The girl grinned. “Very well, miss. I’ll just leave these on the hooks in the dressing room. Mr. Cardenas said I should show you around the house later this evening, after the supper service. Mrs. Cardoza usually does that, but she’s got her hands full with dinner tonight since two of the girls are visiting family out in Madalena. Mr. Cardenas hoped you wouldn’t mind.”
It would probably be easier to get information out of this open-faced girl than out of a housekeeper anyway, so Oriana didn’t argue what some others might consider a slight to her consequence. Instead she sent the girl on her way.
She stripped off her silk mitts and jacket and left them lying over the curled arm of the settee. Determined not to be wasteful, she forced herself to sit down and eat a couple of the tasty sandwiches the cook had provided for her, enough to take away the edge of her hunger. And then deciding that everything left on the tray would be acceptable cold, she returned to the bathing room to consider that lovely oversized tub.
CHAPTER 10
Humming with the sound of moving water, the pipes on the second floor told Duilio his mother’s new companion had drawn a bath, which served his purposes well. He had questions that needed answering, and catching her in her bath would give him the leverage he needed. She wouldn’t be able to deny who she was.
It might be improper, but it was expedient. He could apologize later.
But he had to smooth his butler’s injured consequence first. “This has nothing to do with you, Cardenas. I merely suspect she would prefer to hold both copies.”
Cardenas wasn’t happy about surrendering one of his precious keys. “And if I should need to get in there to inspect the maids’ work, sir?”
“It’s only for a short time, Cardenas,” Duilio said soothingly. “I’ll give it two weeks. If she’s comfortable with the arrangement by then, I’ll ask her to return the key to you.”
“As you wish, Mr. Ferreira.” Cardenas frowned as he worked the brass key off his ring.
Duilio couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t the loss of a key that bothered the man, but the implied loss of control. Cardenas didn’t want to give up the ability to check on the other servants in the household, particularly not after the incident with the footman who’d robbed them. Fortunately, the butler wasn’t the sort to abuse his power. Duilio slipped the key inside his coat pocket, where it clinked against the master copy he already held. “Thank you, Cardenas.”
The perturbed butler took his leave and headed down the stairs to the first floor.
Duilio chewed on his lower lip. Am I actually going to do this? He took a deep breath and knocked on the bedroom door. When he got no response, he listened carefully and then let himself in.
It was Alessio’s old room—too masculine for a lady’s companion, perhaps, but there hadn’t been time to make changes. It had a private bath, as did none of the other empty rooms; if he was right about her, she would appreciate that.
Duilio strode across the rug and pressed one ear against the door to the bathing room, but didn’t hear any movement within. He unlocked the bathroom door, and, once inside, gazed down into the oversized porcelain tub.
Miss Paredes lay under the surface of the water, her eyes closed. The jangling of the keys must have been muffled by the water, because she apparently hadn’t heard him enter.
Duilio stared down at her, mesmerized. A flush of heat surged through his body. She was . . . stunning.
He’d admired her figure before, but unclothed she was as spectacular as he’d imagined. Her breasts with their mauve-tipped nipples were rounded but not overlarge. Her waist didn’t owe its trimness to corsetry, and her hips flared down to nicely curved thighs. His hands practically itched to touch her. He’d never been attracted to small, delicate females. Oriana Paredes was the sort of woman he preferred to bed—tall and strong and able to keep up with him in . . .
Oh, good Lord! What was he thinking? She was employed in his household. He turned partially away from her, mentally clamping down on his desire.
He was grateful she seemed unaware of his presence, that she hadn’t opened her eyes to catch him gaping at her like a schoolboy in a whorehouse. He must be flushed all the way to his hairline. He peeked at her again out of the corner of one eye, firmly reminding himself he was purportedly a gentleman.
Her hair spread about her head, the reddish tinge transmuted to a burgundy glow. Her skin looked different in the water as well, the paleness of her face becoming an opal-like iridescence. Below her breasts, her skin changed to a shimmering silver, a perfect imitation of scales running all the way down to her toes—the reason sailors claimed sereia had fish tails.
Her hands moved slowly through the water, no longer obscured by an old woman’s mitts. Translucent webbing showed between her fingers, pearly skin stretching between them up to the last knuckle, so thin he might be able to see through it in the light.
The expression on her face reminded him of paintings of the saints enraptured in the presence of God. She was singing to herself, the notes muted by the water. On each side of her neck, pink-edged gills vibrated with the sound.
But that song could entrap him if she raised her head above the surface. It was said men would throw themselves into the sea on hearing it. And while he wouldn’t mind staring at that silver-gilded body for the rest of the afternoon, the last thing he needed was to be enslaved to her, so he discreetly tapped on the side of the tub with one booted foot.
Still underwater, her dark eyes opened wide.
Miss Paredes sat up in a rush, setting the water sloshing about. She scooted back against the side of the tub and pressed her hands over her neck to hide her gills. That forced her breasts together, unfortunately obscuring his view of them at the same time. “I locked the door,” she said, her shaky voice betraying alarm. “How did you get in here?”
