He drew the coat closer, shivering inside as he continued to watch the dark waves crashing onto the dock. He had been here in this spot for more than an hour, and despite the warmth of the season, his feet felt like ice and he was light-headed, but he could not tear himself from the sight of the churning sea. “The water is rough, Tarasai, don’t you think? Very rough for this time of year.”
“A summer storm,” she said gazing at the sea for a moment, then dismissing it as she slipped her arm through his. “Armand, mon chèr, you must listen to the docteur if you are to get better.”
He sighed, feeling worn to the bone. Defeated. “Tarasai,” he said gently, turning his head to look into her liquid-dark eyes. “We both know, you and I, that I will not get better.”
“Non.” She gripped his arm tighter, then drew her other hand over her barely rounded belly. “The medicine the docteur gives you, it is making you stronger. Stronger for l’enfant.”
“It’s not making me stronger,” he whispered sadly. “This illness, it’s eating me up inside.”
“But, mon—”
He pressed his finger to her sweet lips, silencing her. “Tarasai, I am getting weaker. Look at me. I cannot even walk my jungle paths any longer. I must have men to carry me.” He pointed to the two teenage village boys who stood back discreetly and waited to be summoned to take Armand back to the house in the sedan chair he had had built from one of his grandmother’s old dining room chairs.
“Non, non,” she repeated, closing her eyes and rubbing her face against his arm, breathing in his scent.
“Shh,” he soothed. “It is not so bad, really. I’m much older than you. I’ve led a good, full life.” He kissed the top of her head, her hair braided in black plaits. Then he stared out at the rough sea again. “I only wish it did not take so long to hear from England. I sent the funds weeks ago, the moment I heard from Lucia and the girls, but I have heard nothing since.”
“They are fine, your chères filles,” she assured him.
“I keep telling myself that.” He watched a wave break at the dock’s pilings and water splash and wash toward him. “And yet I have this feeling about Sapphire that I cannot shake.” He drew his free hand into a fist. “I sense…I don’t know. Unrest. Fear.” He looked into her eyes. “I know it sounds foolish, but I’m afraid she has gotten herself into trouble and she needs me.”
“It does sound idiotic, coming from a man like you. A learned man,” she said, smiling up at him. “So enough sottise.” She tugged on his arm. “Come, let us take you home and put you to bed.”
“You’re right. I know you are. But I could do this, you know. Give in, die peacefully, if I just knew she was safe.”
“No more talk of mort!” Tarasai wrapped a small arm around Armand and led him off the dock, making a sign with her hand she often made to ward off evil spirits. “Come to bed, Armand, mon chèr, and I will join you.”
“You never come to bed in the middle of the day.”
“For you, mon amour, I will. Just until you fall asleep.”
“That would be nice,” he said, suddenly so overcome with weakness that he could barely walk. Taking one last look over his shoulder at the raging sea, he pushed his worried thoughts of Sapphire away and allowed himself to yield to Tarasai.
The moment Lucia heard the knock at the door, she was on her feet. “Avena,” she ordered, waving her hand.
Avena hurried to the door. “Mr. Stowe, welcome,” she said in carefully pronounced English as she extended her hand. “Please come in.”
“Have you heard anything?” Lucia asked, rushing toward Jessup.
He opened his arms to her, breaking into a grin. “I have. There was a message there waiting at my office when I arrived this morning.” He kissed Lucia’s forehead. “I cancelled my first appointment and came straight over.”
“Where is she?” Lucia clasped both his pudgy hands in hers, thinking to herself what a treasure this roly-poly man was. “Is she safe? When can I see her?”
“She is safe.” He nodded and then turned to Avena. “Some tea, please.”
Avena bobbed a curtsy and disappeared into the kitchen.
“She’s fine,” Jessup continued, “but apparently young Lord Thomas was not entirely forthright in his conversation with me the other night.” He led Lucia to the settee and helped her sit before taking his place beside her, holding her hands.
