Captive

Chapter 37

SHE WAS TRULY alone.

Murad was hiding somewhere in Tripoli, and Blackwell was gone.

Alex would never forget her last glimpse of him.

He had turned, wild-eyed, when Jebal had pulled Alex down from the horse.

His struggle had been as clear as day. Alex knew that in that split second he had debated leaping off of his uncontrollable mount and returning to her.

He had debated attacking Jebal, even though his hands were manacled.

Alex no longer cared about herself. Fresh troops were swarming into the square, wielding scimitars and firing pistols.

Jebal had her by the arm. Alex had looked right into Blackwell’s furious eyes. “Go! Go!” she had screamed.

Someone else had also screamed at Blackwell. Neilsen, on a brown steed, racing by them all. Blackwell had abruptly faced forward, riding his horse toward the harbor like a bat out of hell.

But there had been a promise in his eyes.

He would return for her. Alex believed it with all of her heart, in the very depths of her soul.

The entire palace was talking about little else other than Blackwell’s escape.

The bashaw was furious. Jebal was furious.

Jovar had sentenced an entire regiment to labor in the quarries and had put the captain of that troop to death.

Alex only had to press her ear to her locked bedroom door in order to hear her guards gossiping somewhat gleefully about all that was transpiring.

But in her bed, Alex turned over onto her belly and began to cry into her pillow.

Whom was she fooling? This wasn’t a romance novel.

This was real life, only worse—this was the Moslem world in 1804.

Blackwell was courageous, powerful, and strong, but he was a flesh-and-blood man, not a paperback hero.

If Blackwell tried to rescue her, he would most likely die.

She was never going to see him again. They would never share a lifetime together.

It crossed her mind that she had been a fool, to think that she could rewrite history.

It crossed her mind that she should return to the century where she belonged, and forget all about Xavier Blackwell.

Maybe, one day, her memories would fade to the point where they didn’t hurt so much, like the blade of a scimitar shredding her already bleeding heart.

Maybe one day she would be able to recall this adventure and it would be out of focus and blurred, feeling only like the fragments of some old, odd, nightmarish dream.

Alex did not think so.

In any case, she wasn’t sure she could return to the twentieth century even if she wanted to. Zoe had the oil lamp. Either that, or she had destroyed it.

Jovar paced across her bedchamber. “He escaped! It was impossible, but he escaped. We tried to cut off the entrance to the harbor, but the Danes beat us out. Blackwell escaped—Neilsen with him!”

Zoe sat up, yawning. “I say good riddance, Peter.”

He stared at her without seeing her. Blackwell’s image remained engraved upon his mind. Rage coursed through his veins, swelling his pores. “I want him dead.”

Zoe slid from her bed, clad in a whisper of transparent silk. “Come, darling, let’s use your rage to good ends.”

Jovar ignored her, knowing he would use her body later, roughly, even cruelly.

He continued pacing. “I can only hope he will return to rescue Alexandra Thornton. I saw his face when Jebal dragged her from the horse. He was actually a moment away from going back to her—the fool. If I hadn’t run out of powder, I would have killed him then and there. ”

“He won’t come back. At least, not soon. Maybe next year, with a big American battleship.”

Jovar wheeled. Zoe was actually smiling. “Are you amused?” he said with deceptive calm.

She shrugged. Her big breasts heaved. “It is so rare that you are thwarted, Peter.”

He crossed the room in three long strides and gripped her by her hair, pulling her head back so that her spine was awkwardly arched, her throat exposed, her breasts upthrust. Zoe gasped.

“I think he will come back. I think he will come back soon, to attempt to rescue her.” Jovar smiled grimly and jerked on her hair once.

“And I shall be waiting, Zoe. This time he will not elude me.”

The best that Alex could do was send a message to Jebal and pray that he would respond. He hated her so thoroughly that she had little hope.

But he appeared shortly after. He stared coldly at her, his arms folded across his chest. “I cannot imagine what it is that you wish to say to me.”

Alex sat up slowly. “I know I am doomed,” she began hesitantly.

“So now you confess your guilt?”

“I only confess to loving a man and saving his life.”

“You tried to escape with him!” Jebal’s voice rose.