Duilio spotted a towel on the table near the vanity stand and retrieved it. He was not going to blush. “I have the keys, of course.”
Selkies rarely showed any discomfiture over nudity. That French book he’d once read, if he recalled correctly, suggested the sereia shared that view. Her choice of covering her gills—rather than anything else—reinforced the notion. Even so, it would be ungentlemanly to stare at her bared body, no matter how lovely. He held out the towel, resolutely reminding himself to keep his eyes on her face.
“What are you doing in here?” She rose from the water, giving him a glimpse of golden stippling along the outside of her thighs. He couldn’t see her dorsal stripe, supposedly one of a sereia’s best features, from that angle. She snatched the towel from his hand and wrapped it about her body, keeping her back turned away from him the whole time. Then she fixed him with a hard gaze, raising her brows to prompt an answer to her question.
Duilio leaned back against the vanity stand and crossed one ankle over the other, trying to present a nonchalant facade. “I suspected you were a sereia,” he said in a mild tone. “I needed to be sure.”
“You could have asked,” she said with asperity.
Her teeth barely showed when she spoke. Even though they looked like a human’s teeth, he’d heard they were razor sharp. He had the feeling she was considering biting him, so he kept his distance. “You would have lied.”
She twisted her dripping hair into a knot with one webbed hand. The movement gave him a better view of a yellowish discoloration encircling her forearms and wrists, faded bruises that might have come from being bound. “It is unacceptable to take advantage of someone in your employ, sir,” she said primly.
He felt his cheeks burn again, but tried to ignore it. “I haven’t taken advantage of you,” he said, “nor do I have any intention of doing so. But we need to talk, and we can speak privately here without being interrupted.”
“And I expected that I could bathe privately here, sir,” she snapped. “Without being interrupted.”
Duilio found himself ad
miring her nerve. It made him like her better. He doubted he would have maintained such composure if their positions were reversed. “If you’re caught here,” he began, “the prince will have you imprisoned or killed.”
“I am aware of that,” she said, sounding as if she thought him dense.
He inclined his head. It had been a waste of his breath to say it. “But in this household, you are quite safe.”
One brow rose. “Even from you?”
“As I said, I needed to be sure. This is not a habit.”
She tucked the towel more firmly about herself. “How did you know?”
“I’ve watched you for some time.” He smiled, feeling oddly pleased that he was finally getting to tell someone how he’d figured out her secret. “Your eyes are large, dark, as one would need to see in deep water. You always seem to hide your hands. I’ve never seen you wear gloves, always mitts.”
“I see.” Miss Paredes regarded him warily. “So, what do you want of me?”
“You were pulled out of the river on the night of the twenty-fifth. What happened?”
• • •
Oriana stared at Mr. Ferreira, taken aback. How does he know about that night?
“Miss Paredes?” he prompted.
And how could she answer his question? She couldn’t tell him the truth. . . .
Then again, she had nothing to lose, did she? He already knew she was a sereia. Could she trust this man? He wore a different face now, not the one she’d seen the day before. He’d unnerved her at first, but ultimately she’d taken him for a fop, silly and desperate for approval, prattling on about a stupid coat. The man standing in front of her had direct, intelligent eyes—sharp eyes that she suspected many in the upper levels of society wouldn’t appreciate if they realized his frivolous manner hid them.
He’d been hunting her all along, she realized. Mr. Ferreira had to be the one who’d been inquiring about her by name on the streets, the one Heriberto had mentioned. She sat down on the edge of the full tub and tucked her overlarge feet behind its clawed foot, debating internally. Then she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Isabel Amaral died there.”
He didn’t flinch.
“She and I left her home disguised as housemaids, but we were apprehended in the street. I was drugged. When I awoke, I was tied to a chair, upside down, inside a tiny dark room. Isabel was across from me, bound the same.”
He looked neither surprised nor horrified. “And then it was dropped into the river.”
“Yes.” She gazed down at the bruises that discolored her arms. If she kept to the facts, she could keep the pain at bay. “I heard chains rattling. Then we hit the water and started sinking. The water kept coming in. I chewed at the ropes, but Isabel was dead before I could get free.”
His expression remained solemn.
She took a steadying breath. “You knew.”
He pressed his lips together, stalling perhaps. “I suspected. Can you tell me what happened then?”
Oriana told him everything—about trying to save Isabel, about the glowing letters on the table, and the taste of death in the water once she’d escaped. Her description of the two men in the rowboat drew a scowl from him. She quickly listed what she’d learned since, including Carlos’ revelation that Mr. Efisio’s coachman had searched for them, her research taken from the newspapers, and the sketch she’d made of the table. She left out only her meeting with Nela, as she was unwilling to endanger another sereia. Mr. Ferreira listened solemnly, asking pointed questions in places, but he never questioned her veracity. “So, this might be necromancy of some sort,” she said, “although I don’t know what purpose it serves.”
“Magic is not my forte. I know whom I would ask if we were in Paris, but here . . . here the Church holds more sway, so no one practices openly.” He shrugged ruefully. “In any case, you’re the first victim to escape, so what you know far outweighs what the police know.”
