Captive (2 page)

Ignoring the other models, Alex moved toward the brig, as if in a trance. Her eyes widened when she read the engraved plaque beneath it:
the Pearl.

Had she read something about that ship in her studies? Why did this vessel, and its name, seem so familiar? Alex had an excellent memory, but failed to recall any anecdotes about this particular vessel. Alex stared at the stately ship, because she could clearly see that it was no usual merchantman—it had been designed so that it could carry at least thirty-two guns. She wet her lips, managed to tear her gaze from the decks and rigging and the vacant gun mounts. Her fingers trembling, she reached for the pamphlet and flipped it open.

Alex was shaking. She could hear the explosion, could see the beautiful vessel erupting in splinters of wood and swaths of sail from the deep blue sea, aflame. She could hear the angry cries of the corsairs—and she could see the captain, watching, perhaps in manacles, at once heartbroken by the loss of such a gallant ship and triumphant at having denied the corsairs such a prize.

Suddenly Alex felt eyes upon her. She looked up and cried out.

There on the wall facing the small replica of the
Pearl
was a portrait of a striking, dark-haired man in clothes from the same period. Alex was immobilized.

Finally she began to breathe. She moved closer, her gaze riveted to his. The nameplate beneath the portrait read
Xavier Blackwell.

Her heart raced. Alex wet her very dry lips. She stared at Blackwell, drinking in the sight of him. God, he was a magnificent man.

He stood with his back to a vessel under construction and in dry dock. He appeared to be very tall, perhaps six foot two, and he was both broad shouldered and narrow hipped. He stood in a seaman’s stance, his long legs braced hard apart as if on the deck of a rolling ship. He wore the clothing of his era, a white shirt, a gray waistcoat, and an open red frock coat. He was wearing tan knee breeches, pale stockings, and black shoes with silver buckles. He was hatless, his hair dark and pulled back in a queue. His face was mesmerizing, harsh in its planes, but high cheekboned, his nose patrician, his jaw strong and broad. Yet it was his eyes that held her spellbound. They were black, and they burned with stunning intensity. They seemed to be staring directly at her, as if he were alive, a flesh-and-blood man, instead of many layers of pigment and paint, a superficial rendering. And he was unsmiling. Alex
knew he had hated standing for this portrait. She could almost feel his restless spirit surrounding her—dear God.

Alex stared.

He stared back.

Alex could not move. She could not look away, either. It really felt as if the eyes in the portrait were real, as if they bored into her with deliberate intent—with the intention of communicating to her.

Which was utter nonsense.

Still paralyzed, Alex heard herself whisper, “Are you here?”

The room was silent.

Had he been present last night outside of Blackwell House? she wondered. She was almost certain that she had felt something—or someone—then.

Alex managed to tear her gaze away from the portrait and she looked carefully around. The drapes did not move. Dust motes sparkled in the air. Outside, there was a small back garden, mostly dirt and sand, and the sun was shining brightly through the trees.

Alex hugged herself, and found herself creeping closer to the portrait. Staring up at Blackwell, she was stricken with a sudden, intense yearning. Imagine meeting, knowing, loving such a man. She had only to look at him to know that he was a man of courage and conviction, a real nineteenth-century hero, a man to admire for all time.

But he had died way before his time. Alex felt a wave of grief sweeping over her as she thought about how unjust his execution was. Why had the bashaw of Tripoli condemned him to death while his crew were ransomed and freed?

Alex suddenly wanted to find out. She was suddenly compelled to find out. In fact, she wanted to know far more about this heroic man than the mere paragraph provided by the museum’s pamphlet.

Alex shrank against the wall, listening to the voices of a group of new visitors to the museum fading as they moved away down the hall. She did not hesitate. Quickly she left the library where she had found Blackwell’s portrait and she hurried into the foyer. Certain that she had not been discovered yet, glancing around to make sure the museum attendant
wasn’t present, Alex stepped over the blue velvet cordon and raced up the stairs.

On the second-floor landing she paused, her heart hammering far too swiftly for comfort. She did not understand her fear, or her complusion. Alex forced herself to concentrate on what she intended to do. She glanced around the second floor and down the single, narrow hallway.

Her nerves prickling now with anticipation, Alex shoved open the first door she came to.

It was a small but pleasant bedroom. The walls were papered in what had once been a white-background floral print, the two-poster bed had a matching coverlet, and the furniture was all beautifully designed; Alex was a historian, but she knew a little about furnishings. She was immensely disappointed because she thought that everything was French or English. Nothing could have been early American. The furniture was too elegant.

Alex backed out, quietly closing the door. She paused in the adjacent doorway of a child’s nursery. Again, this room had been furnished with tasteful elegance and European appointments. But a very crude rocking horse sat in one corner of the room. Alex stared, her pulse pounding.

Its mouth was painted red and fading, its eyes were blue, and the rocking horse was grinning widely at her. Alex continued to stare. The horse had a mane and tail of yarn. It had been hand carved. Suddenly she could see a small, chubby boy astride it of no more than three years old. Her palms grew damp and her pulse was racing even more quickly than before.

She closed the door carefully and began glancing into other rooms, ignoring them now, because she was looking for
his
room. She continued on past the master bedroom. She was certain that Blackwell’s father had been alive at the time of his death, so Blackwell would not have used the master suite.

And then she opened the door to a sparsely appointed room, one dominated by a heavy, dark bed. Immediately she knew she had found
his
bedroom. Alex froze.

And she felt his presence far more strongly than she had felt it last night outside of Blackwell House. He was there, with her, watching her, ohmygod, she knew it.

His eyes burned holes in her, not in her back, but from across the room, as if he faced her.

