Chapter 1 #3
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.
“No!”
The lady regarded Alex with concern. “We don’t show the upstairs because some of the staff here think it’s haunted.”
Alex opened her mouth to speak—but no words came out.
“Did you see him?”
“I beg your pardon?” Alex managed.
“His portrait. In the library. Xavier Blackwell.” The lady was watching Alex very closely.
Alex nodded. Thinking, She knows.
“He’s an eyeful, isn’t he?” the blue-haired lady said very seriously. “My staff is in love with him, wouldn’t you know?” She hesitated. “But they’re also terrified of him.”
“Have you seen him?” Alex whispered. “Here?”
Their eyes met in a guilty conspiracy. “I haven’t, no. It was so unfair.” Her voice had also dropped to a whisper. “He loved ships and the sea. The sea was his life. His love. And it took his life in the end, too. What a shame, a man like that—so strong and handsome, in his prime, too.”
“The sea didn’t take his life. He was executed by the bashaw of Tripoli.” There was anger in her tone. The depth of her anger surprised her.
“I know that.” The attendant was unruffled.
“But had he not gone to sea, again, in defiance of his father, he would have lived. He was William’s only living child, his only heir.
As it is, Blackwell Shipping passed into the hands of Xavier’s uncle.
Markham’s sons had plenty of children, but all girls.
Today the company is run by a worthless playboy, Charles Mathieson, who has barely any claim at all to the name of Blackwell.
I doubt there’s a drop of real Blackwell blood in his veins. What a shame.”
“What happened?” Alex asked. “Why was he executed? What crimes did he commit?”
The little lady actually blushed. “Well, dear, you won’t find this in any history book, but it’s a fact and we all know it here at the museum.”
Alex waited, hardly patient, still gripping the front door—still afraid to come face-to-face with Blackwell’s ghost at any moment.
“Blackwell was quite a man, as you can see. Apparently he was carrying on with the wife of the bashaw’s son.”
Alex failed to understand. Not at first. “I beg your pardon?”
“In those days it was a terrible crime for a Moslem woman to lie with a Christian man. Blackwell might have been a captive, but he had a lover, a stunning Moslem woman, it is said, but she wasn’t just any Moslem woman, she was the bashaw’s daughter-in-law.
That was why he was executed, dearie. For his love affair with her. ”