Chapter 30
ABSOLUTE SILENCE FILLED the room.
Alex could not believe her eyes. She was devastated.
Zoe smiled, very pleased, and sent Blackwell an arched and meaningful glance. She swaggered past Alex. Alex reacted without thinking. Her hand whipped out and she seized the other woman’s arm, jerking her to a halt. “Don’t you ever enter my room again,” she ground out.
Zoe blinked, wide-eyed. “How testy you are, Zohara. Have I done something wrong?” She smiled again, shook Alex off, and left with one more backward glance at Xavier.
A silence so thick and tense it crackled returned to the room.
Alex was breathing far too rapidly and far too harshly. The image of Zoe practically astride Blackwell remained implanted in her mind. And an inkling began to form there, increasing her unease.
Jebal’s wife.
Zoe was Jebal’s wife—the bashaw’s daughter-in-law.
Alex was frozen, mesmerized … horrified. Ohmygod. It had become crystal clear to Alex that it might very well be Zoe whom Xavier was discovered with.
She could not move, absolutely paralyzed.
“Alexandra,” Blackwell said.
Her gaze lifted, meeting his. “This is how you repay me?” she whispered.
His face was set. “Nothing happened.”
“Nothing? In another moment Zoe would have been climbing up your body.”
“No.”
Alex realized then that she and Blackwell weren’t alone; Murad stood behind her, watching them both, listening to their every word very intently. “Could you leave us alone?” she asked.
Concern etched upon his face, he nodded and walked past Blackwell, into his own antechamber. His door closed.
When he was gone, Alex turned, still stunned by what she had seen, by Xavier’s near if not actual betrayal. She stared blindly out of the window at a mostly full and very bright, champagne-colored moon. “Do you find her beautiful?” she finally said.
He approached. Alex tensed when he stood close behind her. “Of course she is beautiful. Why are you jealous? Her beauty can’t compare to yours. She cannot compare to you. And nothing happened. I don’t want her.”
Alex faced him, relieved. “You don’t?”
“No, I don’t.” His stare was clear and hard.
She felt it then. The sizzling connection coursing between them.
A connection of heat and blood. A connection of destiny.
It hadn’t disappeared or lost any of its intensity.
Alex was acutely aware of him as a man, and knew he still felt the same brilliant attraction to her.
But this time there was so much more. And he knew it, too. She lifted her hand.
He moved away. “She was searching your room. What was she looking for?”
Alex was disappointed. Her palm fell to her side. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t trust her,” Blackwell said.
“Neither do I.” Alex wet her lips. It was late, the night dark and silent, and she and Xavier were alone—for the first time since he had returned. Possibilities filled Alex’s head. They had been separated for almost a year. But this night could be theirs.
“Why?” he asked.
She forced aside the overwhelming urge to lose herself in his arms. “She hates me. She has already threatened to find out what I am hiding, to expose me to Jebal. She wants to destroy me.”
Blackwell regarded her with his diamond-hard black gaze. “And what are you hiding, Alexandra?”
She did not reply. She forgot about the intimacy of the moment. Her mind raced.
“Let us start at the beginning.” His fists found his waist. “We all know you were never married to a British diplomat named Thornton. Why did you lie?”
Alex sat down. “When they brought me here, a woman examined me. Jebal knew I wasn’t a virgin. Given that fact, I had to think of a way to keep him out of my bed. Pretending that I was newly widowed and grieving seemed perfect. He gave me a year to mourn.”
“That was clever,” Blackwell agreed. Then he surprised her by asking, “Who was he? Your lover?”
Alex told him about Todd. She told him the truth, except for the fact that her love affair had taken place 192 years in the future.
“I’m Sorry,” Blackwell said. Very softly.
Alex was breathless, her gaze on his face. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she finally said, slowly rising to her feet. She moved toward him. Aware that he tensed.
But this time he did not move away. Alex halted in front of him and laid her hands on his hard, bare chest. He shuddered, his eyes widening slightly. She relished the feel of his skin, stretched tightly over impossibly hard muscle. “Xavier,” she whispered. “How I have missed you.”
He reached up and caught her wrists. Emotion and desire surging forth so hotly, so brightly, so powerfully inside of her that Alex’s knees buckled; she could barely stand up. “Why? Why have you missed me?” he demanded.
“You must know by now.”
