“Sir?” a voice asked from the hallway, dragging Duilio’s attention away from the girl. João, the young boatman who stayed down on the quay with the family’s boats, stood there, his sheepish expression evident in the light of the lamp he carried. “She came onto the yacht looking for you, sir. I thought it best to bring her here to the house. I . . . I thought she would knock, but . . .”
“It’s fine, João.” Duilio knew better than to expect polite behavior from this girl. Selkies didn’t have the same manners as humans. She stood gazing up at the gaslight distrustfully. “Give me a few minutes,” Duilio said, “and then you can escort her back.”
“Yes, sir.” The young man nodded quickly and withdrew into the hallway, pulling the bedroom door shut as he went.
Duilio wished João hadn’t closed the door. The girl wouldn’t be concerned for her reputation, but Duilio would prefer that the servants not get the wrong idea. He plucked his velvet dressing gown off the end of his bed, drew it on over his nightshirt, and belted it. Then he returned to the girl’s side, leaning closer to get her attention. “What did you need to see me about?”
“Oh. There was a woman in the water,” she said, watching the flickering gaslight as if concerned the flames might suddenly jump out of the fixture.
A woman in the water? That had to be what his gift had been yammering on about. “Where?”
The girl glanced at him for the first time. Her eyes slid toward his velvet dressing gown, her brows drawing together. “What is that?”
She’d probably spent most of her life in the sea and would have little familiarity with human luxuries. Duilio held out his arm so the girl could touch his sleeve. “It’s called velvet.”
She laid a tentative hand on his arm. The corners of her lips lifted as she ran her hand over the fabric’s nap. Her warm brown eyes were, in the gaslight’s glow, quite lovely. “Pretty. Can I have it?”
In addition to their ability to change form, most selkies purportedly had magical abilities in the area of seduction—selkie charm, it was often called. Duilio doubted this selkie was more than eighteen; young in human terms, but likely experienced in many things human girls of that age would not be. He patted her hand in his best fatherly manner. “What is your name?”
“Aga.” Her eyes flicked toward the bed and then up to meet his. “Tigana said I could stay with you. You could give me the velvet.”
God help me. Duilio pressed his lips together, weighing his response. Tigana, the queen of Erdano’s harem, had control of the harem’s many females. It wasn’t the first time she’d sent him a girl, apparently believing he must be in dire need of a woman. Duilio had never been sure of the rules of harem politics and, not wanting to cause friction between Erdano and his queen, he’d always refused the gift. Well, save for the first time. Since then he’d tried to handle it diplomatically.
“Can you tell me what you saw, Aga?” he asked, reminding the girl of the reason she’d come. “Where was the woman?”
The girl’s mouth drew down in a moue. “Over the rotting houses.”
The rotting houses were what the selkies called The City Under the Sea. The houses themselves were all new, even the oldest not showing much wear from being underwater yet. All the same, the selkies had noticed a scent of rot in the water about them—a detail that Duilio feared was linked to several reports of missing servants. They had only made a connection between those missing servants and the work of art a few weeks ago, when Lady Pereira de Santos had reported two of her maids missing only a day after the replica of her house had been mentioned in the newspapers. They’d wondered if their bodies might be hidden within those houses. Aga’s sighting firmly linked Duilio’s sense of foreboding to The City Under the Sea, but he was still missing some vital clue. “Was she swimming?”
Aga shrugged fluidly. “Yes, but then she was in the boat.”
Duilio felt his brows drawing together. When had a boat entered the conversation? “How late was this, Aga? Had the sun set?”
She sighed as if vexed by all his questions. “Only a little while ago. I swam to the mouth and then to the big boat . . .”
The “big boat” would be the Ferreira family’s yacht, moored out past the Bicalho Quay. “I see.”
“. . . and then I walked here with the man.”
Duilio chewed his lower lip as he calculated. Aga had swum out to the mouth of the Douro, almost three miles against the current, back to the yacht, and then she’d walked nearly a mile up the steep streets of the Golden City. How long had that taken her? Perhaps two hours? Three? “So, was it before the moon rose?”
“Yes.” Her tone suggested he might be dense.
Women did not swim in the river in the middle of the night. Most human women never learned to swim at all. “Did you see the woman, Aga? What did she look like?”
The girl stepped closer and laid graceful hands on his velvet-covered chest. She didn’t quite reach his chin. “She wore black. And white.”
His gift told him that this conversation was important, that he needed to know something this girl was telling him . . . or not telling him. He wasn’t sure what questions he needed to ask. “Were you close?” he pressed. “Did you see her face?”
Aga rubbed her cheek against his chest. “No. Wrong way.”
He wished Tigana hadn’t been in a mood to be generous. He didn’t need this sort of distraction now. Duilio set his hands on the girl’s shoulders, stepped back, and tried again. “This is important, Aga. Can you tell me anything else? Did she fall out of the boat?”
“No, it was waiting when she came up,” Aga said, her shoulders slumping.
Came up? From the houses? Why would someone come up from the houses? If they wanted a better look at them, they could ride out to the site on one of the submersible boats that sold tickets to curious folk who wished to see the work of art. He’d even gone to look at them himself. And at night it was too dark to see them anyway.
“You don’t want me?” Aga’s hands began to roam his chest, drawing Duilio’s wandering mind very firmly back to the present.
Oh, what a vexing question. His body had clearly noted the girl’s lithe form. Heaven knew she was attractive enough, and once he got her out of Erdano’s garments, the disturbing scent of male selkie would be greatly diminished. But she was part of Erdano’s harem . . . and there was a servant outside in the hall, waiting. Both factors dampened any ardor she aroused in him. “He’s my brother,” he told her. “I want to keep on his good side.”
“Why?” She sighed again, sounding petulant. “Tigana said . . .”
He held her at a distance. “All the same.”
“They said you were nice,” she added plaintively.
Oh, good Lord. The only time he’d gotten involved with any of the women from Erdano’s harem had been when he was fifteen. That was half a lifetime ago, and evidently they still talked about him being “nice.” Well, it could be worse. “I’m sorry, Aga, but I need to sleep.”
That only made him sound like an old man.
Her lower lip thrust out in a pout. “What do I do?”
“There’s a room down the hall where Erdano sleeps when he’s here. You can stay there for the rest of the night or go back to the boat if you wish.”
Her face took on a calculating look. “Is the handsome man from the boat still here?”
Duilio resisted the urge to laugh at her eager tone. Poor João. “I believe so.”