Sapphire

by Rosemary Rogers

  “I don’t see how.”

  “When do you and I ever see eye-to-eye?” He drew his thumb along her jawline in a tender caress. “Hmm?” he murmured. “I wonder, is this the way it will always be with us?”

  She looked down. She had come to tell him in private that he must send her back to London, but she didn’t want to quarrel with him, not yet. “I don’t know.” She caught his hand in hers and threaded her fingers through his. “There are some things we agree on.”

  He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’ll say.” Then he reached down to remove her apron, but she pushed his hands aside.

  “Don’t. I’m hot and sticky. I look a sight.”

  “You don’t.” He kissed the top of her head and stepped back from her. “But why don’t you take a bath?”

  She looked in the direction of his bathing room longingly. “I shouldn’t.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He reached for his glass of scotch on the edge of the table.

  “It’s not fair. The other girls have gone to bed without a cool bath.”

  “You are not one of the other girls.” He gave her an easy push in the direction of the bathing room.

  The door stood ajar and she could see the big white tub that was so long that a person could sit in it with legs out in front. “You’re just trying to get me to take my clothes off so you can take advantage of me.”

  He tilted his head back and laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?” she asked indignantly.

  He wiped his eyes, which had teared up from laughing so hard. He took a sip of the scotch. “Sapphire Fabergine, you have never done anything in your life that you did not want to do. I pity the man who would try to bend you to his will.”

  She stared up at him, exasperated by the fact that he had brought her across the Atlantic Ocean against her will, but that wasn’t what he meant, and she knew it. “I’m going to take a bath,” she said, “but if you come in there—”

  “You’ll what?” he challenged with that cocky grin of his. He took one look at her face and then laughed and looked away, waving her off with his hand. “Never mind. All I know is that I should probably take care in staying on your good side or else I may be seated in the latrine with Clarice.”

  Chuckling, Sapphire grabbed several towels off the floor where Blake had dropped them, entered the bathing room and closed the door soundly behind her.

  In the next hour, Blake knocked on the door twice, but both times Sapphire sent him away, and he remained true to his word, staying out. She knew she couldn’t stay submerged in the exquisitely cool water, hidden in his bathing room from the world forever, but each time she rose to step out of the tub, she would rinse her hair or scrub her entire body head to toe with perfumed bath salts one last time.

  But finally, when her skin began to wrinkle, she got out of the tub and wrapped her hair in one of the smaller towels, using a larger towel around her body. She just couldn’t bring herself to put on the scratchy black maid’s uniform; even the old gray skirt and faded blouse Blake had given her were more comfortable than the heap of clothing on the floor.

  She opened the bathing room door and walked into the bedchamber. Blake had turned off most of the oil lamps so that only one glowed softly beside the bed. She did not see him but she could smell the smoke from one of his cigars, and when she went out on the balcony, she saw the outline of his form. He stood leaning against the rail, peering out over the cliff onto the dark water far below.

  Sapphire walked over to stand beside him, and though he rested one hand casually on her hip, they were both quiet for a long time. They just stood there, enjoying the cool breeze, being together without arguing. “I should go,” she said softly at last.

  He tightened his arm around her but did not look at her. “No. Stay with me. Stay the night.”

  “Blake, I can’t. If someone wakes in the dormitory and realizes I’m missing, they might come looking for me.”

  “Sapphire, tell me what you want from me.” He ground out his cigar on a glass plate that was balanced on the rail and he turned to her.

  “What I want?” she said, taken aback by his sudden question.

  “Yes, what you want, what will satisfy you. Do you want me to say I love you? Is that it?” He stared at her through the darkness. “Do you want me to declare my undying love for you?”

  He said it as if love were a dirty word, and instead of being angry at him as she should have been, all she felt was sadness, and pity. Sapphire released the white towel and let it fall to the smooth stone floor of the balcony. She tipped her head back and removed the towel, letting her damp hair fall over her shoulders. Then she reached out to him. A part of her wanted to pull him into her arms, draw his head to her breast and smooth his hair, smooth away the lines on his face, smooth away all the pain she heard in his voice at this moment.

