Sapphire

by Rosemary Rogers

  She followed main roads all night, keeping the water on her left shoulder, but when dawn came, she decided that she had better stay out of sight, just in case Blake was angry enough to send someone, perhaps an officer of the law, looking for her. There was no telling what the man might do; perhaps he would accuse her of theft or of committing some other crime just to get her back under his control. A few miles out of the city, she came upon an abandoned stone building on a stream, a structure that appeared to have once been a mill. After eating some apples she’d found along the road, she curled up in a ball on a pile of tattered feed bags, wrapped herself in a wool blanket Myra had found for her and drifted off into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

  Sapphire must have been more tired than she realized because by the time she woke, stiff but refreshed, the shadows inside the old mill were already beginning to lengthen. After eating another apple and half a slice of Mrs. Porter’s bread, she packed up her meager possessions and prepared to set off again. She was just slipping her arms into the woolen barn coat one of the boys in the Thixton stables had given her when she heard something move outside.

  Sapphire froze. She wasn’t easily frightened. On the island, she had grown up hearing natives’ tales of spooks and haunts, none of which she feared—but what she did fear was man. It was dangerous for a woman to travel alone and she knew it. She was just hoping her own sense of self-preservation and a little luck would keep her safe.

  She heard the sound again: weeds snapping, something brushing against the partially closed door that hung crooked off its old iron hinges. Sapphire held her breath. There was someone out there, but who? Maybe just another traveler looking for a safe place to take shelter.

  It was quiet outside again and she slowly exhaled, her heart racing. She heard the snapping noise again. Then a strange sound, almost like a whine.

  As a wet, black nose appeared through the crack in the door, Sapphire burst out in relieved laughter. The dog poked its head through the door to look at her almost quizzically.

  She laughed again and crouched down. “Hey there, boy,” she said, putting out her hand.

  The small, round-barreled, brown and white spotted hound squeezed through the opening in the door, wiggling its stumpy tail. Halfway to Sapphire, it stopped and regarded her cautiously. The dog was thin and homeless…like she was.

  Smiling, Sapphire reached into her canvas bag and drew out the other half of a slice of bread she’d been saving for the next day. The dog came at once, tail wagging excitedly, and she laughed as he took the bread from her hand and wolfed it down. After licking every last crumb from her hand, the dog looked up expectedly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, patting his head. “That’s all I have.” She showed him both of her hands. “See, all gone. Now, go on, shoo.” She made a motion with her hands to chase him out the door, but he only wagged his tail more and danced around her.

  She slipped through the narrow opening in the doorway, out into the cool early-evening air. The dog followed, but she noticed that it was limping. “What’s wrong?” She crouched down, wondering if the animal would let her look at his sore leg or take a bite out of her. It didn’t seem vicious, so she carefully lifted the injured paw. “You poor thing. You’ve got a thorn in there.” A black thorn protruded from the dog’s pad. “No wonder you’re limping.” Carefully, Sapphire extracted the long thorn. “That should make you feel better.”

  The dog licked the paw and then her hand.

  “Good boy,” she said, walking away.

  The dog followed.

  “No, you can’t go with me,” she told him, and she went a long way before she looked back to find the dog still trotting after her. “No. Absolutely not. Go home. Go anywhere.”

  She turned, walking backward to watch him, unable to stop smiling. He was so ugly he was cute.

  “Dog, you can’t go with me. The last thing I need is you trailing after me. I don’t even know where I’m going,” she explained. “I don’t have enough food for us both and I don’t have much money.”

  The hound whined in response and continued up the road.

  Sapphire turned, walking forward again, and glanced over her shoulder every once in a while at the hound who seemed to be walking a little better on the injured paw. “So you’re loyal, are you?” she asked him after a mile or two. “Better than someone else I can think of.”

  Again, she got a whine and a tail wag.

  “Utterly devoted, just like Aunt Lucia’s Mr. Stowe.” She stopped on the hard-beaten dirt road and crouched down again. The hound came to her at once, and this time he licked her hands and tried to lick her face when she got too close.

