Sapphire

by Rosemary Rogers

  He thrust his gloved hands into the pockets of his black wool overcoat. He’d received reports tonight from two separate agents he’d hired to search for Sapphire, and neither had been good. That was six in the past two weeks. Six reports and more than two hundred dollars, a fortune by some standards. Not that he cared about the money—hell, he had more money than he knew what to do with.

  No one had seen Sapphire. She had just disappeared from Boston. From his life. She was gone. Vanished into thin air, as hard as that was for the private agents he hired to believe.

  And yet, in a way, it wasn’t hard for Blake to believe. They didn’t understand her the way he did. Sapphire was so determined. It didn’t surprise him that once she decided to rid herself of him, she’d just done it. Didn’t surprise him a bit.

  Blake heard a knock at the door, a knock that became a pound when he didn’t respond. “Mr. Thixton?” a voice called from the bedroom door.

  “What is it?” he barked, having to almost shout for the maid to hear him above the howling wind. “I told you I didn’t want any supper.”

  “Mr. Lawrence is here to see you, sir.” Molly dropped a curtsy and hurried out of the room as Manford walked in, still in his overcoat.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” Blake said, leaning back against the rail.

  “Didn’t think I needed an invitation.” He walked to the open doorway, buttoning up his coat. “What the hell are you doing? It’s freezing out here.”

  Blake turned to stare into the darkness. “It doesn’t feel that cold.”

  Manford was quiet for a minute. “Listen, Blake. I know this isn’t any of my business, but this girl you told me about—”

  “You’re right. It isn’t.”

  “This is getting a little silly, don’t you think? I mean, honestly, she was just a serving girl. She—”

  “Don’t you say that! You understand me?” Blake spun around, raising his fist. “Don’t you ever say that again or I swear by all that’s holy, I’ll—” He stopped himself before he drew his fist under Manford’s chin and let it fall to his side. He looked down and scuffed his boot in the snow. “God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Manford. I’m sorry.”

  Manford clamped his hand on Blake’s shoulder. “How about a scotch? One inside, out of this snow. Maybe a little something to eat? You’re wasting away, old friend.”

  “Maybe a drink,” Blake agreed.

  The two men stepped into the bedchamber and into the light. Manford closed the door behind them, shrugged off his coat and walked to the table to pour them both a drink. “So she’s not just a servant. Tell me about her, then. You never even told me her name.”

  Blake stood by the glass doors, still in his coat, feeling out of place, even in his own bedchamber. He had felt out of sorts ever since Sapphire had gone missing—out of place in his own house, in his own office, even in his own skin.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It always is.” Manford crossed the bedchamber and pushed a crystal tumbler half full of scotch into his hand. As he did so, their fingers brushed. “You’re ice-cold,” he remarked. “How long have you been standing out there?”

  “Not long.” Blake lifted the glass to his lips and drank deeply.

  “So tell me about her.” Manford walked toward the bedchamber door. “I’m going to order us both some supper because I, for one, am famished. Then I want you to tell me everything.”

  Blake stared into his glass, swirling the amber liquid. “I don’t know that I can.”

  28

  Lucia entered her apartments to find Angelique sitting on a chair in the parlor and staring out the window to the busy street below. “This is a surprise,” Lucia said with a smile, placing several brown-paper-wrapped parcels on the floor beside the door. “Is Avena here?” She didn’t hear the maid’s footsteps, even as she closed the door. Usually Avena was more than efficient when it came to her duties.

  “I told her she could take the afternoon off. Wedding preparations.” Angelique rolled her eyes.

  Lucia plucked off her yellow gloves and removed her bonnet. “I’m happy for her. She and her tailor make a handsome couple. I knew he was worth hanging on to when he told her he wasn’t interested in her past.” She walked to the window and leaned over to place a kiss on Angelique’s cheek. “So to what honor do I owe this occasion? It’s been ages since you’ve come to visit. It seems that Jessup and I only see you at social events.”

