"What about when you go back? Do you really expect me to marry someone who might suddenly get yanked back to his own century? Just so you won't feel guilty when we sleep together?"

Griffin grabbed her hands. "Merrie, let us be honest here. I don't think I will be going back. With every day that passes, this fact becomes more real to me."

"You-you can't be sure of that," she said.

"Marry me," he repeated.

"No," Meredith said, snatching her hands from his. "I will not marry you, Griffin Rourke."

With that, she turned and walked through the door, making a point to slam it behind her. Of all the nerve! Who did he think he was? She couldn't imagine a more ridiculous proposal. Honor? He could take his half-witted proposal and his moral obligation and shove it, for all she cared.

"Damn it, Merrie, wait!"

"Leave me alone, Griffin!"

Meredith strode to her bedroom and slammed that door, as well. "A marriage proposal should be based on love, not some debt of honor," she muttered. "If he thinks I'd even consider such an insult, he's more provincial than I thought!"

Meredith threw herself on the bed and covered her head with a pillow. All right, so maybe she was tempted to accept. Deep inside, she wanted nothing more than to spend her life with Griffin Rourke. But she also wanted a marriage based on love, not duty. And she was not fool enough to believe that Griffin loved her. He may desire her, but he did not love her. In his mind, love was not necessary to make a good marriage.

Yet, that didn't stop her from wanting him. There wasn't a minute that passed in which she didn't think of him and didn't wonder what it might be like between them. And the more time that passed, the more she began to see him as a man who belonged in her time.

When he was dressed in body-hugging jeans and a torn T-shirt, she could almost believe that he had been born in the same decade as she had. His speech had even slipped into more familiar patterns and as time passed, he seemed more comfortable with his surroundings.

Meredith sighed. Who was she trying to fool? When it came right down to it, he was still Griffin Rourke-a man whose heart and soul belonged to the past.

7

Meredith thought Griffin might come to her bed that night, but he didn't. She woke at least once to hear him pacing outside her bedroom door. Several times he stopped and she could imagine his hand gripping the knob. She slowed her breathing and pretended to sleep, but he didn't venture inside. Finally, the house had grown silent and she'd drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

When she awoke, it was well past dawn. From the living room, she could hear Ben Gunn carrying on a onesided conversation from his perch next to her desk. Meredith rolled out of bed and stretched, grateful that Griffin had already left for work and relieved that she wouldn't have to face him.

The last thing she wanted to discuss was his marriage proposal. She knew her refusal had stung his considerable pride, but there was much more to be solved between them before they could consider a future together. If he truly was here to stay, then she would have time… time to make him love her-before she told him why she really believed he'd come to her.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then padded to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

"Morning!" Ben cried, adding a wolf whistle to his cheerful greeting.

"Good morn-"

Meredith cut short her reply to the gray parrot. She and the bird were not alone. Griffin stood in front of the fire-place, staring into an empty grate, his arms braced on the mantel, the muscles of his back tense beneath the soft fabric of his paint-spattered T-shirt. Her gaze drifted to the tight contours of his backside. The man was meant for denim, she mused.

Griffin slowly turned to face her. Her hesitant smile faded when it met a mask of cold indifference. He stared at her for a long moment. When he didn't speak, she did.

"It's late. Why aren't you at work?" she asked, watching him warily.

Her words seemed to crack his icy facade and he raised a dark eyebrow. "When did you plan to tell me, Merrie?"

Meredith ran her fingers through her hair. "What are you talking about? Tell you what?"

He reached over and picked up a stack of papers from her desk, then held them out to her. "About this," he said, waving them at her. "Your work. The subject of the book you're writing."

Meredith's breath caught in her throat. "You searched my desk?"

He let out a laugh, a harsh sound without a trace of humor. "Of course I searched your desk. You forget, Merrie, I'm a spy. If I need information, I make it my business to find it."

"You had no right," Meredith said softly.

"No right!" Ben mimicked.

Griffin glared at the bird, then leveled a cool gaze on her. "I had no right? I had every right," he said, his voice deceptively even. "When, Merrie? How long did you expect to keep this from me?"