  “All right, all right. So you love me, do you?” She frowned. “At least someone does.” She scratched him behind a ragged ear that had been torn at some point. The wound had healed ages ago but had left him with a broad scar. “So you love me for who I am, do you, Stowe?”

  The dog wagged its tail faster, seeming to like his new name.

  “All right,” she said, standing up. “But we’re headed south and I don’t know for where, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to feed you because I’m guessing you don’t eat apples.”

  The dog stared up at her with big, dark eyes, not unlike the English barrister’s.

  “Does that mean you’re in?” she asked him.

  Sapphire knew full well that dogs didn’t smile, but he appeared to be smiling.

  “All right, come on.” She waved her arm. “Let’s go. I was thinking New York City. I’ve read about it but never seen it.”

  The dog caught up to her and fell into step beside her, his little legs pumping rhythmically, his tongue lolling.

  “I’m not even certain how far it is—are you? I only know what Blake told me. We were supposed to go so that I could see the art museum and some of the buildings. Blake, you see, he was—”

  Sapphire’s voice suddenly broke off and she halted for a moment, letting her head drop, refusing to let the tears flow. After a minute she opened her eyes to see Stowe sitting on the ground, staring up at her. “He was this man,” she said softly. “I loved him, but he didn’t love me back.”

  She began to walk again, somehow feeling better now that she had actually said it out loud. “So maybe we’ll go see New York together. What do you think, Stowe?”

  The dog bounded up beside her again, wagging his tail.

  “Fine. You can go, too, but you have to keep up, do you understand me?” she warned. “Those little stumpy legs of yours will have to carry you all the way to New York City.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Blake declared angrily, pacing the floor of the keeping room. “How can a penniless, twenty-year-old girl just disappear in a strange city where she knows no one?”

  Mrs. Dedrick and Mr. Givens stood in front of him, both of them with their hand clasped, their gazes fixed on the exquisite Persian rug on the floor.

  “No one has seen her,” Givens said. “No one in the shops, at the wharf—”

  “Which is equally ridiculous!” Blake reached the edge of the carpet, turned on his heels and started back in the opposite direction. “She’s a redhead, for Christ’s sake. A redhead with one green eye and one blue eye. How could no one have seen her anywhere?”

  “Pehaps she has gone to anothuh city,” Mrs. Dedrick offered, her eyes remaining downcast.

  “Is that what the other servants say? Is that what—” he snapped his fingers “—what is her name? Myra? Did Myra say she went elsewhere?”

  “She didn’t know whehe the miss went, sih.”

  “I want to speak to her.”

  “Mr. Thixton,” the housekeeper began.

  “Now, Mrs. Dedrick,” he insisted, changing directions again. “And you, Givens, cancel my appointments. I’ll go down to the docks and have a look myself. I’m not sure either of the two of you could find a pig in a pantry.”

  The two made a hasty retreat and Blake continued to pace, trying to figure out how he could find Sapp
hire rather than why she was gone. To go over again in his head what he had said, what he had done, what she’d said and done, was pointless. First he would find her and bring her back to Thixton House, and not as a maid, either. Then they would work this out. He would make her understand.

  The little dark-haired housemaid rushed to the keeping room and dropped a curtsy. She then stood in front of Blake, hands held at her sides.

  He tried to forcibly calm the tone of his voice. He knew he could sometimes appear intimidating and he didn’t want to scare the girl; he just wanted to see what she knew. “I understand you were friends with S—Molly,” he corrected himself.

  She nodded.

  “And when she left, she didn’t say anything about where she was going?”

  The girl, who could not have been more than seventeen or eighteen, slowly lifted her head, meeting Blake’s gaze. “She said it would be better if she didn’t tell me where she was goin’ so when you ask, I wouldn’t be able to say.”

  He noticed the hostility in her voice and wondered what Sapphire had told her. Lies? The truth about them? Half-truths? What was the truth? he wondered.

