Sapphire

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.