Sapphire

Sapphire shifted her gaze from Blake to the housekeeper, and for a moment she did not register that this was the way a housekeeper might speak to a new servant. At a loss for words, she stammered. “I…I…”

“Best you keep youh mouth shut,” Mrs. Dedrick interrupted. “I shall call you Molly. Shaffire is not a proper skivvies name. Follow me, Molly.” Mrs. Dedrick whipped her shoulders around and marched back down the corridor, leaving Sapphire with no choice but to follow.

As Sapphire passed the staircase, she looked to see Blake on the first landing. He was standing there watching her, grinning triumphantly.

Sapphire turned away, and hurried after the housekeeper. She’d rather sweep hearths and wash dishes than concede to his fancy.

Later that night, Sapphire lay on a narrow cot in the women’s dormitory in nothing but an old, thin cotton chemise that a kitchen girl named Myra had loaned her after taking pity on her. As Blake had predicted, it was stiflingly hot on the fourth floor, and although she had a long and physically exhausting day, she could not fall asleep. She was too upset to sleep, too angry with Blake, with herself. She should never have given in to her desire for him. She should have dived off the ship stark naked while they were still in London Harbor. Anything would have been better than seeing that smug smirk on his face when she followed Mrs. Dedrick to the kitchen to begin learning her “new position.”

Sapphire had expected Blake to come to her all day. She thought he might take the broom or the wet clothing from her hands and lead her upstairs to a lady’s bedchamber where she could take a cool bath and dress in a light, summer gown, then join him on the beautiful veranda that overlooked the bay. But he had not come, and as the hours ticked by, her hands became redder, her back starting to ache and she became more determined not to give in to him.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would tell him she was going back to London. He had promised he would send her home and she was going to call him on his word. She wanted to see Boston, to see the beautiful buildings more closely. She wanted to meet this architect whom she already admired, but the only way she would meet Mr. Bullfinch now would be if she were promoted from her kitchen job and permitted to answer the front door as one of the housemaids!

A lump caught in Sapphire’s throat but she refused to allow herself to cry. Instead, she rolled over on the lumpy mattress, said her prayers and closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep.

“Manford.” Blake rose from his chair in his study where he’d been reading and offered his hand to one of the few men he could genuinely call his friend.

“Blake.” The tall, slender man shook Blake’s hand and then wrapped his other arm around him. “Or should I say, Lord Wessex?”

Blake frowned and stepped back, always a little uncomfortable with Manford’s physical displays of affection. They had met at Harvard, where Manford had been an instructor at the time. His family was also in shipping, originally out of Baltimore, but after marrying a Boston socialite, Manford had remained in the city and eventually took over the family business, moving the center of operations to Boston after his father passed away.

“Can I interest you in a brandy?” Blake asked.

Manford laughed. “Have you ever known me to turn away a good brandy? Or a bad brandy, for that matter?” He loosened his cravat, pulled it off and tossed it onto the brocade chair that Blake had been sitting in before his arrival. “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, but Elizabeth had another dull benefit ball we were forced to attend.” He rolled his eyes. “I escorted Clarice, as well.” He waggled a finger. “You know, she had several invitations from perfectly respectable young men her own age, Harvard men, I might add, but she refused them.” He accepted the crystal glass Blake offered him. “She said she’d rather go alone than go with any of those boys. I think she’s rather smitten with you, my friend.”

Blake covered his discomfort by raising his glass. “Yes, an appropriate toast, to old friends,” he said.

“And getting older by the moment.” Manford brushed his fingers against the graying hair at his temples, then lifted his glass into the air and tipped it back to sample the brandy. “Let’s go out on the veranda, shall we? Hot as Hades in here.”

Blake added some more brandy to his own glass, taking his time before following Manford through the French doors that opened onto the veranda. The one good thing about his lengthy trip to London had been escaping from Miss Clarice Lawrence, Manford’s daughter. Though more than ten years his junior, she fancied herself in love with him, and despite Blake’s best attempts to extricate himself from her clutches, he found himself escorting her more and more often to social events. At first it had been simply a favor to Manford—a ball here, an art exhibition opening there—but by the time he had set sail for London, half of Boston had been gossiping about the expectation of an engagement between Clarice Lawrence and her father’s best friend and occasional business partner, Blake Thixton. Clarice was a beautiful, slender blonde with the face of Athena. She had the looks, the education, the social etiquette of the kind of woman Blake knew he should marry; the problem was that the moment she opened her mouth, all was ruined. She was immature, short-sighted, ill-tempered and…dull.

As he walked through the doors, it occurred to him with sudden surprise that Sapphire was probably no older than Clarice.

But that was irrelevant, he told himself firmly.

“So,” Blake said, walking to the marble railing to stand beside Manford, who was taking in the view of the bay. “Mr. Givens has given me all the news of what’s going on in the Boston shipping business, but I want to hear the real news.” In an unusual gesture of affection, he slapped Manford on the back. “So tell me everything, old boy.”

Manford laughed and sipped

his brandy. “Good to have you back, Blake.”

Blake exhaled, ignoring his thoughts of Sapphire lying upstairs, and gave his friend his full attention. “Good to be back.”

20

Sapphire quickly deduced that her work would entail anything not assigned or completed by another scullery or housemaid, which meant she had to perform the most difficult, dirtiest duties in the house. By midmorning of her second day in Boston, she had already washed, dried and put away a sink full of dirty dishes, swept the kitchen floor, scrubbed the front steps, polished six silver candelabras and the entrance-way doorknob and knocker, and carried table and kitchen scraps to the compost pile behind the garden shed. Now she’d been ordered by the laundress to collect the bed linens from the four bedchambers on the second floor, as well as the dirty towels from Mr. Thixton’s bathing room.

Sapphire’s first mistake was attempting to use the front staircase, and after a proper scolding from Mrs. Dedrick, whom she could still barely understand, she slowly made her way up the narrow rear servants’ stairs carrying a large basket given to her by the laundress. Her second mistake was allowing her mind to wander.

Towels from the bathing room? Blake had a room in his house devoted to bathing?

She had discovered that Blake was far wealthier than she had presumed and that he lived a life of luxury she had not even realized existed. Armand, who had plentiful servants and slaves, had been a wealthy man, but his success could not even begin to compare to Blake’s. In London, all of society had been impressed by his inheritance of the homes and titles belonging to her father, but no one had realized how the new Lord of Wessex lived in his own country.

His house, built on a cliff over the bay, was not, as he had warned her, entirely furnished, but the rooms that he had completed were magnificent. Blake mixed old with new, such as the Louis XIV pieces in the parlor, referred to as the downstairs keeping room, and plain, cherry pieces in a style she’d been told by one of the housemaids was called Shaker, in an office. But each room blended perfectly, from the fabrics on the chairs to the beautiful paintings on the walls, with themes dominating each. While the small dining room had a definite Asian feel, with Oriental carpeting and china on display, the larger dining room housed a table that was distinctly eighteenth century and French in design.

And Blake spared no expense—not just in the design and construction of the house, but in the decorating of it, as well. While Armand had two carpets on the floors at Orchid Manor, a fairly new fashion, Blake had at least two in every room, some of Chinese design, others Turkish, each one more beautiful than the next. He had authentic artwork in every room, some she recognized as works by Jean-Antoine Watteau and Anton Raphael, but some she suspected were American artists. And there were sculptures, as well, and glassware and pottery that must have come from halfway around the world.

As Sapphire climbed the narrow staircase with the cumbersome laundry basket in her arms, she could not help but wonder what was in this bathing chamber of Blake’s, and what had possessed him to build such a grand house.