“Ooof,” Nora shook her head. “You’re right. Poor dears.”
From beneath the surface, the mother creature released an echoing song. It was similar to the baby’s wail, but deeper, controlled, more lovely. The baby swam to her side, then they both poked their noses up for a breath, submerged, and disappeared somewhere on the far side of the pool.
Lia gently covered her nose with her hand. At least this explained the smell.
“There’s a tunnel at that end,” Julian mentioned, squeezing Tavia’s shoulder and pointing with his free hand. “They go back to the sea at night. No one troubles them when it’s dark.”
“What are they?” Lia breathed.
“They are baleacanis,” Nora said.
“But you killed the baleacanis, Julian!” Tavia exclaimed.
“No,” Julian sighed. “I wounded it.”
His expression darkened so that he looked like his usual broody self. “The king sent me to slay a sea monster, but when I harpooned the thing and brought the whaler up beside it, a monster isn’t what I found.”
Lia reflected on the animal in the pool—the whiskers, the sad eyes, the pudgy face. Certainly, if she had only seen the tail or the fins or the little spines on its back she might have taken it for a monster, but a look at the whole thing proved quite the contrary.
“I found a docile being, pleading for her life.” Julian shook his head. “And when I noticed the way her sides protruded, I realized I’d wounded a mother.”
Lia, Tyrell, and Tavia listened in complete silence, trying to reconcile the tidal wave of new information as it crashed across their previous assumptions.
“I had my men net her and drag her to the harbor where we did what we could for her,” the Captain continued. “Andshe healed up just fine, only trouble is now she won’t leave me alone.”
He sighed. “Every year she has a new baby, and returns to the harbor hoping I’ll spare her a fish or two.”
He paused and sent a peculiar glance across the room to the blue-grey lady in the corner.
“‘Never close the door on a mother in need,’ my parents always say,” Julian continued. “I doubt they were thinking of baleacanis when they said that but . . . Well, this home has been a refuge for all kinds of mothers over the years, I’m not that particular.”
“Julian hired us to build this place,” Jeanie added. “So Carmilla (that’s her name, isn’t it cute?) has a refuge of sorts. We take good care of her.”
Tyrell glanced around the room at each woman in turn. “You hired them to—”
“Well, Lord Salamar doesn’t approve of women sailors and we needed work,” Nora put in. “Our husbands sail with Captain Julian and we look after the hall.”
“They’re not . . .” Tyrell mumbled. “Your fiancees?”
All the women roared with laughter.
“You think we’re baby snatchers?” Molly howled. “I’ll keep my grown man, thanks!”
“Could you imagine!” Nora gasped. “Most of us are married to his crew! There’d be a mutiny if he tried anything.”
“They’d pick up little Julian and toss him overboard!” squeaked Jeanie.
Lia felt her heart crashing to the floor—she had thought . . . she had said . . . the rumors she had spread about a man whose only crime was being rude . . .
“Why didn’t you just tell us?” Lia gasped. “In the lighthouse!”
Julian twisted his lips as he tried to contain a tiny smile. “I’ve a busy life, precious, I take pleasure in the little things. Your assumptions were justsoentertaining.”
Lia scowled and clenched her fists, sympathy subsiding slightly. Employing outcasts, saving sea creatures . . . Perhaps Julian had the deeds of a saint, but his manners remained those of a scoundrel.
18. Audacity
Lia was beginning to think that Julian was the perfect man for Tavia. He had that broody, villainous aesthetic that the princess found so fascinating, and yet, not only was he actually completely harmless, he was a good person. To think, all this time Captain Julian’s only real crime was audacity.