  Angelique turned to look out the window again, propping her chin on the heel of her hand as she leaned on the broad windowsill. “I can’t believe we’ve been in London almost a whole year. It seems as if we only left Martinique a few weeks ago.” Her tone was uncharacteristically pensive.

  “You sound like an old woman.” Lucia chuckled. “Usually girls of your age think a year is a lifetime.” Lucia glanced out the window to see carriages passing, venders selling fresh eggs and gingerbread, men and women hurrying up and down the street, carrying their wares; it was the first warm day of spring and it seemed as if all of London was coming out to greet her. She looked back to Angelique and smoothed her dark hair, which was looped with ribbons in tiny, whimsical braids. “You’re in a particularly contemplative mood today, ma fille. Is there anything wrong?”

  Angelique sighed, still staring out the window through the diamond-cut panes. “Do you really think Sapphire is all right? I’ve been worried about her since her last letter. I really thought she would stay with that American, marry him and have babies.”

  Lucia took the chair across from Angelique. “I think she’s fine.”

  “She’s being very secretive. All we know is that she’s somewhere in New York and that she’s no longer with Blake. It’s just not like her to be so reticent. She must know we would worry, and it isn’t in her nature to prolong it.”

  Lucia shrugged. “Obviously things didn’t work out between her and Lord Wessex the way she had hoped. I suspect she simply needed the winter to be alone, to lick her wounds and get back on her feet.”

  “But it’s April! It’s no longer winter.”

  Angelique turned to look at her, and Lucia realized that her charge was beyond simple worry—she was truly concerned, which again was uncharacteristic of Lucia’s little carefree vagabond.

  “What if she’s penniless and has no way to return to London?” Angelique continued. “What will become of her? Will she be forced to turn to her mother’s trade simply to buy bread? I think we should write to Mr. Thixton and find out where she’s gone in New York.”

  “You can’t do that,” Lucia said sharply.

  “And why can’t I? Someone’s got to do something.” Angelique rested her hands on her hips. “You’re so busy acting ridiculous with Mr. Stowe that you’ve completely abandoned your responsibilities as Sapphire’s guardian!” Angelique gasped as the last words slipped out and covered her mouth in horror at having said such a thing. She looked away, tears welling in her eyes.

  Lucia took Angelique’s hands in hers. “Look at me,” she said softly, not a fleck of anger in her voice.

  Angelique slowly turned from the window to meet Lucia’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have said such a terrible thing. I didn’t mean it. I truly didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t. You’re afraid for Sapphire, and that’s all right because I’m afraid for her, too.”

  “You are?” Angelique sniffed.

  “Of course I am.” Lucia patted Angelique’s hand. “But if a parent, a guardian, a godmother, reacted every time he or she was fearful for a child, well…well, we wouldn’t get much accomplished in this world because we’d all be running about fretting, twisting our hands and pulling at our hair, wouldn’t we.” She paused, giving Angelique a moment. “Now listen to me. You cannot write to Lord Wessex in Boston and you know it. When Sapphire wrote to us, she passed on her trust and we cannot betray that trust. Now, she said in her letters that she’s fine and that we’ll see her by summer’s end. S
he said we have to have faith in her—and we have to do just that.”

  Angelique glanced down at the floor and then up at Lucia again. “Henry and I, we’re thinking of going to America.”

  “How exciting!”

  “To look for her.”

  Lucia frowned. “That’s very noble, but you must go for your own reasons. America is a very big place to look for a person who doesn’t wish to be found.”

  “Oh, Aunt Lucia, won’t you go with us?” Angelique slid to the edge of the chair to be closer to her aunt. “Jessup said Blake Thixton is a very important man in America. I imagine all I have to do is step off the boat and ask someone, and I’ll be told where I can find him.”

  Lucia frowned. “And Henry is willing to do this for you, to cross the ocean and look for someone important to you? Why, she could already be on her way home and you could pass each other, one on a ship sailing east, the other on one going west.” She released Angelique’s hand to demonstrate with her hands.

