New York City, 1996
FEELING VIOLENTLY ILL, her head about to explode, Alex began to wake up.
Slowly, in excruciatingly painful stages.
Alex finally opened her eyes and was met by the glare of a blazingly hot sun. She was disoriented, confused, and flat on her back on the hard ground. Was she still in Tripoli? Somehow that seemed wrong. Then her heart constricted. Hadn’t she escaped?
Alex realized that she was staring up through the branches of a leafy green tree—not a palm tree or a date tree, but some kind of continental species, a beech or an elm, perhaps. Her heart raced.
And as her world slowed in its spinning, as the tree and the puffy white clouds overhead came increasingly into focus, images flooded her. Of finding Xavier outside of the palace’s front gates, of Murad standing there, refusing to escape with them, of being picked up on the beach by a small rowboat and taken to the USSConstitution.Ohmygod! In a blinding flash she recalled the night that had just passed, and Xavier’s fierce yet tender lovemaking.
Her head pounded harder now, and she had to close her eyes.
“I cannot,” he had whispered.I cannot.
He was married.
Alex’s eyes flew open and she stared up at the tree. Slowly, filled with dread, other bits and pieces of that evening coming back to her now, she turned her head. And stared at the Riverside Drive brownstone where she lived.
Alex levered herself upright.
Pedestrians in jeans and shorts were hurrying by her and studiously ignoring her. Alex did not care. She brushed chunks of red hair out of her eyes, beginning to cry.
How was this possible? How had she traveled back to the present? Hadn’t she been on board theConstitutionjust moments ago? She found it terribly difficult to breathe, panic overtaking her. The intensity of her headache increased, the pain nearly blinding.
Xavier was married. He had betrayed her.
Alex covered her face with her hands, fighting the urge to vomit. How could he have deceived her this way? In the two years since she had first met him in Tripoli, he had never said a word, never even hinted, that he had a wife.
Alex clutched her chest. She did not think she could survive her grief.
A passerby hesitated, and stopped. “Are you all right, young lady?”
Alex blinked at the elderly gentleman through tear-filled eyes. She was incapable of formulating a reply.
He hurried on.
She bent over her knees, choking on a sob. Xavier was on board the USSConstitution,just north of Tripoli, married to another woman, and Alex was here, in the twentieth century. Oh God! If anguish could kill, then she would be dead.
She rocked herself back and forth, moaning.
“Alex!” Beth cried.
Alex froze, looking up at her best friend. Beth was white with shock. Then she dropped to her knees and gripped Alex’s shoulders. “Good God! What has happened to you? And what are you doing back—and here—on the street?!”
Alex had never needed anyone more than she needed Beth. She rose with Beth’s help, a wave of nausea sweeping over her again. “I am going to be sick,” she gritted.
“Alex?” Beth asked with concern.
Alex allowed the violently ill feeling to pass, and then she embraced her friend.
Beth held her, stroking her hair. “Good Lord, what happened to your hair?” she said thickly.
Alex did not understand. She broke away, wiping her eyes. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“It’s long. And your face—how did you get those cuts? Are you hurt? And what are those strange clothes? Alex—I thought you left for Tripoli!”
Alex glanced down at her genuine nineteenth-century breeches and her old-fashioned linen shirt—items she had freely borrowed from a chest in Preble’s cabin. At least she hadn’t been dreaming. The clothes were proof that she had been in the past, as were the scratches on her face and arms. Alex clutched herself, overwhelmed by another cresting tide of heartbreak.
