Beth took her to see Goldman that afternoon. The cab ride made Alex queasy, but she said nothing to her friend, resolving not to become ill for the second time that day. But the moment they entered the doctor’s office, Alex gasped, her tone strangled, “I have to use the rest room!”
The receptionist eyed her over the rim of her tortoiseshell glasses. “First door on your left.”
Alex barely made it to the bathroom before giving in to another vicious bout of nausea. Maybe Beth was right, she thought when she could finally stand, a good five minutes later. Maybe she was truly ill, perhaps even with some foreign virus.
Goldman was in his seventies if he was a day. He smiled cheerfully at Alex, regarding her through thick horn-rimmed spectacles, while asking her what was wrong. Alex hesitated, then told him that someone had died, someone very close to her, and she was incapable of functioning. She started to cry as she spoke. He listened very sympathetically. She finally mentioned that she also had a stomach flu.
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” he said kindly.
He asked her many questions while he examined her. “I’ll run some blood tests. Considering you just got back from Libya.” He smiled again. “When was your last period?”
Alex blinked. “I …” She stopped, trying to think. Time had become scrambled up in her head. “Why?” Surely he didn’t think what she was thinking he thought!
“Could you be pregnant?”
Alex stared at him, stunned. “No! That’s impossible!”
“All right.”
But her mind raced as he listened to her lungs and chest. She’d had sex. Last night, which didn’t count, and a few weeks ago. Without using any contraception. Her last cycle had been, she decided, six weeks ago—she was late. But she could not be pregnant. Absolutely not. Very faintly, Alex said, “I’m two weeks late. I did have sex about three weeks ago. We”—she turned red—“didn’t use a thing.”
His eyes widened. “Not even condoms? Dear girl, this is the age of AIDS.” He immediately shoved three pamphlets into her hands.
Alex stared down, her eyes tearing. Not in the nineteenth century, it’s not, she thought.
“You’ll have to give me some urine.”
Alex nodded. Not wanting to tell him that, come to think of it, about a day or two ago her breasts had begun to feel strange—both heavy and sore.
She called Goldman’s office at 10:00A.M.the following morning just as she had been told to do. The test results, the nurse told her cheerfully, were positive.
Alex hung up in shock.
She was pregnant. Yet it didn’t seem possible. And with whose child? Xavier’s? Or Jebal’s? She remained motionless and stunned. How could this be happening? How could she be pregnant with the child of either man, both of whom were dead for over a century?
Alex could not move.Dear God, the child had to be Xavier’s.And suddenly she knew,she knew,with absolute certainty, that the child was Blackwell’s. That it was their love child, that it was Destiny’s child. No other outcome was possible, not when her love had been so strong to send her to Blackwell in the first place.
And it hit her then with brutal clarity that she did not want to remain in the twentieth century. She wanted to go back to him, even if they couldn’t be together. She wanted to live in the same century with him, in the same town. To be able to see him, even from a distance, even if infrequently.
Alex began to cry. At least now she knew why she was so overwrought and emotional. But crying would not do her any good. Crying and self-pity were not going to take her back through time.
Alex tried to think. She had assumed that the oil lamp had sent her to the nineteenth century in the first place. But she had returned to the future without that lamp, which had been left somewhere in the palace by Zoe, either that or destroyed. How had she returned that second time? What common denominator was there?
It took Alex an instant to decide. She had traveled to Tripoli in search of Xavier, desperately in love with him, obsessively in love with him. On board theConstitution,his confession had filled her with a rage the likes of which she had never before experienced. Had her love sent her to him in the first place? Had her rage returned her to the twentieth century?
She knew what she had to do. Alex stood and picked up the phone, booking herself a seat on the next commuter plane to Boston. Excitement flooded her. Her depression was gone.
She stood in front of Blackwell House trying to recover her wits. Blackwell House was not a museum. The Blackwells still lived there, and tonight they were having a party.
The house was magnificent, freshly painted, carefully maintained, right down to the shingles on the roof and the dark green shutters and the redbrick chimneys. At some point, someone had had the house moved back on the lot, so that it now sat in the middle of the property. The landscaping had changed as well. Stately elms and oaks were everywhere, pines lined the property’s perimeter, as did a high brick wall topped with a dangerous-looking iron fence. Blooming red roses rioted against the sides of the house. There was a graceful circular drive in front of the house that hadn’t been there before, and it was filled to overflowing with Mercedeses, Jaguars, Ferraris, and limousines.
But it was Blackwell House. The structure of the house itself hadn’t changed.
Alex hesitated. The wrought-iron front gates were wide open. No security guards stood there. And even from this distance, she could hear laughter and conversation and the strains of a band drifting across the groomed green lawns and the island in the center of the drive. Her pulse was pounding. She made up her mind and walked up the drive.
If only she had known, she thought dryly, she would have worn a cocktail dress. She was clad in a denim shirt, a big brown belt, her Levi’s, and lug-soled ankle boots. There was no way she could crash the party without being noticed immediately. Except, of course, as the help.
She ignored the chauffeurs who eyed her as she passed their limos. How she had changed. She knew they were looking at her not because she was inappropriately dressed, but because she was a beautiful woman. Blackwell had given her that.
