He’d barely risen to his knees when another body slammed into his from behind, sending him back to the ground. Searing pain burned through the back of his left shoulder—a knife. Duilio hissed in a tight breath. Gritting his teeth, he rolled away, drawing his revolver as he moved.
The sight of that was enough to forestall his assailant, a burly, dark-haired man in a checked suit. After a split second of indecision, the man bolted out the tavern door and into the night. Duilio groaned and lay back on the floor, wondering how long it would take his heart to stop racing. Damnation, that was close.
There were people bustling past, stepping over him, belatedly trying to escape from danger that had already fled. Fortunately, no one stepped on him.
“You’re bleeding,” Erdano said helpfully from above. He offered Duilio a hand up.
Duilio took Erdano’s hand, grunting when Erdano practically jerked him off the floor. Erdano sometimes forgot how strong he was. Once Duilio was on his feet, Erdano started looking about for his waitress, unconcerned by the aforementioned blood.
Duilio holstered his gun and raised his other hand to his stinging shoulder. It did come away bloody, but he doubted the wound was severe. Had the attack been linked to his recent discussion with Augustus Smithson, tied to his search for the missing pelt? Perhaps he’d gotten too close, as Alessio had at the end.
Then he saw the dagger lying on the floor at his feet. He retrieved it, noting both his blood on the edge of the blade and the sigil stamped on the hilt—the open hand of the Special Police. Not good. He slid it into a pocket.
What had changed that had caused the Special Police to come after him? He doubted it was his selkie blood. They had no way to prove he wasn’t completely human. No, this had to be something else.
They patrolled the area around The City Under the Sea. Could his attacker be involved in that somehow? And if this attack was about that, why now? How did they know he’d made enough progress in the case to become a threat? And if that was it, would they come after Miss Paredes too? He wasn’t sure what to make of the timing. He turned to Erdano. “I suspect you shouldn’t go back to the house with me after all. I’ll send word when it’s safe.”
Which apparently suited Erdano’s plans for the night anyway. He shrugged and wandered off to find his Eva.
* * *
After a nearly silent dinner, Felis had helped get Lady Ferreira settled in bed. Oriana spent the remainder of the evening in her bedroom, stewing over the day’s happenings as she affixed the new ruffle to the blue silk dress. She was baffled by Heriberto’s actions toward her father. What did it mean that her father had paid Heriberto money? And the woman who’d watched Heriberto and then Oriana herself? That was another mystery that she was going to be picking at for some time. At least tomorrow night she might get answers about Isabel’s death from Nela’s mysterious Lady. That would be a leap forward.
And now that the household was mostly quiet, she could take a stab at unraveling the mystery of her employer’s family. In the silence, Oriana walked downstairs and entered a room that had been left off her tour, off-limits to the servants, according to Cardenas. The library had the same elegance as the rest of the house and smelled of ambergris cologne, a hint of lingering muskiness. Well-dusted bookshelves lined the walls. A liquor cabinet held an assortment of bottles, and between the sets of shelves was a niche with a kneeler for prayer.
That niche held her quarry, the Ferreira family’s Bible. Oriana flipped through the first few pages and found the information she sought. Among the births and deaths, there were only two sons listed under Lady Giana Ferreira’s name: Duilio, who would be twenty-nine, and Alessio, who had died before his thirtieth birthday. No Erdano at all. No previous husband. So although this Erdano must exist, he wasn’t recognized by the Church.
Oriana rubbed the back of her neck. Where could she look next?
Then she heard footsteps in the hall. With a startled gasp, she quickly ducked into the shadows on one side of the liquor cabinet, hoping not to be noticed.
Mr. Ferreira strode into the library. He closed the door, trapping her there with him, but she was certain he hadn’t noticed her. He leaned on the table for a moment, one hand on its polished surface. Then he sighed, withdrew a holstered revolver from the waist of his trousers, and laid it on the table. He shrugged off his frock coat, revealing a bloodied shirtsleeve. Oriana clapped one hand over her mouth. He tossed the coat over one of the chairs, then removed a small gun from an ankle holster. Apparently thinking he was alone, he pulled down his braces and unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it off, and laid it atop the coat.