“Whatever do you mean?” Lucia said, beginning to lose patience with him. “If that young man has harmed a hair on my Sapphire’s head, I swear—”
“Now, now,” Jessup soothed. “Don’t get your feathers all ruffled.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t have feathers—now tell me what has become of my goddaughter.”
He hesitated, then took a deep breath and reached for her hand. “It’s as I guessed. She’s gone to America with Lord Wessex.”
Tears sprang to Lucia’s eyes and she turned away. Her darling had gone. She’d always known it would happen someday, but so soon? She hadn’t expected it to be so soon. “I don’t believe you. She would never leave me without saying goodbye, without telling me where she was going.”
“But you see, she did leave word. Lord Wessex sent me a note. It was only because they sailed on a Sunday that we didn’t know sooner.” He patted her hand. “The message was delivered to my office, rather than my home, by mistake.”
She turned back to him. “Sapphire sent a message?”
“Lord Wessex did.”
Lucia wasn’t sure what to make of this and found herself immediately suspicious of the note. “And he said…”
“The note was rather brief, mostly instructions for me concerning the business of his inheritance.”
Lucia’s eyes narrowed. “What about Lord Thomas? What does he have to do with all this?”
“Well, I’m not entirely certain, but I have a feeling that Lord Wessex rescued your Sapphire from Lord Thomas and in a moment of impulsiveness—you know how impetuous these young people in love can be, dear—she agreed to run away with him.”
A smile crept across Lucia’s face. “I see, an adventure,” she murmured. “They fell madly in love and, after having a row with Charles, she impulsively boarded the ship with Lord Wessex, unable to go another moment with him.”
“Something like that, I think,” Jessup agreed, smiling. “Very romantic, isn’t it?”
“Mostly foolish,” she said, looking at him. “But it sounds like my Sapphire. I knew that when she truly fell in love, she would fall hard.” She frowned. “But what of this business of her needing to be rescued from Lord Thomas?”
“That was not information I gained from Lord Wessex’s note, but from a far more reliable source.”
“And that source being?”
He offered a sly grin. “One of my servants. Apparently my housekeeper’s daughter’s husband’s brother is one of Lord Thomas’s coachmen, and he was a firsthand witness to Sapphire’s—” he paused “—flight.”
“Good God, Jessup, you’re making no sense,” Lucia said. “What flight?”
“It seems that Lord Thomas did not leave her on the street so much as she left him.”
Lucia arched a brow.
“From what the driver could gather—” he cleared his throat “—there was a bit of a tussle inside the coach and Sapphire simply…got out.”
Lucia chuckled. “Tussle, was there? Sounds like my girl, my Sophie’s girl. Sapphire has always been one to make her own decisions. But she wasn’t harmed? Tell me that she wasn’t harmed.”
“No one was harmed except Lord Thomas, who gained a broken jaw from Lord Wessex somewhere in the process.”
“Serves him right.” Lucia sighed with relief. “I’m just thankful she’s safe. And this Lord Wessex, he will take good care of her, won’t he?”
“I must tell you again, my dear,” he said, “a finer gentleman I do not believe I have ever met. Oh, a little arrogant perhaps, a little too full of his own accomplishments and capa
bilities—but what successful man isn’t, at his age?”
She smiled. “Thank you,” she said, lifting his age-spotted hand to kiss it. “Thank you so much. You told me you would get to the bottom of this and you have.”
He patted her hand. “So, I suppose there’s no need for me to go any further with my research concerning Sapphire’s father.”
Lucia pulled her hand away from him. “Whatever do you mean?”
He looked at her in obvious confusion. “It’s…it’s just that if she has gone with Lord Wessex, who her father is or is not is of little consequence, don’t you think?”
Lucia rose to her feet. “I think nothing of the sort, Mr. Stowe.”
“I…I don’t—” He pushed himself off the couch.