  Blake turned away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as if he could wipe away the taste of the red-haired beauty, the memory of her. “Did she try to find a ship to take her back to London? Did she obtain money from somewhere in the house?”

  “Said she didn’t want nuthin’ of yours, Mr. Thixton.” Again the hostility.

  This maid had worked at the house for at least a year. He had accepted her as a favor to Grace, something about the chit seducing her sixteen-year-old son. But Blake had never found her to be anything but polite, if not a little fearful of him. She didn’t seem terribly afraid of him, and now he thought if Sapphire may have had something to do with her new attitude. Had Sapphire remained any longer on his staff, he could have had a maids’ mutiny on his hands.

  “She said she didn’t want anything of mine?” Blake asked Myra.

  She tucked her hands behind her back defiantly. “Said not so much as an apple she would take.”

  He laughed, startling Myra, then shook his head, beginning to pace again. That sounded so like Sapphire that he knew it had to be the truth. So she was clever and it would take some time to find her. Maybe time was what they both needed. Maybe in time, he’d know what to say to her when he found her. Because he would find her.

  He had to.

  Sapphire and Stowe walked for hours along the road, and all the way she talked to the dog, rambling. She told him about her godmother, Lucia, and her days as a high-priced courtesan in New Orleans, and about Angelique and the village she had been born in. Walking in the dark with nothing but moonlight to guide her, Sapphire found herself telling him all about her mother and her father and how she had gotten into the mess she was in now.

  Stowe was the perfect listener, the perfect companion, and when the dog began to tire and slow his pace, she scooped him up and dropped him into the canvas bag she carried, allowing his head to peek out of the top.

  “Now, I’m not carrying you all the way to New York City, you understand me?” she told the dog. “This is just to let you rest those short legs of yours.”

  The dog closed his eyes and Sapphire walked for the next hour in silence, not feeling quite so alone or quite so forlorn. Sometime after midnight, the dark sky began to cloud up, and fearing it might rain, Sapphire began to look for shelter. With no abandoned buildings in sight, she ended up taking refuge under a bridge. And when the raindrops began to fall on the floorboards over her head, she and the little dog were wrapped up in a wool blanket, safe and dry.

  The next morning, she decided they were far enough from Boston to risk walking during the day. She met an old woman on the road who said she was headed to the market to sell her biscuits and cheese, and she sold Sapphire six biscuits and a piece of cheese the size of her fist. She even gave Stowe a crumbled biscuit, saying she wouldn’t be able to sell it anyway and it would only go to waste. She pointed Sapphire in the direction of her house on the hill overlooking the road and offered to let her draw water from her well, calling her “young man.” She also told Sapphire where she was—a place called Connecticut. Sapphire asked if she was headed the right way to go to New York City—to see her aunt, she explained in as deep a voice as she could muster—and the gray-haired woman confirmed that she was going the right way. “Just follow this big road south,” she said in her funny accent.

  So, after a breakfast of cheese, biscuits and all the fresh water Sapphire and Stowe could drink, the two set out again. Sapphire walked with a stick she had found along the road, her shoes slung over her shoulder, as Stowe took his place beside her. Walking barefoot was easier once the soles of her feet got used to the road. She knew she’d have to buy a pair of shoes that fit. Again, she talked to the dog; she told him about things she had seen, things she hoped to see, and she promised to take him to London with her, if he wanted to go. The little spotted dog’s presence was a great comfort to her and she found herself smiling as the sun came out and shone warm on her face.

  Sapphire knew she had done the right thing in leaving Blake; she would not dwell on regrets. She was certain there was a future out there waiting for her. There would be another great adventure, just as she’d had with Blake. She had no time for tears. She would go back to London to be with Aunt Lucia and Angelique and she would find the proof she needed to petition the courts to have her recognized as her father’s child. Then, and only then, would she contact Blake. She would send him a letter in Boston and tell him who she was and then she would be free of him.

  “It’s a good plan, don’t you think?” she asked the dog.