He was a well-made man, athletic and lean. Oriana found herself staring at his back, weighing whether the lack of a dorsal stripe detracted from its attractiveness. No, it doesn’t. There was something fascinating about that span of monochromatic skin.
Her eyes were drawn then to a narrow cut crossing the side and back of his left shoulder. It was still oozing, no doubt the source of the bloodied sleeve. Mr. Ferreira tried to inspect the wound, pulling his arm forward and craning his neck around to do so. Then he turned toward the liquor cabinet and spotted her there. He started and cursed under his breath.
Oriana quickly hid her smile behind her hand. While it hadn’t embarrassed her to be caught nude, as it would have a human woman, it had embarrassed her to be caught at all. Now she had the upper hand. “A knife wound?”
His cool manner restored, he attempted to survey the slash again. “Yes, but not deep.”
As she couldn’t go to a hospital herself, she’d been trained to handle minor injuries. She opened the liquor cabinet, selected the brandy decanter, and carried it over to the table. She picked up his bloodied shirt and, once she’d poured some brandy on it, lifted it to his shoulder. “Who did this?”
He hissed when the fabric touched his skin, but otherwise he didn’t flinch from her familiarity. “I’m not sure.”
“You didn’t see your assailant?”
He gazed at her, his expression calculating. “I did, but I didn’t recognize him.”
She pulled the shirt away. The blade must have scraped along the skin, leaving a shallow cut rather than a puncture, so the wound wouldn’t need stitching. “Do you have something to bind this?”
“I was going to use the shirt,” he said with a short laugh. “And I was planning on drinking the brandy.”
Oriana handed him the sodden garment. “You must have gauze somewhere. Iodine?”
“Open the bottom drawer of the cabinet.”
Oriana returned to the liquor cabinet and, from the bottom drawer, extracted a bottle of iodine in a paperboard box that also held a few rolls of gauze and a pair of sharp-looking scissors. The handles were small, but she could probably use the very tips of her fingers to control them. She took a pair of glasses from an upper shelf and returned to the table.
“Who is Erdano?” she asked as she set everything down.
He picked up the brandy decanter, poured two glasses, and slid one over toward her hand. “What did my mother tell you?”
Oriana ignored the glass for the moment and peered at his wound again. There was a bit of skin that would need to be cut away, but it looked clean otherwise. She removed her mitts and laid them aside. “I gather he’s your half brother. She said he lives at Braga Bay, but only selkies live there.”
He was facing away from her at the moment, so she couldn’t see his expression. “And your deduction is?”
“That Erdano is a selkie,” she said as she negotiated the small handles of the scissors onto her fingertips. “And that your mother must be, as well.”
“Yes,” he said, his head bowing. “If my mother were handed over to the Special Police, it would mean her life.”
“Don’t move, please.” She dabbed at the wound with some of the gauze, and then began to cut away the extra skin. So Mr. Ferreira was half selkie himself. That shed new light on his willingness to harbor a sereia in his household. He could ensure Oriana’s saf
ety here . . . because she could turn the threat of exposure back on him and his mother. “I’m done cutting.” Oriana wiped the scissors on a scrap of gauze. “Your mother’s human in this form,” she pointed out. “They can’t prove she isn’t.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Someone can. Someone has her pelt, which would be ample evidence should that person choose to expose her.” Oriana touched iodine-soaked gauze to his wound, and he flinched. “Are you enjoying that?”
“Of course I am,” she said, not entirely sarcastically. She sponged the wound and then the skin around it. “Was her pelt taken from her?”
He sighed when she laid down the iodine-dampened gauze. “It was stolen three years ago, and since then she’s been trapped in human form. Until we can get it back, she won’t get better.”
“Is her”—Oriana laid clean gauze over the wound while she tried to find an acceptable term—“distraction due to its absence?”
