Captive Read Free Page B

Alex’s.
    “No!”
    The lady regarded Alex with concern. “We don’t show the upstairs because some of the staff here think it’s haunted.”
    Alex opened her mouth to speak—but no words came out.
    “Did you see him?”
    “I beg your pardon?” Alex managed.
    “His portrait. In the library. Xavier Blackwell.” The lady was watching Alex very closely.
    Alex nodded. Thinking,
She knows.
    “He’s an eyeful, isn’t he?” the blue-haired lady said very seriously. “My staff is in love with him, wouldn’t you know?” She hesitated. “But they’re also terrified of him.”
    “Have you seen him?” Alex whispered. “Here?”
    Their eyes met in a guilty conspiracy. “I haven’t, no. It was so unfair.” Her voice had also dropped to a whisper. “He loved ships and the sea. The sea was his life. His love. And it took his life in the end, too. What a shame, a man like that—so strong and handsome, in his prime, too.”
    “The sea didn’t take his life. He was executed by the bashaw of Tripoli.” There was anger in her tone. The depth of her anger surprised her.
    “I know that.” The attendant was unruffled. “But had he not gone to sea, again, in defiance of his father, he would have lived. He was William’s only living child, his only heir. As it is, Blackwell Shipping passed into the hands of Xavier’s uncle. Markham’s sons had plenty of children, but all girls. Today the company is run by a worthless playboy, Charles Mathieson, who has barely any claim at all to the name of Blackwell. I doubt there’s a drop of real Blackwell blood in his veins. What a shame.”
    “What happened?” Alex asked. “Why was he executed? What crimes did he commit?”
    The little lady actually blushed. “Well, dear, you won’t find this in any history book, but it’s a fact and we all know it here at the museum.”
    Alex waited, hardly patient, still gripping the front door—still afraid to come face-to-face with Blackwell’s ghost at any moment.
    “Blackwell was quite a man, as you can see. Apparently he was carrying on with the wife of the bashaw’s son.”
    Alex failed to understand. Not at first. “I beg your pardon?”
    “In those days it was a terrible crime for a Moslem woman to lie with a Christian man. Blackwell might have been a captive, but he had a lover, a stunning Moslem woman, it is said, but she wasn’t just any Moslem woman, she was the bashaw’s daughter-in-law. That was why he was executed, dearie. For his love affair with her.”

2
    A LEX WAS STAYING at the Bostonian, a downtown hotel. She rushed into her room and slammed the door. She was still stunned.
    But she was much calmer now than before. The entire Boston Common separated her from Blackwell House. She was also amongst a hotel full of guests. And the street below her window was lit up brightly with restaurants and shops, while filled with pedestrians and passing cars and taxis. Perhaps, just perhaps, she had imagined everything.
    Alex did not think so.
    She hung up her blazer and stripped out of her faded jeans. Clad in nothing but a white lace bikini, a matching bra, and her Gap T-shirt, she prowled her hotel room. She could not get Blackwell’s image out of her mind. And now that there was a safe distance between them, she began to try to analyze what had happened. He had been present, and his eyes had been hot, his expression somehow intense, but had he been angry and hostile? Alex could not decide.
    But if she were he, she would not be a happy spirit. If she were he, she would haunt Blackwell House, demanding justice, perhaps even vengeance, even two hundred years later.
    In fact, she mused, there was probably a lot to make him unhappy, for not only had he been unjustly executed, he had died childless, and his heritage had eventually passed into thehands of relatives so distant that they were hardly Blackwells. The company that he had loved, and Alex was positive that he had loved Blackwell Shipping, had become a dinosaur,