  Instead, she rested a hand on each of his broad shoulders and she lifted up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. His lips remained rigid for a moment, but then they softened and suddenly his arms shot out, pulling her against him. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, kissing her hard, turning her in his arms to push her roughly against the railing.

  Sapphire felt her hair hang free over the open space; she felt as if she were falling, and yet as long as Blake held her in his arms like this, she knew she would never hit the rocks far below. They kissed again and again, Blake cupping her breasts with his hands, squeezing them, kneading them.

  She pulled the tail of his shirt from his trousers, found the buttons with her fingers and pulled it over his head. She loved the feel of his hard, muscular chest beneath her fingertips, loved to take his nipple in her mouth, loved creating the same sensations in him that he created in her.

  Blake drew his hands up and down her arms, over her rib cage, over her waist, in a frenzy of desire for her. He rested his face between her breasts and then began to kiss his way downward. Before she could stop him, he was on his knees pushing her legs apart. Sapphire grabbed the rail behind her as he thrust his fingers between the damp, aching folds of her womanhood. She cried out in pleasure, in agony. First his fingers, then his tongue. The stars overhead began to swirl, pulling her into their vortex.

  She ran her fingers through his dark hair, arching her back, groaning as she found glorious release. Then Blake was on his feet, stepping out of his trousers, pushing her up against the rail again. He grasped his erection and entered her as she held on to the cool forged metal with one hand, lifting her hips to meet him…to take all of his length inside her. She rose and fell in a rhythm of ecstasy under a canopy of stars that seemed to be theirs and theirs alone. Soon she heard herself cry out again, felt him thrust one last time, and then he slid out of her, dropping his cheek to her shoulder.

  For a moment they just stood there, clinging to each other. Sapphire was trembling all over. What had Blake meant when he asked her if she wanted him to tell her he loved her? Did he love her? Was that his way of saying he did but that he was afraid to admit it? They had never spoken of love and yet she knew she loved him, and she knew it at this moment as well as she knew herself. Was it possible that this man who seemed to have no emotions possessed feelings as deep and vast as her own…was it possible that he truly loved her…or was it only more deceit and lies?

  “Let’s go inside,” he whispered in her ear when he could breathe evenly again. “Where are my manners.”

  She laughed and allowed him to lead her into his room. They lay down on his bed on the cool sheets and she rested her cheek on his shoulder, reveling in the feel of his arm around her. On the mantel across the room, she could hear the small case clock ticking.

  “You asked me what I want,” she said softly.

  She knew he was awake, listening, even if he didn’t answer. “I need for you to accept me for who I am.” She paused. “Accept me for who I might be. Accept the possibility.”

  “Sapphire—”

  She half sat up, pressing her finger to his lips,
looking down at him in the shadows of the lamplight. “I never asked you to believe me when I told you that I was Lord Wessex’s daughter. All I ever asked was that you give me the opportunity to prove it to you.”

  “You have no proof.”

  This time she was the one who was silent. Again the clock ticked hollowly in the large, airy bedchamber.

  “Do you truly love me?” she asked quietly.

  He turned his head, shifting his gaze. “I don’t know,” he said.

  She was saddened at once by the thought that he didn’t say he loved her, but she felt a flicker of hope. If he didn’t not love her, did that mean that perhaps he did love her? Or was there something inside him that kept him from ever feeling love?

  “So what are we going to do?” he asked after another long silence with nothing but the tick of the clock and the thumping of her heart making a sound.

  “I don’t know,” she sighed, lying down with her head on his pillow, not yet ready to leave him. “Perhaps we both need some more time to think.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed. “In the meantime, will you join me here in my bedchamber?”

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I just can’t, Blake.” She swallowed. “And really, it’s not so bad in the kitchen. I’ve made a good friend.”

  “Sapphire, I hate to think—”

  “I think that’s enough talk for one night, don’t you?” she asked.

