“Fine, fine. Just . . . Don’t torture her. She’s been through enough.” The woman turned and hurried down the stairs after Radomil. I glanced over my shoulder. Doolittle was holding a large syringe filled with pinkish liquid. Desandra petted her stomach.

“What is this for?” I asked.

“Amniocentesis,” Doolittle said. “It’s a routine screen of amniotic fluid. We want to make sure everything is proceeding as it’s supposed to.”

Aunt B approached us. “Well, that went nicely.”

“You told my father no,” Desandra said to me.

“Sure.”

“He’ll kill you for it,” Desandra said.

“He may find it much harder than it appears, dear,” Aunt B told her. “Dinner is coming up. Kate, you may want to change. You smell like the sea. You two go. Derek and I will watch after Desandra while you’re changing.”

I turned to Derek. “I will send Eduardo. When Desandra is ready to go, the two of you will follow her. Nobody comes in the room if she doesn’t want to see them.”

“Got it,” Derek said.

“The rooms are just down the hall,” Aunt B said. “Here, I’ll walk partway with you then head back.”

We strode down the hallway.

“I told you so,” Aunt B said quietly.

“Told me what?”

“Please, Kate. The fresh young thing on the pier? She even wore white.”

“And?”

“Nothing at all, dear. Just reflecting on the color. How virginal and bridal.”

Yes. I’d noticed. If they were trying to influence Curran by shoving Lorelei under his nose, they weren’t very subtle about it.

“Yours is the first door on the right. Andrea, you and Raphael are across from them. The rest of us are just down the hall,” Aunt B said. “The sound really carries through here. You can hear practically everything, so if you call we’ll come running.”

Got it. Nothing said in the rooms would be private, and our hosts were likely listening really hard. “Good to know.”

“I’ve checked and the dinner is a formal affair. Do wear a dress, Kate.”

I killed a growl, and Andrea and I went down the hallway.

“We’ve worked worse jobs,” Andrea said.

“Mm-hm. This whole place doesn’t feel right to me.”

“I’m with you,” she said.

We reached my door. I waited until Andrea opened hers across the hall and went inside, and then I stepped into our room and shut the door behind me.

A sizable room, as far as bedrooms went, with tapestries and rugs on the stone walls. An open door offered access to the bathroom on the left. A large wooden poster canopy bed waited in the center, complete with silk pillows and gauzy purple curtains. It looked like something out of the historical romances Andrea liked to read.

Curran came out of the bathroom.

I nodded at the bed. “Someone robbed an ancient music video.”

“I know. It creaks like a sonovabitch, too.”