in the library with her grandmother.

Hurrying through the house with visions of still greater disasters looming in her mind, she found her grandmother ensconced cozily at her worktable, studying an inscription on a stone jar with a magnifying lens. She was wearing her Grecian chiton again, complete with a flowing himation draped around her. Celeste halted in the doorway and closed her eyes against the sight. Was there no end to the humiliations she would suffer?

“So there you are,” Lady Sophia said with a note of cheeriness. When she opened her eyes, the old lady was coming toward her. “I heard you calling your beasties. Are they here, yet?”

“Nana, you promised,” she said plaintively, picking up a fold of Lady Sophia’s voluminous wrap and giving it a halfhearted tug.

“Well, that was before the professor learned about the society and my work. What harm can it do to have him see me in my normal clothing, now?” The old lady threaded an arm through Celeste’s and drew her along toward Poseidon’s throne. “Anyway, the professor didn’t seem to mind.”

There he sat … on the throne in the strong morning light, the sheen of his dark hair creating the arresting impression of a halo about his head. His face fairly glowed with intensity as he regarded the object on the black velvet drape spread over his lap. It was a ball-like lattice made of glinting silver rods … Nana’s special puzzle, now assembled into some sort of geometric figure. He was so immersed in studying the skeletal orb that he didn’t notice them at first.

Celeste stared at him. Even in his impeccable Oxford-proper suit, starched collar, and silk tie, he looked as if he belonged in that chair. As she watched, he contemplated the ball from all angles, watching the play of light and shadow on its interior and running his fingertips over the inscriptions that lined the sides of the squared rods. Her gaze fixed on his hands as he rolled the ball deliberately from one palm to the
other. Those large hands and lean, supple fingers that were both skilled and tender … for one breathtaking moment, she recalled the feel of them gliding across the bare skin of—

“Oh, my.” Nana scurried toward him with her hands raised in delight. “Professor, you’ve done it—you’ve assembled our sacred puzzle!” She took it from him and lifted it into the light. Reverently, she turned it over and over, examining it from all sides. “It’s wonderful … magnificent.”

He rose with a dent of apology in his brow. “Well, I’m not certain it’s magnificent, or even that it is the correct configuration. You see, I seem to have one piece too many.” He held out his hand and in his open palm lay one final silver rod. Celeste, like her grandmother, was drawn close to take a look at the unused piece. It bore no markings or symbols at all.

Nana picked it up, looked it over, then gazed analytically into the many-sided geometric figure he had created. “But of course.” She smiled. “It’s perfect, don’t you see? One lone piece. It’s an axiom among students of antiquities that ancient puzzles were often made with extra pieces or pieces missing.” When he looked at her in bewilderment, she gave his arm a pat. “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised; you weren’t trained as an archaeologist, after all.

“The practice was common in old civilizations,” she continued. “The workmen intentionally introduced an imperfection into the object or work they were creating, in deference to the divine and as a caution against human pride. The lesson intended was that we humans must never think ourselves complete unto ourselves. We must never begin to think we or our creations are perfect and without need of celestial guidance and support.” She turned back to the silver orb and seemed to be searching for a proper description. “Although, this seems nearly perfect. It’s a marvel, a regular … a …