She sat up straighter. “Are the police investigating this? How long have they known?”
“It took them some time to see the pattern,” he said. “A couple of servants would disappear from a household on the Street of Flowers and, a day or two later, that corresponding replica would be found in the river. The police only figured it out a few weeks ago. Most of the missing servants were never reported to the police, and those who were reported were treated as missing. No one believed they might be dead until Lady Pereira de Santos started pressing the police to find her two missing housemaids. Since the houses aren’t being placed in the river in an obvious order, the relationship between the two factors was difficult to discern.”
Oriana covered her face with her hands. Servants came and went, generally unimportant to their masters, but she recalled Lady Pereira de Santos herself coming to the Amaral house to speak to the butler. Even if Oriana hadn’t known the girls, it made her stomach turn to think that they and so many others had died the way Isabel had. She drew another calming breath and laid her hands in her lap again. “Espinoza has taken someone from each household?”
Mr. Ferreira nodded ruefully. “All of the houses have confirmed the abrupt ‘departure’ of a pair of servants.”
And she and Isabel had been disguised as housemaids. Oriana laid one hand over her mouth, suddenly wondering if Isabel’s silly whim had gotten her killed. She was not going to cry. She turned her eyes to the floor so he wouldn’t see. “How many have died?”
“We can’t be sure, but there are now twenty-five houses in the river.”
Oriana shuddered. That meant fifty dead servants out there. No, forty-nine. It was a huge number to have slipped past unremarked, showing a damning disregard for the lower classes of society. “That means we only have about a week left to stop him before he kills again. I should have gone directly to the police. I didn’t realize . . .”
“No,” he said softly. “Turning yourself in wouldn’t have benefited anyone. When we went to the commissioners for permission to pull up one of the houses and open it, we were ordered to drop the investigation altogether.”
She licked her lips, wondering at his use of we. “You work for the police?”
He smiled sheepishly. “Surely you aren’t suggesting a gentleman would work for money?”
She preferred a direct answer. “Do you?”
“I consult for them,” he said, dipping his head.
Semantics. “In what capacity?”
He shrugged. “I have access to levels of society where the police are not welcome.”
Ah. The police were using him to access society, just as she’d used Isabel. “But if the investigation was stopped . . .”
“As a private citizen,” he said, “I can ask the questions now forbidden to the police. We’re hoping that, given enough evidence, we’ll be allowed to reopen the investigation. Right now we have no proof. We can’t even get the newspapers to investigate. They fear being accused of spreading conspiracies by the Ministry of Culture, and supposedly the prince likes the artwork. They don’t want to offend him and get shut down. However, the fact that someone other than a mere servant was killed might prove the tipping point.”
Far too late to do Isabel any good. “So you sought me out. Why ask me to come here, if you could simply ask me your questions and send me on my way? You could have had them arrest me.”
“You are a victim in this,” he said, actually sounding regretful, “not a criminal. And you’re the only witness we have, the best lead we have in finding the man who’s doing this.”
“And when we have stopped Espinoza, will you then turn me in to the Special Police?”
He smiled wryly and shook his head. “No. You’re safe here. I have never found it reasonable to fear any of the sea folk. And I do not intend to reinforce the prince’s fears by exposing an actual spy. Heaven forfend.”
He made it sound light, but he could easily send her to her
death. “Thank you.”
“You are a spy, aren’t you?” he asked, as if needing verification.
“Yes,” she said. “I am a spy.”
He nodded once. “I assume you have a master to whom you report. Do you need to do so?”
No, she wouldn’t tell Heriberto. He would not like this development at all. Oriana shook her head. “I’m avoiding him for now. I will find Isabel’s killer first and face him later.”
One of Mr. Ferreira’s dark brows quirked upward. “That’s brave.”
“I have my reasons,” she said. “So, what do I do now?”
“Well, to start, try to entertain my mother a little, which will be harder than you expect.”
Given her earlier interview with the woman, she did expect that to be difficult. “Should I not speak to the police? The actual police, I mean.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it would be wise for me to drag you to one of the police stations. If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit down tomorrow, perhaps after breakfast, and go over everything you can remember. I need every detail you can dredge up. Then I’ll talk to my police contacts, find out what we need, and we’ll go on from there.”
“Is that all?” She suspected her frustration came through in her tone.
He pushed away from the vanity where he’d been leaning and added, “I intend no slight, Miss Paredes. I believe you will be key to stopping Espinoza and his cohorts. But we need time to assess your information. Give me one day, please.”
He took her free hand—the one not clutching the towel—and pressed two brass keys into her palm. The sight of the webbing between her fingers didn’t seem to give him pause. “The butler’s copy as well, so you can have some privacy here. And one of these tins,” he added, gesturing toward the jumble of gilded boxes on the vanity table, “probably has sea salt in it.”
He let himself out of the bath, the scent of his ambergris cologne tickling her nose as he brushed past. Oriana locked the door behind him and rested her back against it.
The Golden City Page 11