  He rolled over to face her, playing with her hair. “I’m a Harvard graduate and you were schooled by the Good Sisters of the Sacred Heart,” he said, sounding more like himself again. “And yet time and time again, I think to myself that you’re the far brighter of the two of us.”

  She laughed, looking up at him, finding herself lost in his dark eyes. “Will you kiss me?” she whispered, her lower lip trembling with emotion. All she wanted to do at that moment was to tell him she loved him. She wanted to stand on the rail of the balcony and shout it to all of Boston. But Blake kissed her and her words were lost, lost to his touch and her own fears.

  23

  “Jessup?” Lucia sang, bustling down the corridor to his office, a letter clutched in her hands. By now, his clerk, Mr. Turnburry, knew better than to try to stop her from bursting into his office whenever she pleased. “Jessup, dearest.”

  Angelique followed behind her, removing her lace gloves one finger at a time. “Really, Aunt Lucia, have you any idea how unfashionable it is to be in love with the man keeping you?”

  “Keeping me?” Lucia stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to her young charge, one hand on her ample hip. “No man is keeping me, I will have you know, young lady! I keep myself. I may not be wealthy, but it has been many years since I have been forced to have a man to pay for the roof over my head. How dare you! How dare you,” she accused, taking a step toward Angelique.

  Angelique was genuinely surprised. “Aunt Lucia, please. I’m sorry.” She held up her hands. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I see nothing wrong, obviously, with allowing a man to pay for my favors.”

  “I’m not upset! I’m insulted.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you.” She gave a little laugh. “I am the last person to judge a woman for allowing a man to care for her. You know that. I was only saying that because…well, it’s embarrassing the way the two of you carry on, not just in private, but in public, as well.”

  “Mon dieu, but I love you. I love our dear Sapphire, and I make no bones about that, in private or in public.”

  “I know.”

  Angelique looked at Lucia with those beautiful eyes of hers. Lucia still wondered sometimes, after all these years, if the girl was not Armand’s child. She certainly had his passion. “But you’re too old to be kissing in public.” She chuckled. “And it is different.”

  Lucia adjusted her new straw bonnet with its wide grosgrain pink bow that tied beneath her chin. “It most certainly is not different.”

  “It’s a different kind of love,” Angelique insisted. “And you know it. My love for you and Sapphire, for Armand, will last a lifetime. Henry’s so-called love for me will last only a few weeks, a few months, a few years, perhaps, but eventually he’ll tire of me and he will no longer be in love with me.”

  “You are too cynical for a girl your age.” Lucia played with the lace of the collar on Angelique’s pretty blue walking dress. “Love is different between a mother and her daughter and a mother and her lover in many ways, dulce, but as you grow older, not as much.” She sighed, wishing she knew how to better explain it. “Both kinds of love can be overwhelming, sometimes the passionate kind even more. I think perhaps that is why you are afraid to love your Henry.”

  “Afraid to love Henry? Where did that ridiculous notion come from? Has Henry called on you again? Because if he has—”

  “Angel, calm yourself,” Lucia said as she took Angelique’s cheeks between her palms. “Young Henry has not been by to call alone since the last time you punished him for that full week. I only speak of what I see. What I see in your eyes when you’re together.”

  “Really, Aunt Lucia, you’re as daft as he is. Now, are we going to ask Mr. Stowe if he would like to join us for tea or are we going to stand here and talk about my lover?”

  Lucia considered carrying the conversation concerning Henry a little further, but then decided that the subject of Angelique’s true feelings for him needed to be dealt with a bit at a time. For Angelique, the thought of loving a man had to be difficult, especially because she had been determined never to love, only to be loved. Lucia knew the young woman needed time to get used to the idea. Why, it had taken a year for Angelique to actually sleep in a bed when she joined them at Orchid Manor. For the first year she was with them, she slept on a mat on Sapphire’s bedchamber floor because, for all her appearance of being enlightened and impulsive, change did not come easily to her.

  “Lucia, dear heart, there you are.” Jessup came down the corridor toward them, his arms outstretched. “I thought I heard your lovely voice.”