  Stowe wagged his tail.

  A wagon approached and Sapphire and Stowe stepped off the road to let it pass. But the old man driving the wagon slowed down and glanced in Sapphire’s direction, squinting beneath the broad brim of homemade straw hat.

  “Afternoon, son,” he said gruffly. He had worker’s hands, wrinkled, rough and nicked with cuts, that he wrapped the wide leather reins around.

  “Afternoon, sir,” Sapphire said, self-consciously tugging on the brim of the cap she wore, taking care to keep the pitch of her voice low.

  “I’m headed to New York City with this load of ladders to sell,” the old man said, hooking a thumb in the direction of the bed of the wagon. “Get a good price there. Lotta building goes on. Them New Yorkers need good ladders.”

  Sapphire looked into the back and could discern the outline of several ladders under an oiled tarp. She caught the scent of freshly cut wood on the light breeze. “Me, too,” she said, trying to imitate the speech of the young boys in Blake’s stable. Some spoke like Mrs. Dedrick, without any r’s, but others were easier to understand. She walked a little farther and the old man continued to ride beside her. He kept squinting, his eyesight apparently poor.

  “You a carpenter?” she asked him.

  “Been a lot of things in my lifetime—fisherman, cook, an iceman when I was younger.” He gave a nod. “But mostly I was just a mess.” He grinned.

  The wisps of hair that poked out from beneath his straw hat were salt and peppered, as was his short-clipped beard, but she couldn’t tell by his face how old he was. Maybe as young as forty-five, as old as sixty.

  “Is that right?” Sapphire asked, beginning to relax a little. Either the man’s eyesight was so bad that he couldn’t tell she was female, or her disguise was working, at least so long as she kept her hair pushed up under the cap.

  “Why you headed to New York City for, boy?” the old man asked.

  “Going to see my mother’s sister,” she answered, thinking it was easiest to use the same story over again.

  The old man nodded. “Long walk.”

  Sapphire shrugged. “Weather’s good.”

  He cackled. “It is, but it won’t be long before the cold winds blow through here.”

  Sapphire fell silent and all was quiet except for the creak of the wagon
’s wheels and the flapping of the oilcloth that hung over the side.

  “You want a ride?” the old man asked as they passed a walnut tree that dropped nuts to the ground with every slight gust of wind.

  Sapphire picked some nuts off the road and dropped them into her bag as she contemplated what her response should be. She didn’t know the man. How did she know she would be safe with him? But he did think she was a boy, and it was an open wagon. She could jump out of it if she had to. And though she could probably walk all the way to New York City, it was a long way, especially for Stowe and his short legs.

  “I’d be much obliged,” she said.

  He pulled back on the reins, speaking beneath his breath to the two dapple mares.

  “Do you mind my dog?” she asked, scooping Stowe up into her arms.

  “Nope. I like dogs. Got me two when my wife left me. Good riddance, I say.” He laughed at his own joke. “Dogs don’t put up a fuss when a man smokes a pipe in his own kitchen.”

  Sapphire put Stowe on the buckboard seat and pulled herself up to sit beside him. “Do you want him in the back?” she asked.

  The man looked at the dog and the dog stared back.

  “His name is Stowe,” she explained.

  “Nice to meet you, Stowe.” He took one hand off the reins to lift the dog’s paw. “Name’s Petrosky.”

  “Nice to meet you, sir.” Sapphire gripped the rough side of the wagon as it jerked forward. “I’m…”

  It wasn’t until that moment that she realized she needed to have a boy’s name. “Sam,” she said quickly.

  “Nice to make your acquaintance, Sam.” He offered his hand.

  She shook it. “And yours, Mr. Petrosky.”

  His forehead wrinkled beneath the straw hat. “Nope. Not mister, just Petrosky.”

  She nodded. “Petrosky.” She opened her bag. “Biscuit?” She held out one of the fresh ones she’d bought that morning. “I’ve got cheese, too, and apples and nuts.”