Betina Krahn by The Mermaid Read Free Book Online Page B

again, staring at her … embarrassingly aware of every part of his body in proximity to every part of hers … feeling a peculiar warming in his skin and an alarming itch crawling up his inner thighs.
    Just thinking about it, he was starting to feel warm and slightly irritable.
    Halting in his tracks, he glanced desperately around and found a cab. Settling back in the worn leather seat, he gripped his knees and took several deep, calming breaths. Never mind how he’d got into this mess—how the hell was he going to get out of it? What was he going to do, stuck for God knew how long—perhaps a whole fortnight—in the seaside lair of the determined and potentially treacherous Miss Ashton?
    He took several deep breaths and soon felt calm and reason returning.
    He was going to prove her wrong; that was what. He was going to demand that she produce her damnable dolphins and make them do a few tricks. When she failed to do so, he would quickly decamp, hie himself back to Oxford, and write a carefully reasoned and utterly lethal assessment of her lunatic ideas. Before he was through, she would rue the dayshe ever stuck her appallingly provocative nose into the hallowed halls of science!
    That settled, he relaxed back against the seat and looked out the cab window just as they passed a sign advertising seaside cottages and holidays in Brighton.
    Seaside. Her last words to him came rushing back to him, and he found himself instantly back on the edges of his nerves.
    “Something to swim in, my arse,” he muttered. “I’m not going anywhere near the damned water.”

Three

    ASHTON HOUSE WAS an old stone manor house built around the ruins of a medieval keep. It had been built atop an ancient stone cairn that was revered by the early people who populated the south of England. It was the air of mysterious history about the place that led Sir Martin Ashton—archaeologist and incurable romantic—to purchase that particular property more than twenty years earlier. But it was what lay just beyond the house that made Sir Martin and his family come to love their home.
    To the rear of the sprawling manor, below the rocky cliff that nature had fashioned into a set of broad steps, was a sheltered cove containing a beautiful, sandy beach. And crashing onto the barrier rocks that protected the cove and lapping at the beach was the sea itself.
    Broad and mesmerizingly blue … constantly in motion … capricious, secretive, and alluring … the sea was a mystery far deeper than any pile of stones mere humans could erect. It was an unimaginable force with an entitylike will that shaped every bit of land it touched, pounding and tearing away the rock and then gently carrying the pieces back to shore. It filled the air with the taste of salt and the lulling sounds of breaking waves. It colored the daylight, moderated the weather, directed the morning andevening breezes, and nourished a unique community of sea birds, tidal creatures, and humans who lived by its changeable edge. And it had cast a spell on the mind and heart of the youngest Ashton the first time she set eyes on it.
    That bit of magic was renewed each time Celeste stood watching from the top of the cliffs, the widow’s walk on the roof, or the flower garden at the side of the house. This morning, she stood with a basket of freshly gathered flowers, watching the clouds out at sea, drifting over the water’s surface. From here, the water looked serene and the clouds resembled wisps of cotton wool. On each side of the cove, green fields ran to the very edge of the cliffs, and the rocky escarpments below them bore striations of brown, gray, and chalky white. Every texture, every interplay of color, light, and surface, made her feel as if this were the one place on earth that she belonged.
    With a sigh, she started for the front doors. She still had a number of things to do before the professor arrived that noon. Halfway to the entrance, she looked up at the house and slowed, seeing