  Angelique looked at Lucia and then rolled her eyes as if to say, This is what I’m talking about, but Lucia only laughed and let Jessup kiss her on the cheek. Unlike the young Angelique, Lucia knew how infrequently true love came in a lifetime.

  “I have some wonderful news,” Lucia told Jessup. “We thought you might like to join us for tea, Angelique and I.”

  “I would love to join you for tea. And I have news, as well.” He gestured toward his office. “Won’t you both come in? You can tell me your news while I finish up this one task and then we can be on our way.”

  “We’ve a letter from Sapphire, at last,” Angelique said, passing the two of them to enter Jessup’s office first. Inside, she turned around, pulling her bonnet off and letting it dangle by the ribbon from her fingers as she studied his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with interest. “For all our little Sapphire’s priggishness, I think she’s become Lord Wessex’s mistress.”

  “We know nothing of the sort,” Lucia contradicted, taking a seat in the red leather chair in front of Jessup’s desk. “Her letter says nothing of the sort.”

  “Well, what does it say?” Jessup asked diplomatically as he returned to his chair behind his desk and reached for his spectacles.

  “It’s very brief.” Lucia smoothed the paper she had already read at least ten times. “She says that she has gone to Boston with Mr. Thixton, but that we are not to worry. She says that she is having a grand adventure—” emotion rose in her voice but she swallowed it and continued “—and that she will return to London soon.” She folded it, glancing up at Jessup. “She asks that I look after the casket she left behind, where she keeps her mother’s keepsakes, and she asks that I please implore the good-hearted Mr. Stowe to continue his research into the legal marriage of her mother to Lord Edward Thixton.”

  “I see,” Jessup said. “So she and Lord Wessex have not settled this matter between them?”

  “I told you, Jessup—she wants proof of her mother’s marriag
e. It would do my heart good before I leave this mortal coil to know that my beloved Sophie’s wish was realized.” She began to fold Sapphire’s precious letter on its creases. “You said you had good news. I do hope it’s in reference to my Sapphire’s request.”

  “It is, indeed.” He scrawled his name across a document and then removed his glasses to look at her across the desk.

  “Well, do tell, Mr. Stowe,” Angelique said, removing a book from one of his shelves and dusting its cover to read it.

  Jessup drew himself up with pride. “I believe I have found Miss Sophie Barkley’s residence in Sussex.”

  “Jessup, that’s wonderful, mon amour!” Lucia turned in her chair. “Do you hear that, Angel darling. Mr. Stowe has found our Sophie’s family.”

  “He didn’t say he found her family, Auntie.” Angelique returned the book to its place and chose another. “Mr. Stowe, have you any books on America? At dinner the other night one of Henry’s friends was spinning an amazing tale about Indians. It’s all Henry has talked about for days. I wonder if they have wild Indians in Lord Wessex’s Boston.”

  Jessup chuckled, rising from his chair to walk to the bookshelves that lined one wall of his comfortable office. “I believe I might.” As he began to run his fingers across the spines of a row of books, he glanced at Lucia and then at the books again. “As Miss Fabergine said—”

  “Oh, for sweet heaven’s sake, would you please start calling Angelique by her Christian name, at least when we’re alone?” Lucia rolled her eyes. “I cannot imagine how many hours of life you Englishmen waste rattling off titles and these formal names.”

  Angelique looked to Jessup, lifting her brows in amusement.

  He glanced at her for consent and she nodded. He then cleared his throat and continued. “As Angelique said, I have not located her family. I am sad to say that they are gone, parents dead, some siblings dead, others scattered to the winds.”

  “But you’re closer than you were before?”

  “I believe I am. I intend to go personally to the village in Sussex where Mr. Wiggins, the gentleman I hired to research this, believes she may have resided.” He offered Angelique a book. “Of course, you should not get your hopes too high, yet. We don’t know if this was your Sophie or if anyone there will remember anything about a young viscount romancing one of the village girls.”