Ignoring the other models, Alex moved toward the brig, as if in a trance. Her eyes widened when she read the engraved plaque beneath it:the Pearl.
Had she read something about that ship in her studies? Why did this vessel, and its name, seem so familiar? Alex had an excellent memory, but failed to recall any anecdotes about this particular vessel. Alex stared at the stately ship, because she could clearly see that it was no usual merchantman—it had been designed so that it could carry at least thirty-two guns. She wet her lips, managed to tear her gaze from the decks and rigging and the vacant gun mounts. Her fingers trembling, she reached for the pamphlet and flipped it open.
The Pearl was captured by Barbary corsairs in the early summer of 1803. Both captain and crew were taken into captivity. Acting heroically, at great personal risk, Captain Xavier Blackwell, with two of his most trusted crew members, Jake Tubbs and Patrick O’Brien, managed to slip back aboard her and destroy her before she could be delivered to Tripoli and used against American naval forces stationed in the Mediterranean. Blackwell, the heir to Blackwell Shipping, was executed in July of 1804 upon the personal orders of the bashaw. The crew were ransomed and released in the fall of 1805 for thirty thousand dollars.
Alex was shaking. She could hear the explosion, could see the beautiful vessel erupting in splinters of wood and swaths of sail from the deep blue sea, aflame. She could hear the angry cries of the corsairs—and she could see the captain, watching, perhaps in manacles, at once heartbroken by the loss of such a gallant ship and triumphant at having denied the corsairs such a prize.
Suddenly Alex felt eyes upon her. She looked up and cried out.
There on the wall facing the small replica of thePearlwas a portrait of a striking, dark-haired man in clothes from the same period. Alex was immobilized.
Finally she began to breathe. She moved closer, her gaze riveted to his. The nameplate beneath the portrait readXavier Blackwell.
Her heart raced. Alex wet her very dry lips. She stared at Blackwell, drinking in the sight of him. God, he was a magnificent man.
He stood with his back to a vessel under construction and in dry dock. He appeared to be very tall, perhaps six foot two, and he was both broad shouldered and narrow hipped. He stood in a seaman’s stance, his long legs braced hard apart as if on the deck of a rolling ship. He wore the clothing of his era, a white shirt, a gray waistcoat, and an open red frock coat. He was wearing tan knee breeches, pale stockings, and black shoes with silver buckles. He was hatless, his hair dark and pulled back in a queue. His face was mesmerizing, harsh in its planes, but high cheekboned, his nose patrician, his jaw strong and broad. Yet it was his eyes that held her spellbound. They were black, and they burned with stunning intensity. They seemed to be staring directly at her, as if he were alive, a flesh-and-blood man, instead of many layers of pigment and paint, a superficial rendering. And he was unsmiling. Alex knew he had hated standing for this portrait. She could almost feel his restless spirit surrounding her—dear God.
Alex stared.
He stared back.
Alex could not move. She could not look away, either. It really felt as if the eyes in the portrait were real, as if they bored into her with deliberate intent—with the intention of communicating to her.
Which was utter nonsense.
Still paralyzed, Alex heard herself whisper, “Are you here?”
The room was silent.
Had he been present last night outside of Blackwell House? she wondered. She was almost certain that she had felt something—or someone—then.
Alex managed to tear her gaze away from the portrait and she looked carefully around. The drapes did not move. Dust motes sparkled in the air. Outside, there was a small back garden, mostly dirt and sand, and the sun was shining brightly through the trees.
Alex hugged herself, and found herself creeping closer to the portrait. Staring up at Blackwell, she was stricken with a sudden, intense yearning. Imagine meeting, knowing, loving such a man. She had only to look at him to know that he was a man of courage and conviction, a real nineteenth-century hero, a man to admire for all time.
But he had died way before his time. Alex felt a wave of grief sweeping over her as she thought about how unjust his execution was. Why had the bashaw of Tripoli condemned him to death while his crew were ransomed and freed?
Alex suddenly wanted to find out. She was suddenly compelled to find out. In fact, she wanted to know far more about this heroic man than the mere paragraph provided by the museum’s pamphlet.
Alex shrank against the wall, listening to the voices of a group of new visitors to the museum fading as they moved away down the hall. She did not hesitate. Quickly she left the library where she had found Blackwell’s portrait and she hurried into the foyer. Certain that she had not been discovered yet, glancing around to make sure the museum attendant wasn’t present, Alex stepped over the blue velvet cordon and raced up the stairs.
On the second-floor landing she paused, her heart hammering far too swiftly for comfort. She did not understand her fear, or her complusion. Alex forced herself to concentrate on what she intended to do. She glanced around the second floor and down the single, narrow hallway.
Her nerves prickling now with anticipation, Alex shoved open the first door she came to.
It was a small but pleasant bedroom. The walls were papered in what had once been a white-background floral print, the two-poster bed had a matching coverlet, and the furniture was all beautifully designed; Alex was a historian, but she knew a little about furnishings. She was immensely disappointed because she thought that everything was French or English. Nothing could have been early American. The furniture was too elegant.
Alex backed out, quietly closing the door. She paused in the adjacent doorway of a child’s nursery. Again, this room had been furnished with tasteful elegance and European appointments. But a very crude rocking horse sat in one corner of the room. Alex stared, her pulse pounding.
Its mouth was painted red and fading, its eyes were blue, and the rocking horse was grinning widely at her. Alex continued to stare. The horse had a mane and tail of yarn. It had been hand carved. Suddenly she could see a small, chubby boy astride it of no more than three years old. Her palms grew damp and her pulse was racing even more quickly than before.
She closed the door carefully and began glancing into other rooms, ignoring them now, because she was looking forhisroom. She continued on past the master bedroom. She was certain that Blackwell’s father had been alive at the time of his death, so Blackwell would not have used the master suite.
And then she opened the door to a sparsely appointed room, one dominated by a heavy, dark bed. Immediately she knew she had foundhisbedroom. Alex froze.
And she felt his presence far more strongly than she had felt it last night outside of Blackwell House. He was there, with her, watching her, ohmygod, she knew it.
His eyes burned holes in her, not in her back, but from across the room, as if he faced her.
