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.”