Mr. Ferreira took a sip of his brandy and nodded.
How very sad. No wonder the woman stared out at the water; she couldn’t go back. In human form, Lady Ferreira was as vulnerable to the water as Isabel had been. Oriana had Mr. Ferreira lift his arm so that she could wrap a length of bandage about the shoulder, and then he held that tight while she looked through the box on the table. A moment later the bandage was secured with a safety pin, although if he was a restless sleeper it probably wouldn’t hold.
Mr. Ferreira drew out one of the chairs, sat, and drank down his remaining brandy in one gulp. Facing her, he looked little different from a sereia male. That thought sent warmth throughout her body that had nothing to do with the brandy. She was glad then that she couldn’t blush. She settled across from him and finally took a sip of her own glass. Brandy burned her throat and gills, but Isabel had taught her to stomach it. “Was it this Paolo she’s so afraid of?”
He sat with lips pursed for a moment.
“She said he wants to kill you,” Oriana added. “That he’d taken away your brother and your father. Did he kill them?”
He rubbed a hand across his face in a weary gesture. “About a year and a half ago, Alessio fought a duel over a lover. Despite the fact that the other man fired into the air, Alessio was shot through the heart.” He regarded his now-empty glass, then poured another. “I was abroad. I’d been traveling across the continent and I hadn’t come home for . . . well, a long time. When my father finally learned I was in Paris and sent a telegram about Alessio, I started home. I had already missed Alessio’s funeral, so I didn’t rush. A few days before I arrived, my father died of pneumonia.”
Two deaths so close together had to have been hard on him. He’d come home from his travels to find no brother, no father, and a mother sliding toward . . . not madness exactly, but Lady Ferreira wasn’t whole either.
He rubbed his eyes with one hand as if they stung. Perhaps he was fighting tears. Then he dropped his hand, shook himself, and took another sip of his brandy. “I didn’t know how bad things were. They had all been sparing me the worry, you know. But Alessio and Father fought constantly, about everything. It was just easier for me to be elsewhere. I would give anything to go back and change that.”
“You didn’t know,” she said. “You never know when your family will be taken away from you.” Her own life had taught her that.
He gave her a wry look. “I should have known, Miss Paredes. I should have come home. Instead I was far away, playing police officer when I should have been here, helping search for my mother’s pelt.”
She wished she had some clever words, soothing words, to placate him, but he would likely always blame himself, just as she did over her sister’s death. “So is this Paolo to blame?”
“My cousin Joaquim—who’s an actual police inspector, unlike me—he and I investigated my mother’s claims thoroughly. We’ve never found any evidence to corroborate the claim.”
“Then why does she think he’s responsible?”
Mr. Ferreira sighed heavily. “When the pelt was stolen, the thief also took a strongbox from my father’s desk, a box that contained only my grandfather’s correspondences. You see, Paolo’s my father’s bastard brother. Older than my father, but never acknowledged. My father believed his brother stole the letters to find some evidence of his birth he could use to blackmail us, to obtain a portion of the inheritance he didn’t get. The pelt was taken in case the letters proved useless. But we’ve never found any verification of that. No proof.”
So they had ample motive, but nothing more. “And your mother’s just repeating your father’s claims.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We have looked everywhere, Joaquim and I. We know the pelt hasn’t been destroyed—that would kill her. But each lead we had fizzled away. I personally searched every one of my uncle’s properties. My time with the police forces taught me a great deal about breaking into others’ houses discreetly.”
“You broke in?” The idea of urbane Duilio Ferreira breaking into a house seemed fantastic. He laughed, the gloom about the room fading with the sound. At least her incredulity had gotten a smile out of him. “Forgive me, sir. I didn’t mean to make it sound . . .”
“Implausible?” he supplied. “That’s what makes me valuable to the police. People think I’m useless, but I was instructed by some excellent housebreakers. I’ll have you know I’m very good with a skeleton key.” He nodded once at the end of that statement. “I’ll even stoop to breaking a window if necessary, although I have not attempted the palace.”
