And she waited, listening, but he did not come.
Alex looked at the stately bed, a fur throw at its foot, at the white brocade draperies, at the yellow velvet couch and the black marble fireplace. She wept softly.
And then she looked at the rug. “Ohmygod,” she whispered.
The rug had not been replaced. It was the same centuries-old Persian rug that she had seen on her first visit to Blackwell House.
Alex slid to her knees. Rubbing her hands over the worn, faded rug, crying now, harder than before. She lay down on her stomach, her cheek against the soft, worn wool. “Xavier,” she moaned. The wool was warm beneath her cheek.
Strangely warm.
The door behind her opened, a man’s footsteps sounding, halting abruptly. His cry was sharp. “What the hell?”
It wasn’t Black, it was someone older, and Alex did not have to be told to know it was his father, the patriarch of Blackwell Shipping. She heard the authority in his tone, felt his maturity, his power, his presence.
Alex did not move because the rug was very warm beneath her face and hands, and her legs were tingling, growing numb. She prayed.
He rushed around her and dropped to his knees, his eyes wide with concern. Alex looked up and felt a wave of shock.
He was the spitting image of Xavier, but he was older, perhaps fifty or fifty-one. But he was a very young and virile fifty, excruciatingly handsome, extraordinarily fit. Had she not known where she was, she would have thought him to be the man she loved.
And he was staring at her as if he had recognized her too. “Who are you?” he said hoarsely.
Alex’s legs were numb. She was beginning to spin, her vision beginning to blur. She did not answer him, but she smiled.
“What’s wrong? Are you ill?” he asked.
She was truly spinning now. He was so distraught that she decided she had to respond. Still smiling, she whispered, “I am fine. I am going home.”
“Who are you?” he demanded, staring at her.“Who the hell are you?”
She felt a strange yet now familiar sucking pressure taking hold of her body. “Alexandra Thornton,” she said.
He gasped. “That’s impossible!” he cried, but he was standing now—and staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.
Alex smiled at him, filled with love, and then the cyclone came, sucking her down, away.
42
ALEX HEARD Awoman’s startled cry.
The floor stopped whirling. Alex lay clawing the rug, panting. She opened her eyes.
And stared at a dark oak four-poster bed.
It wasn’t the huge canopied affair she had just been lying in front of, nor was it the starkly plain bed she had first remarked when Blackwell House was a museum. But it was clearly a man’s bed, covered only with a nondescript quilt and a red wool blanket. And the walls behind it were sand-colored pine, the curtains plain, undecorated muslin. Alex recognized the scarred pine chest beside the bed. Her heart rate accelerated. She had done it—she had traveled back in time!
The woman cried out again.
Alex quickly sat up, glancing toward the source of the shrill sound. And she stared at the platinum blond woman standing beside the bedroom’s single armoire.
The woman stared back at her, her eyes wide, bulging.
But they were beautiful blue eyes, Alex noted with rising dismay. Dear God, this woman was gorgeous, an angel, perfection. Alex could not believe her eyes. And she did not have to be told to know that this was Blackwell’s wife.
No wonder he had never mentioned her.
“What are you doing here!” the woman gasped. “Who are you? How did you get inside the house? I am going to go and fetch Xavier!” Her tone was high with hysteria.