“How can you blame me when you hate me, when you have imprisoned me—and threatened me with death?”

“What do you want to speak about?” Jebal was cold and impatient.

“I believe that Zoe has my possessions, those items stolen from my slave when he left Neilsen’s.”

“Oh, really?”

“I am asking you to return those things to me. They are just a few items from home. Or will you be so cruel and deny me any comfort at all?”

“Zoe maintains she did not take those things,” Jebal said firmly.

“She is lying. She is a liar.”

“You are a fine one to call another a liar, Zohara,” Jebal spat.

Alex looked down. There was nothing else she could say—and nothing she could do.

Jebal turned and left the room. Alex glanced up just as she heard the heavy metal bolt slamming down outside of her door.

She wiped her eyes, which were tearing again.

She was only flesh and blood too. How stupid she had been to cast herself in the role of a heroine.

She wasn’t brave and she wasn’t strong, not anymore.

And without the lamp, she could not escape Tripoli and Jebal.

But dear God, she had finally recognized that it was time to give up and go home.

Jebal changed his mind. Zoe was a liar, and she might very well be a thief.

If she had Zohara’s personal belongings from her Christian life.

Jebal would be very interested in examining them.

As if it might give him some insight into the woman he had fallen so deeply in love with—and now hated so completely.

As he strode through the women’s quarters, he thought about how ironic it was.

He had married two very beautiful and very different women, but they both had one thing in common—they were both utter, self-serving liars.

Zoe had ceased to please him long ago. Her failure to give him a son and heir had not helped.

But he was still, foolishly, bitterly disappointed about Zohara.

He was in an exceedingly bad mood, as he had been ever since discovering Zohara’s treachery and infidelity, and Blackwell’s escape had only heightened it.

He was almost capable of barging into Zoe’s bedchamber without knocking, but he managed to restrain himself at the last moment.

His fist lifted. About to bang on the door, he ignored her slave, Masa, whose eyes bulged. Jebal did not care why.

And then he heard them.

The woman’s soft cries, the man’s savage, sexual growl.

Instead of knocking, in a state of absolute disbelief, stunned to the point of mindlessness, Jebal opened the door.

And saw his wife lying naked with her legs spread wide on the marble floor. A man knelt above her, his knees by her shoulders—his cock ramming down her throat.

Jebal saw red. But not before he had regained a modicum of thought and realized that the man was Rais Jovar.

“I don’t understand,” Alex cried.

The two soldiers who had demanded she come with them did not reply.

They were striding briskly through the eerily deserted palace that next morning, at dawn.

Alex began to shiver. The moment was horribly reminiscent of the other day when Jebal had dragged her to the town square to witness Blackwell’s execution.

Had he been recaptured? Alex began to sweat even though it was still comfortably cool out in the final moments before sunrise.

“Please tell me what is happening,” she begged her guards, stumbling to keep up with the rapid pace they set.

One of them glanced askance at her. “Lilli Zohara, we are under orders not to converse with you. I am so sorry.”

Alex plucked his vest. “Have they recaptured Blackwell?”

The man set his face in a stony expression and did not reply.

And then Alex heard the hissing, the shouting, the jeers.

Her heart plummeted to her feet. Ohmygod! They were not far from the public square, and clearly a bloodthirsty crowd had gathered there. Please, not Xavier! she begged silently.

She and her escort turned the corner. The narrow dirt street had a slight slope to it.

At the bottom was the square. Alex’s heart sank even further.

She could see that the square was filled to overflowing with excited spectators—just as it had been the day Blackwell had almost been executed.

She strained to see as they hurried toward the piazza.

The bashaw sat his snowy white mount in the center of the square, just to the right of the stained execution block, exactly as he had the other morning.

The tall, burly executioner stood there in his flowing black robes, loosely holding his huge scimitar.

The long, thick, curving blade glinted in the Mediterranean light.

And four heavily armed soldiers kept a prisoner in their midst, a prisoner whose build and features were obscured by the men surrounding him.

She was sweating. Shaking. Violently afraid.

She could not live through this nightmare again.

They reached the crowd and Alex could no longer see.