Oriana wondered if he might be a touch drunk. Or perhaps he was simply fooling her again. “The palace?”
“To see if he’d hidden the pelt there,” Mr. Ferreira said.
Something clicked in her mind, a recollection of his wary reaction when she’d first mentioned Paolo Silva the day before. “Do you mean Paolo Silva, the prince’s seer? The one who pulled me out of the river?”
“Yes.” He sighed, his dark lashes hiding his eyes. “He’s my father’s bastard brother.”
Why hadn’t he mentioned that when she’d told him of the seer’s “rescue” of her? Of course, many families didn’t speak of their bastards. But Silva’s entry into her story must have made him suspicious. “And what happened to you tonight, Mr. Ferreira?”
“Erdano and I met at a tavern,” he said. “We were set upon as we left.” He reached back, dug something out of the pocket of his frock coat, and laid it on the table. It was a knife bearing the mark of the Special Police. “It could be a coincidence or stolen, but this doesn’t look like a cheap copy. It’s regular issue.” His eyes rose to meet hers. “I think they’re not happy that I’m asking about The City Under the Sea. What I’m not sure about is how they know I’m still asking.”
Oriana glanced down at the blade. A line of his blood stained the edge. “Do they know about you . . . and your mother?”
“Why would we be alive if they did? No, I suspect this is about the investigation.” He regarded her wearily. “I came by earlier to return your sketch, but you were out.”
Oriana licked her lips. Was he accusing her of telling someone about his investigation? Did he think she’d provoked this attack on him? “I . . . I saw my master on the street, and . . .”
He held up one hand. “You don’t have to explain. I just wanted to apologize for not getting you a knife earlier, as I promised I would. I’ll bring one to breakfast.”
The coil that had been twisting in her stomach loosened. She didn’t want him thinking badly of her. “Thank you.”
Mr. Ferreira stood and offered her a hand up. Her mitts lay on the table, but she placed her bare hand in his and let him draw her to her feet. That close, he smelled of ambergris cologne, of blood and brandy, a fascinating combination.
“I should go to bed,” he said, “before the brandy goes to my head.”
He must be exhausted. She felt guilty now for interrogating him. “Of course.”
“Then good night, Miss Paredes.” He gathered up his c
oat and assortment of weapons, including the knife with the sigil of the Special Police. He moved toward the door, but stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. “And if you sleep in the bathtub, you might contrive to rumple the bed anyway. I was already asked by my valet, who had it from the butler, who was told by a maid that you didn’t sleep in your own bed last night. Their assumption being, of course . . .”
“That I was in your bed,” she finished for him, warmth stealing through her body again. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He nodded, and then was gone.
Oriana sat down and stared dazedly after him.
She didn’t know why she was reacting this way to him. She had never given a moment’s thought to any of the men who’d made up Isabel’s court of suitors. Some had been overly familiar, touching her inappropriately or making suggestions, but that had only made her like them less. They simply hadn’t interested her.
She wasn’t certain why this man did. He wasn’t strikingly handsome. He was human—or half-human, she corrected herself. He was also half-selkie. Her people tended to regard selkies as savages, choosing to live in the sea like animals. She’d never met one before, though. Lady Ferreira was certainly not a savage, nor was her son.
But selkies also had a reputation for seductiveness. Oriana licked her lips, wondering if that was the source of her reaction. She had gotten close enough to smell his skin. That scent she’d taken for ambergris cologne must have been a selkie’s musk. Could that be it?
She shook her head to stop her brain’s meandering. She needed to keep herself under control around Mr. Ferreira. She didn’t need any more complications.
CHAPTER 15
THURSDAY, 2 OCTOBER 1902
Duilio had expected to toss and turn for hours, but he’d actually fallen asleep facedown on his bed without even undressing. Marcellin had been livid at Duilio’s disregard for his attire, more so than he’d been over learning that someone had tried to kill his master. Duilio took it with good humor, though, offering the man the chance to pick out his evening wear for the ball that night as a sop.
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