Free Betina Krahn by The Mermaid Page A

theater.”
    “For what? Surely, by then, the creature must be
dead.”
    “Of course it’s dead.” He adopted a professional air. “I perform a dissection and analyze the contents of the creature’s digestive tract. Whatever the fish has eaten in the last six to eight hours is evident. Most large fish swallow their prey whole … with the notorious exception of the shark, which will also bite and tear away pieces of much larger prey. But even then, one can still usually identify bits and pieces as belonging to …”
    That was it? Celeste sat stunned, listening to him recount his gruesome technique.
That
was how he researched the feeding habits of fish? He dissected their stomachs and examined the debris?
    “Let me see if I have this straight,” she interrupted, sliding to the edge of her chair. “You claim to be an authority on the feeding habits of fish, but you don’t watch them feeding in the wild … never see them capture or eat their prey … and never have more than one or two fish at a time to study?” Her voice rose along with her indignation. “You simply go down to the London docks, buy the odd carcass, cart it off, and cut it open to see what’s inside?” She paused, struggling to contain her outrage. “A fishmonger could do as much!”
    He reddened. “It is hardly that
simple
, Miss Ashton.”
    “It is hardly more complex, Professor,” she countered, gripping the edges of the table and rising. “And it is hardly science!”
    He shoved his chair back and sprang up. “It is certainly better science than if I claimed I swam about in the ocean, leering at animals, then concocted tawdry stories about their sexual habits.” He raised his chin. “At least when I cut open a fish, there is no question about what it has ingested. It’s there or it isn’t. I deal in pure, undeniable fact, not dubious tales or lurid conjectures.”
    “That’s what you think, is it? That I’ve just made it all up?”
    “I believe that is what I’m here to determine.”
    “So, you’ll decide if I am a liar and a charlatan, or just some poor deluded little ninny who wouldn’t know a dolphin mating if she saw one!”
    His voice lowered so that it set her fingertips vibrating.
    “Oh, I don’t doubt that you’d know a
mating
if you saw one.”
    She looked straight into his sea-green eyes and was suddenly engulfed in treacherous waters. Undertow. It took a moment for her to catch his meaning.
    That
again … the intimation that she knew more about such things than a young woman should know.
    “The real question here, sir, is: will
you
know one when
you
see it?”
    He straightened, a vein suddenly visible in his temple, and she rounded the head of the table to confront him.
    “And there is no better time to find out than now. Come with me.”
    “What? Now?” He gestured to the lowering light coming from the window. “It’s practically night.”
    “Dolphins don’t sleep … at least not like we do. It’s in my book, remember?” She headed for the door.
    Appealing to Lady Sophia with an incredulous look, he received only a beatific smile in response. He gave his vest a violent jerk downward and followed Celeste.
    The old lady sat for a moment, her eyes glowing as she studied the doorway where her granddaughter and the professor had disappeared. Then she clasped her hands together and broke into a laugh.
    “She has needed someone for so long … And such magnetism. Such dynamic opposition. Together, they positively radiate sacred energy!” Her gaze darted over unseen possibilities as she considered what to do, then gradually narrowed upon a course of action. Moments later, she reached for her wine and finished it with a flourish.
    If things went as she hoped, soon dolphins might not be the only things “mating” around here.

Four

    CELESTE LED HIM through the house, through a cavernous stone kitchen—where she paused to thank a rotund, dark-eyed woman for dinner—and then along a worn gravel path that