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.