The Turks who were behind him reached him, seizing his arms roughly. The back of a scimitar blade landed on Murad’s shoulder, sending him to the ground, gasping with red-hot agony. And one of the Turks ripped the sack from Murad’s grasp, sneering. Murad forgot the throbbing pain in his shoulder immediately. His heart sank like a rock.
“Can I speak with you?” Alex asked uncertainly.
Blackwell had been writing a letter on a piece of ivory parchment. He was using a tray on his lap as a writing table. Now he laid the quill aside, looking up. “What is it you wish to say. Alexandra?” he asked quietly.
Alex swallowed, her heart beating unsteadily. She was so nervous and tense that only the strongest resolve kept her from wringing her hands—from turning and fleeing. Forcing a small smile, she entered the anteroom. “I don’t want to fight with you, Xavier.”
“We are not fighting.”
She pursed her mouth, standing in front of him. “Whom are you writing?”
“My father.” Blackwell picked up the letter and folded it in half, almost as if he wished to hide the contents from her.
But that made no sense. “He has been very worried about you. Like myself, he thought you were dead.”
“I realize that.”
“Do you miss him?” Alex sat down beside Blackwell on the mattress.
His jaw flexed, he stood and walked away from her. “Of course.”
“I thought you cared about me,” Alex suddenly said. “But now I think that I’ve been a fool. You find me attractive, but that’s as far as it goes.”
He faced her from across the antechamber. “We are strangers. We hardly know one another.”
“We have suffered through hell together,” Alex said harshly. “And we have shared a slice of heaven, as well.”
He looked away, silent, his expression resolute but otherwise impossible to read. “My feelings are irrelevant to the tasks at hand.”
Alex stood. “I want to know what your feelings for me are.” She could hardly believe her own ears. “Please.”
He stared grimly. “You are the most unusual woman that I have ever met. No other woman would demand that a man reveal his feelings to her, no other woman would remain inside Tripoli, wed to a Moslem, in order to spy.”
“I am not a spy.”
He shrugged.
“Do you really think me a cold, heartless bitch?” Alex asked bitterly. “You think I was sent here to do a job, one that included marrying a Moslem, becoming his wife? I am not heartless, Xavier! I was a captive, like you. If I didn’t marry Jebal, I would have been made a mere concubine. At least by marrying him I gained respect and some degree of power. This has not been an easy time. I’m used to being free, to coming and going as I please. Instead, I have become the possession of a Moslem prince. Do you have any idea what it’s been like, avoiding him? Pretending to be meek? To have no choice, to not be able to say no? I am not a spy. I am a survivor.”
His gaze was piercing.
Alex choked. “I sent Murad to Neilsen’s to get my things. I have proof, Xavier, that I am from the twentieth century.”
His jaw tightened. “That is terribly amusing, you know.” But he was not laughing.
Alex grimaced, filled with despair. Blackwell was a realist, a pragmatist, a chauvinist, and a man of action. He might never believe her. In which case, how could she prove to him that she wasn’t a spy? Was it going to end this way, with their escaping—and his walking away? “I’m not trying to be funny,” she finally said.
His gaze remained riveted on her. “I cannot understand you,” he finally said. “No matter how I try.”
Alex smiled sadly. “That is because I am a twentieth-century woman, as different from you as night is from day.”
“What could you possibly gain from such a ludicrous claim?”
“Why don’t you think about that?” Alex said.
Their gazes met, his impenetrable, black and deep. A taut silence fell between them.
Alex thought about him with Zoe. She became far sadder than before.