She stepped back, surprised at the intensity of his tightly leashed anger, and unable to answer. How long? She had never wantedto keep it from him, there had just never seemed to be a good time to tell him. And then, later, it didn't make any difference.

"Tell me now," Griffin demanded. "Tell me that you have spent years studying the man I despise, that you plan to write a book glorifying his crimes. Tell me that you would do anything to learn more about Teach. Tell me that you are the reason I am here. For 'tis the only thing that makes sense," he said. "Youbrought me here, Merrie. Now, tell me how you did it!"

"I don't know!" she cried. "I've searched my brain since the night you arrived, but I can't recall anything that would have prompted you to land here. But you're not here because of my work, that much I do know."

"If not your work, then what?"

"I-I can't tell you," she said. "It's just so crazy, even I don't believe it."

"Damn it, Merrie, I have a right to know exactly how and why you've manipulated my life."

She drew a deep breath. "You're my fantasy man," she said, the words coming out in a rush.

He gasped. "What?"

Meredith felt a blush creep up her cheeks and warm her skin. "I-I've had these dreams, these… sexual fantasies about a pirate. But they were just fantasies," she cried. "I didn't mean any harm. I didn't mean to bring you here, I swear it."

Griffin laughed harshly. "I have been in your world long enough to know that many strange and unfathomable things are possible, but this I do not believe. I was not brought here to take you to bed! I would not have been taken from my task simply to satisfy some woman's erotic fantasies."

"Then why?" she challenged. "Nothing else makes sense. I know more about Teach than you do. Nothing you've told me is new. At first I was afraid to talk to you about Blackbeard for fear you might be snatched back into your own time. Kelsey warned me that to do so might alter history in some way."

"You've already altered history," he said. "You brought me here, and took me from my task."

Meredith rubbed at the growing knot of tension in her temple. "If I was the cause of your coming here, I'm sorry. And if I could undo it, I would."

"Then there has to be more," he muttered. "We have missed something. You have missed something." His voice was cold and accusatory.

"If I knew how to send you back, don't you think I would?"

"I don't know, Merrie. Would you?"

"How can you even think that?" she asked.

He cursed beneath his breath. "What, then? I am just left to live out my life in this time and place."

She threw up her hands in frustration. "You make it sound so appealing," she said. "Do you find life here that objectionable?"

"I had a life, in my owncentury," Griffin said, punctuating his words with a jab to his chest. "It is not so simple to forget that."

She scoffed. "A life? You had an all-consuming plan for revenge. Is that what you call a life?" Meredith demanded.

Her aim was true and her volley hit its mark. Griffin cursed, then turned away, bracing his hands on the mantel again. She could feel his anger all the way across the room, could see it in his tightly coiled body, could hear it in his harsh breathing.

"Is this plan for revenge that important to you?" she asked, wanting to reach out and touch him, to soothe his anger. "If so, why didn't you kill Teach when you had the chance, on his ship, while he slept?"

He refused to face her. "To murder him would make me no better than the criminal he is. Teach was responsible for my father's death. I will be sure he pays for his crime."

"Tell me about that," she said. "I mean, if you've been brought here for my research then why don't we take advantage of it while we can. My research says that Black-beard was not a bloodthirsty murderer. Though I have read of his capture of the Betty, I have yet to find a record of him killing a man named Rourke."

Griffin turned, his eyes hard with anger. "He did not kill him by his hand," he said. "Teach killed him by his deeds."

"And what does that mean? Explain it to me. Make me understand."

Griffin's expression softened slightly and he drew a deep, steadying breath. "When Teach attacked the Betty, he put everyone on board ashore. My father watched as the pirates scuttled the ship and it sank off Cape Charles. When he returned home, my father wasn't… right. Over the next several months, he grew very sad and quiet, the same as when he lost my mother. The doctors came and bled him, doused him with calomel, but it did no good. He died soon after."

Meredith's heart twisted in her chest. "Calomel? Are you sure of this?"