Alex stared across the dark, shadowy room, her heart hammering, unable to move. She was paralyzed. And for the briefest instant, she saw him on the opposite side of the room, but not as he had appeared in the portrait downstairs. He was clad in a loose and partially open white shirt, in snug breeches and soft boots, his dark hair swept back carelessly in a queue. They stared at one another. He was unsmiling, his eyes dark and intense and very hot.

Alex blinked; he was gone. She was absolutely alone.

She was breathless, sweating, terrified. She licked her lips, wanting to speak, afraid to utter even a sound. She wanted to call him back. If he had indeed been there. Yet she was sane enough to be positive that she had imagined him now, stimulated by her reaction to his portrait. Surely she had not just seen a ghost.

But the hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

And Alex felt a soft, warm puff of air at her nape, and she jumped away from the open door. It had been a draft of air, of course. Of course.

But she hugged herself, glancing around in a 360-degree circle. “What do you want?” she whispered in what was practically a croak. Sweat poured down her body, between her breasts.

There was no answer, but then, she hadn’t expected one—and she didn’t want one. Did she?

And instead of leaving, she entered the room, shutting the door behind her. Alex glanced cautiously around. The bedroom was paneled in pine, the floors oak planking covered with a faded red Oriental carpet. The massive four-poster bed loomed in front of her. A crude pine chest stood beside it, serving as a night table. A single chair and a writing table stood in one corner of the room, both dark oak and far more crudely designed than the furniture in the other rooms. Was everything here early American? Had he lived amongst these things? Sat at that desk and worked there? Slept in that bed? Why hadn’t this room been refurbished and updated like the other ones?

The room was heavy with shadow. Pale, opaque drapes had been left partially open, and sunlight filtered through the thick oak tree outside and through the dirty panes of the window. Alex leaned against the door she had closed. She swallowed
and stared at the bed. At his bed. Then she quickly looked away.

But from the corner of her eyes she saw a blur of movement. Alex jerked, her gaze shooting back to the four-poster, certain she had seen something—or someone—moving, but there was nothing and no one there now.

Goose bumps covered her entire body. She wanted to leave, yet she also wanted to stay. But she was so afraid. “Are you haunting this house?” she whispered. “Are you haunting me?”

He refused to answer her. If he was even present.

Alex swallowed. Her mind warred with Itself. One voice shouted at her that she was in trouble, fooling with ghosts, with the paranormal, and that there was a ghost in the room. And that the ghost might not be a particularly nice or friendly spirit just because she had decided that he was a hero and the kind of man she had always dreamed about. The ghost might be a real nineteenth-century bastard. In fact, he might even be pissed as all hell because he was dead way before his time, or because she was disturbing him. That voice told her to leave as quickly as possible.

But she was also a romantic. Alex had come to Blackwell House on an impulse. And being a romantic, deep in her heart she believed in all the foolishness she read in her romance novels. Had she been drawn here by some weird kind of fate? On order to meet Blackwell’s ghost?

She knew she should leave. Logic and fear told her that. But she was strangely reluctant to do so. She watched dust motes dancing in the air. Dust motes—but where was the draft coming from? Alex had no answer. She was afraid of the answer.

The rug.

The thought came from nowhere. But it loomed in her mind, loud and crystal-clear. A voice inside her head.
The rug.
And suddenly she looked down at the threadbare Persian rug she stood upon. Her heart, beating wildly, soared. She had not a single doubt that the carpet was at least two hundred years old. That he had trod upon it a thousand times. Kneeling, she ripped a strip from one edge. She had not thought of taking a keepsake before, but now she was oddly jubilant.

It was definitely time to go. Alex rushed to the door, gripping the knob. But something made her pause. Helplessly,
compelled, she glanced back at the room one more time, almost afraid of what she would see—but she saw nothing and no one, just the massive bed. And the thought struck her out of the blue. Potent and powerful and terrible.
What would happen if she lay down there?

Waiting for him?

Images flashed in her head. Of a man and a woman, passionately entwined.

Alex began to shake. The woman had red hair, but it was not her, it wasn’t, and she was merely fantasizing, and why was she so afraid? Yet the bed, where he had slept a thousand times, was the single object in his room with the most powerful connection to him.

Alex realized how flushed and hot she was. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes, still staring at the four-poster, aware that she was almost in a trance. She knew she had to leave. That the situation was somehow dire. Even though the room, and the drapes, were absolutely still and absolutely silent. Even though the dust motes had ceased to dance and float. She knew that he was present.

Alex hadn’t realized that she had somehow walked forward toward the bed, and that she stood within a handspan of it. Her mind screaming in protest, her heart beating with alarming strength, she watched her hand lift and reach out. She touched the royal blue quilt.

And the moment she felt the soft silk, she came to her senses. Crying out, she stepped back from the bed as if burned, a single pace, and then she began to backpedal, hard and fast, furiously. And her spine and buttocks slammed into something hard and warm and, dammit, alive and male. Alex screamed, jumping.

As she turned to face the intruder, she saw Blackwell, she did, with his hot black eyes and his open shirt—but when she blinked she realized she saw nothing but the scarred wood of the door and the tarnished brass knob. Alex began to shake violently.

She had bumped into a man—she was certain of it.

This time Alex did not hesitate. She ran from the room.

“Are you all right, dear?”

Alex jumped, her hand on the front door, genuinely startled.

She faced the little lady reluctantly, out of breath and terrified. “I’m fine,” she lied. She could not smile.

She had just seen a ghost. She had just felt a ghost.

“You’re green,” the blue-haired lady said. “Are you unwell?”

“I …” Alex could not continue. Her gaze wandered past the lady, to the stairs. She would faint if she saw Blackwell coming down those steps right now.

Suddenly the museum attendant stared. Her smile was gone. “You didn’t see something, did you?” Her gaze had followed Alex’s.