“Who Sapphire was—is—is just as important today as it was last week. It will be even more important if she is to wed this Blake Thixton. She’ll go on her adventure, explore the United States and then she’ll come back, most likely Lord Wessex’s wife, but she’ll still want to be recognized as her father’s child. It will be important to her children.” She stared at Jessup. “What? You don’t think she’ll come back?”
“I…”
“You’re wrong!” Lucia declared. “I know my Sapphire, and while she may have gone off impulsively, she will not forget us, nor will she forget who she is. She’ll be back, and if you don’t believe this to be true, Mr. Stowe,” she said contemptuously, “then perhaps Avena should show you to the door.”
For a moment Lucia thought he might burst into tears.
“No, no, no,” Jessup said, reaching out to her. “I only said that because I wasn’t certain—” He looked down at the floor, then up at her. “Lucia, love, if you want me to continue researching Sapphire’s parentage, I’ll do it. I’ll find the truth for you if it takes me the rest of my days, if that’s what you want.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “Please do not be angry with me. I can’t bear to have you angry with me.”
She fell silent at his plea. “It’s what I want, Jessup.”
“Then it’s what I want,” he said softly, offering his hand to her. “Now, come sit beside me and we’ll enjoy a cup of tea before I must return to my office.”
“Gone? Whatever do you mean she’s gone?” Henry asked, standing before a gilded floor-length mirror, trying to tie his cravat.
Angelique lay on her belly across his bed in nothing but her shift, a plate of berries and a bowl of sweet cream in front of her. She dipped a berry in the cream and popped it into her mouth. “She’s gone to Boston with the American.”
Henry turned away from the mirror, his fingers tangled in the fabric of the cravat. “Sweet, innocent Sapphire has run away with Lord Wessex?” he asked in wide-eyed amazement.
She dipped another berry, licked the sweet cream off it and dipped it again. “Wessex, Thixton, whatever you want to call him, left a note for his barrister, Mr. Stowe. That’s my aunt Lucia’s Jessup. He didn’t say much, but he did say that Sapphire was with him and not to worry.”
“I’ll be damned,” Henry mused, turning back to the mirror. “You think the chap is, you know, safe?”
Angelique shrugged. “Safe enough.” She cut her eyes coquettishly. “Safe as you, Lord Henry Carter.”
He chuckled at her reflection in the mirror. “Just not what I expected from our Sapphire. Charles said she wouldn’t give him so much as a squeeze of a teat.”
“She was in love with Wessex even though she said she hated him.” Angelique rolled her eyes. “Her and her romantic notions. It’s from reading that silly poetry—Keats, Byron, Shelly.”
“I don’t think it’s silly to be in love with someone.” He looked at her in the mirror. “I’m in love with you, Angel.”
She licked her sticky fingertips and frowned. “Don’t say such things. You’re in love with my body and what it can do for yours.”
“I am in love with your body and your heart.”
She rose from the bed and strolled toward him. “Have you been reading poetry, too?” She reached around him, pushed his hands aside and finished tying his cravat for him. “You’re going to be late for your parents’ dinner if you don’t hurry.”
“You should go with me.”
“That would certainly go well with the roasted pheasant your mother is serving. Didn’t you say your grandparents will be there? Lord and Lady Carter, the lady’s parents, Lord and Lady Bottlewait, the heir apparent Lord Carter…and his whore, Angel.”
“You’re not a whore.” He turned in her arms, wrapping his around her waist. “I love you, Angel, and I want to marry you.”
“That will wear thin once your father disinherits you.” She gave his cravat one last tug and then stepped back to view her handiwork. Satisfied, she gave him a nod. “Now go, before you’re late.”
He sighed, grasped her arm and kissed her soundly on the lips before releasing her. “You’ll wait up for me?”
She smiled, returning to the bed and her strawberries and cream. “Of course.” She dipped one finger into the cream and began to lick it off seductively. “I’ll even save you a little dessert.”