The soldiers shouted at the gawking people, who had to be shoved aside to make way for them.

Alex finally glimpsed Jebal. His face was frozen, and this time he was mounted on a bejeweled black Arabian gelding that danced nervously beside the bashaw’s stallion.

Her guards pushed her through the last row of spectators. Alex gasped as the prisoner in the center of the square became visible. Standing amongst the four armed janissaries, his wrists manacled behind his back, was the blond Scot renegade, the admiral of the bashaw’s navy, Rais Jovar.

Alex did not understand.

Was Jovar a spy?

And then she was propelled forward, toward Jebal. He met her gaze briefly, looked away. The guards halted with Alex. She stood a half dozen feet from her Moslem husband.

The bashaw’s stallion pranced. “Where is she?” he demanded of Jebal.

Alex jerked, turning her wild eyes on Jebal, wondering what horror awaited her now.

But Jebal’s frozen eyes moved slightly. Alex realized he was looking past her, and she turned to follow the direction of his gaze. She gasped.

Zoe was shoved rudely forward by two soldiers, so roughly that she landed on her hands and knees in the dirt in front of Jebal’s gelding. She was naked.

Alex’s pulse pounded wildly. Her gaze lifted, and confused, she met Jebal’s regard.

His cold eyes pierced hers before he turned away.

Zoe stood, her lush body streaked with dirt and grime, her hair matted and disheveled, flowing to her hips. One side of her face was black and blue. There were bruises on her torso, her buttocks. She had been beaten, maybe whipped. Alex was sick.

“My lord, I beg you, forgive me! I knew not what I was doing! It will never happen again, please Allah, have mercy on my body and my soul!”

“Silence!” Jebal shouted. He bent and struck her with a riding whip, so harshly that Zoe screamed and fell to the ground, where she lay unmoving.

Alex’s instinct was to rush to her and help her. Instead, shaking now, she restrained herself. For she understood now, with utter clarity, what had happened. She was horrified.

The bashaw signaled the executioner.

Alex froze as Jovar was propelled to the block and pushed to his knees.

His head was forced down. He was utterly pale beneath his sunburn, but he did not weep or beg.

In fact, there was something strangely savage in his eyes—as if he had always known he would die a brutal death.

Alex closed her eyes as the executioner lifted the scimitar.

She heard a thump and the crowd’s triumphant roar.

Alex refused to open her eyes, panting and ill, enough so that she did not think she could prevent herself from vomiting, even though she hadn’t been able to eat in three entire days.

“Zohara!”

Alex jerked, facing Jebal.

His smile was twisted. “Jovar betrayed me with my wife. His fate would have been Blackwell’s had he not escaped. Look.”

Alex panted. “Please. I cannot.”

“Look!”

Her eyes filling with tears, which thankfully blurred her vision, Alex had no choice but to look at the decapitated man. Instantly she fell to her knees, her insides heaving, throwing up water and bile.

Jebal spat out a command.

Zoe screamed.

Alex jerked, her attention helplessly drawn to Zoe—who was being tied up hand and foot. “No,” Alex whispered, horrified.

Tears streamed down Zoe’s face. “Jebal, please. I beg your forgiveness, have mercy, dearest Allah the Great, help me, please, I love you, I am loyal to you, please, don’t do this!” She screamed hysterically. “Allah, my Lord, my savior, Allah the Great, spare me!”

Two soldiers appeared with a sack.

Alex was immobilized.

Zoe began to struggle, but the two guards easily lifted her and threw her into the huge burlap bag.

The soldiers holding it tied the top closed with cords.

The sides of the burlap rippled and bulged as Zoe tried uselessly to free herself, her screams, although muffled, shrill enough for all to hear.

This could not be happening, Alex managed to think.

Jebal rode forward. He gripped the top end of the sack and continued to ride toward the harbor, dragging his burden behind him. Zoe’s screams grew, as did her gruesome gyrations.

Alex leaned heavily on her nearest guard, unable to believe the monstrous spectacle she was witnessing.

At the edge of the wharf, very calmly, Jebal threw the sack containing his wife into the sea.

Again the crowd roared with approval.

For the second time in her life, Alex fainted.