His gaze roamed her face. “What we have shared, it was only a physical act, nothing more.”
Had he thrown ice water in her face, he couldn’t have shocked her more. “That’s not true!” she cried.
“It is true.” He released her wrists and stalked away from her. Not facing her, he said, “How are my men?”
Alex couldn’t believe that he did not feel any love for her.
That his interest was only in passion, in sex.
The night they had sabotaged the Pearl together, he had protected her instead of exposing her and destroying her.
She stared at his back. He was denying it.
Perhaps even to himself. He had to be in love with her.
Either that or the past two years spent in captivity in Tripoli were an incredible travesty.
“My men?” he demanded, turning.
“They labor in the quarries,” she managed.
“How many live?”
She hesitated. “Five of your crew have died.”
A shadow crosed his face and filled his eyes. He slumped abruptly on the bed.
Alex moved swiftly to him, sitting beside him, hurting for him now, her own anxiety and indignation forgotten. Her arm pressed his shoulder, her hip his thigh. “Xavier, we must escape, you and I, immediately.”
He did not reply.
“We will never be able to escape with your men, and you must know that.”
He nodded. “Perhaps, once I am free, I can ransom them.”
“There have been ransom negotiations, but the bashaw likes to play cat and mouse with both Neilsen and the consuls in Tunis and Algiers. He is very frustrating to deal with, they say.”
Blackwell stared at her.
Alex managed a smile. “Escaping will not be difficult. There is a secret tunnel that leads outside of the palace. I have mentioned it before. We can merely walk out. The only factor which must be arranged is our boarding an outbound Danish ship. Once at sea we can be transferred to an American vessel.”
“Alexandra, if it is so easy to escape, why have you not already done so?”
Alex shrank.
He stared, waiting.
“I couldn’t leave without you,” she finally said. “And that is the truth.”
“That makes no sense. I have been gone almost an entire year. Yet you remained here. Why?” He was standing, towering over her.
Alex also stood. “Xavier, I knew you would return. I was waiting for you!”
He shook his head, uttering a disparaging sound. “Fate brought me back to Tripoli, Alexandra—you could not have known that I would return.”
“You have to believe me.”
He said not a word.
Alex flicked hair out of her face. “Can we at least agree on this plan of escape? And to escape as quickly as possible? Perhaps early next week? You should have most of your strength back by then.”
“Yes. That we can agree on.” His eyes narrowed. “Why is there such a need for haste? Other than the obvious—that I might be recognized by someone here?”
She inhaled. Did she dare tell him what she knew? Yet how could she not? Their lives, their freedom, were at stake. She could not, of course, tell him the crux of her worries, that he was predestined for execution in mid-July. But she could tell him everything else, and warn him in the process.
“Xavier, if you are discovered here, they will execute you; surely you understand that?” A note of desperation had crept into her tone.
“Do you know something that I do not know?” he asked sharply.
“No,” she lied, wetting her lips. “Not other than the facts of this past year. Preble is now in command of the United States squadron, Xavier. You probably don’t know that in October the Philadelphia ran aground just off the coast, and that her captain surrendered to the bashaw.
Three days later the winds changed and the bashaw’s men freed the ship.
She was an incredible battleship, Xavier.
And the crew numbered over three hundred men.
The loss of the Philadelphia worsened relations between Tripoli and the United States. ”
“I can imagine.” He was staring at her.
“There’s more,” Alex said, his stare making her uneasy.
“Preble spent most of the fall trying to achieve a ransom. The bashaw, as he did with the negotiations over your men, merely toyed with Preble. Then, in February, Preble sent a commando team to destroy the Philadelphia, very much the way we destroyed the Pearl. He was successful. The ship was blown to smithereens. The bashaw is more furious than ever with the United States. Not to mention the fact that the United States is still in arrears to Tripoli. The money promised the bashaw years ago has never arrived. And Preble’s blockade has been very successful.
No corsair can get out of the harbor, no ships can get in.
There is a big shortage of foodstuffs and other supplies.
Even here in the palace we are feeling far more than a pinch. ”
“You are very well informed.”
Surely he did not mean what he seemed to mean? “These are facts. Everyone in the palace knows what I am telling you.”
“What are you leading up to, Alexandra?”
Alex hesitated. His tone was so sharp. But she had saved his life; surely he trusted her now. She trusted him—completely.