He removed his frock coat from the coat rack near the door and slipped one arm into it. “You’d better.”
Henry was always saying he loved her, but every man she had ever made love with proclaimed his undying love. She knew men didn’t mean it and she never held it against them. Life was too short for falling in love only to end up brokenhearted.
That was usually what happened to women, Angelique thought. She had witnessed it from a young age. Her mother had loved the white planter who had come to their hut nights, her father, whose name she had never known. Then he had cast her mother aside for another. She died of a terrible fever when Angelique was five, but the old women in the village said she’d died of a broken heart.
“Angel?”
Henry’s voice broke into her thoughts and she looked at him, smiling.
He opened the door as he reached for his top hat. “I want us to have our own apartments. I want us to be together.”
“And if your parents disown you, how will we pay for these grand apartments?” she asked.
“They won’t disown me. They’re just testing me to see if I really do love you.” He lowered his hat to his head; it was a rather handsome hat, she had to admit. “You let me worry about money. Let me worry about everything.”
“Have no fear of that,” she teased, dropping onto the bed. “You’re already doing a fine job of it.”
He kissed her hand and drew it from his mouth. “Adieu, mon amour.”
“Your French is atrocious,” she laughed, trying to lighten the conversation.
“And you love me anyway.” He held on to the door. “Say it, say you love me, Angel.”
“Go. You’ll be late.” She waved him away.
“It isn’t enough.”
There was something in his voice that hurt her. She met his gaze. “For now, it will have to be.”
Sapphire sat cross-legged on the bunk, as far from Blake as she could get. She watched him read, but whenever he turned his head to look at her, she pretended to be interested in her nails or the pattern of threads in the blanket.
Hours passed. She napped, relieved herself when he discreetly excused himself from the cabin, ate in the afternoon, and napped some more. Now it was growing dark outside the single porthole and the fact that she was going to America was beginning to sink in. The silence in the cabin had begun to wear on her. She fidgeted. She made the bed, then remade it. Twice Blake offered her a book. Both times she declined.
When it grew too dark in the cabin to read, Blake lit two swinging brass lamps that were attached to the bulkhead and another that was cleverly attached to the built-in desk, which swayed along with the ship.
“Are you going to sulk all the way across the Atlantic?” he asked, startling her when he finally spoke.
“I’m not sulking.”
He closed his book. “Yes, you are. Which is fine,
if you’re enjoying yourself.
She folded her arms. “I am most certainly not enjoying myself. I’ve been taken against my will and am being dragged across the ocean toward the wilds of America.
Blake rose from his chair. “All right, all right, enough.” He extended a hand to her, turning his head as if to protect himself from her next attack. “We’ve already gone over this. I know you’re here with me against your will. The question is, how are you going to deal with it now that you find yourself in this position?” When she said nothing, he went on. “Because that really tells me what mettle a man is made of, how he reacts to a bad situation he finds himself in.”
“I’m not a man.”
The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. “I, of all people, am well aware of that.”
She almost laughed. She stared at her feet for a moment, her arms still crossed over her chest. “I’d like to go up to the deck before it gets too dark. I’d like to see the ocean.”
“Would you like to dine topside?”
The thought intrigued her. “We can do that?”
“I paid the ship’s owner well for this crossing. I can do whatever the hell I please.”
“Do you always get your way?” she asked, letting her hands slip to her sides. “Do you just buy your way through everything?”
“Usually.”
“That’s pretty arrogant,” she said.
“It’s the truth.”
She let her gaze fall to the floor.
He waited.
She reluctantly lifted her lashes to look at him. He was handsome in this flickering lamplight, dressed in simple breeches, linen shirt and the tall boots of a working man, perhaps even more handsome than in his frock coat and top hat.
“I’d like to have dinner on the deck…preferably without you,” she added quickly.
“Not an option. We dine together topside or we dine together here.” Walking to the bed, he opened his arms and waited.
Sapphire Page 21
