Sapphire

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.”