  “This isn’t just about Sapphire, Aunt Lucia. Henry says he will go to New York and look for Sapphire if I’ll go west and see his Indians.”

  “And you want to do this with him?”

  Angelique nodded.

  “You should marry him, then.”

  Angelique rose with a contemplative smile on her face. “That’s what he says. Henry claims there’s nothing to stop us from marrying. His parents have all but disowned him. The only monies he has now are those left to him by his grandfather.”

  “And yet he remains true to you.”

  She rested her hand on the windowsill. “Yes.”

  “Do you want to marry him?” Lucia looked up at her niece, thinking how truly beautiful she was. And more mature than when they arrived a year ago. Love did that to a person.

  “I don’t know,” Angelique answered quietly. “Aunt Lucia, I don’t know what to do. I wish Sapphire were here,” she said almost desperately, drawing her fingers down the drapes. “I wish that I could ask her what I should do. She would know—I know she would. She knows me better than I know myself.” Her lower lip quivered. “She has always been there for me, you see? I have always had her good sense to rely on.”

  Lucia fell quiet, allowing the young woman she loved as if she were her own a chance to think.

  “I never saw myself marrying anyone, and certainly not a proper Englishman like Henry. I didn’t think I wanted to spend my whole life with one man. It…it sounded so dull.”

  “You live with Henry now. Is life dull?”

  Angelique laughed. “It’s many things, but dull is not a word I would use to describe it.”

  “Then perhaps you have answered your own question.”

  “You think I should marry him?”

  “I think you should follow your heart. I also think you should take into consideration the fact that Henry is willing to give up everything, his family, his inheritance, his title, to have a life with you.”

  “I at least owe him this?” Angelique looked out the window again, pressing her palm to the cool glass.

  “No one ever owes another their life.”

  Angelique smiled. “And what of you, Aunt Lucia? Will you be happy marrying your Mr. Stowe?”

  “I think I will be,” she said honestly. “I never expected it. Never expected to love again, certainly not this way, so late in life. But Jessup is a good man. I cannot tell you how many times this winter he has gone to one shire or another in the hopes of finding the church where Sophie and Edward might have been wed.”

  “He wants to make you happy.”

  “True.” Lucia rose from the chair. “But I also sense this has become an obsession with him, his holy grail of sorts. He is determined to get to the truth, no matter what.”

  Angelique stepped forward, smiling. “I think you will be a happy couple.”

  “And I think you should go to the kitchen and see if Avena has left us some biscuits and coffee, because I’m famished!”

  “Are you ready, Sam?”

  Sapphire gripped the reins tightly in her hand, staring straight ahead between Prince’s ears. “I can’t do this, Red,” she said under her breath.

  “Of course you can.” He patted her calf. “Don’t matter anyway, boyo, because you’re doing it.”

  Sapphire gazed overhead at the puffy white clouds drifting in the clear blue sky. When Red had convinced Cosco last fall to allow “Sam” to ride Prince through the winter while his jockey’s broken bones mended, Sapphire had never imagined she would actually be racing the steed. But as the winter passed it became more and more apparent to everyone that the horse adored the new stable boy called Sam Water, and it was Mr. Carrington himself who made the decision.

  A month ago when the snows were still swirling around them, he had watched Sapphire race Prince out through one of the fields, and he had decided by the time Sapphire dismounted, breathless. “Sam” was no longer the lowliest stable boy, but now held the coveted position of one of Carrington Farm’s jockeys. And Sapphire would be Prince’s jockey. She had felt guilty about taking another man’s position, but Red had insisted she shouldn’t because Prince had never liked Jimmy to begin with. Jimmy hadn’t the hands for it. Besides, the pay as a jockey was a far sight better than the pay as a stable boy. A stable boy, besides room and board, only made a couple of dollars a month. But a jockey, if he was good, could earn a small percentage of his race wins.

  “Are we ready?”

  Sapphire looked up to see Mr. Carrington approaching her. He was a pleasant older man with a shock of white hair and a smile that never left his craggy face. He walked with a cane because of a bad leg break he acquired years ago after a fall from horseback. He no longer raced his own horses, but he had become one of the best breeders on the Hudson and was known for his ability to produce fast horses.

  “Ready as we’re gonna be, Mr. Carrington.” Red swiped his cap off his head while still holding tightly to the lead rope attached to Prince’s halter.

  The black steed pranced in place. Sapphire could see the other horses beginning to line up for the race a hundred feet ahead. She fingered the reins nervously, thankful for the tan kidskin gloves she wore. Her hands were so sweaty inside them that if she were barehanded, she feared she couldn’t have held on to the reins.

  “No need to be nervous, kid,” Mr. Carrington said, reaching out to pat Prince’s neck.

  The horse pawed at the ground, snorted, seeming anxious to join the other horses.

  “Just along the bank and back, that’s all it is. Just you and Prince going for a ride along the riverbank,” Mr. Carrington assured her.

  Sapphire realized this race was of little importance. It was the beginning of the race season and owners just wanted to let their horses stretch, wanted to see how their jockeys would fare, new and seasoned. But Sapphire also knew Prince was already entered in other races; in a few weeks they would be in a place called Long Island where there would be hundreds of spectators, unlike here where mostly horse breeders and racers and their families had gathered to welcome spring.

  “You’re not nervous, are you, Sam?” Mr. Carrington asked, looking up at her perched on Prince’s back.

  Feeling tense, she shook her head. It had all sounded like a good idea in the beginning, when it was cold outside and she was lonely and missing Blake and spent most of her day grooming Prince. Even when the training had begun and Cosco had taught her how to race, it still hadn’t seemed real. Now, as the other horses and riders lined up and the spectators placed their final bets, there was no denying what she was about to do. She just hoped it didn’t involve breaking her neck….

  “I’m not nervous, Mr. Carrington,” Sapphire said.

  “That’s my boy.” The older man stepped back. “You win today, Sam, I’m telling you now. It’s dinner at my place tonight and you will have the seat of honor. That and a couple more dollars jingling in your pocket.” He winked.

  “Thank you, sir.” Sapphire tipped her hat the way she saw other joc
keys do it.

  Red looked up. “Ready, me boyo?”

  Sapphire pressed her lips together and nodded.

  Red led her to the starting line, marked in the new grass with ground limestone poured from a bucket. Around her, Sapphire could hear the other jockeys and trainers whispering, staring at her, talking of the newcomer who had tamed the wild Prince Caribbean and taken Jimmy’s seat in the Carrington barns. She ignored their stares and whispers and concentrated on the patch of white between Prince’s ears.

  “All right, boy,” Sapphire whispered to the horse as Red unhooked the lead rope and stepped quickly out of the way of her mount’s powerful hooves. “Just a ride along the river,” she told him softly. “A quick ride around the track and you’ll be back in your stall with a bag of molasses oats, all right, old boy?”

  The horse nickered.

  One of the men, an owner of a farm down in the valley, stepped up to the line of racehorses. There were nine in all. Ordinarily, Prince Caribbean would have been the favorite, but he was unpredictable and word had it in the horse-racing community along the Hudson that no one knew if the kid Carrington had hired had it in him to make the mile race and stay on the horse’s back.

  The distinguished gentleman in the bowler hat produced a white handkerchief from inside his frock coat and Prince put his head down, snorting.

  Sapphire tensed on the horse’s back. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the handkerchief fall and she loosened the reins and sank the heels of her new boots into Prince’s flanks. Prince shot over the white line and suddenly the countryside was a blur. Sapphire ignored the horses beside her, and the shouts of the riders as they tried to urge their mounts faster, as Prince pulled away. She used no riding crop. She didn’t even carry one because the horse never seemed to run as good a race when she tried one, perhaps because of his experiences with his previous owner. Instead, she sat high on his back, crouched forward on his withers and let him take the lead.