She smiled up at him. “Good try, Armand, but speak for yourself. I am not old.”
“Not old!” He laughed and then coughed again. “What must you be?”
She dropped the cigar to the stone patio and ground it out with the toe of her silk slipper. “My age is none of your concern or anyone else’s.” She turned away, flipping back the skirting of her silk dressing down and lifting her head high. “This old whore intends to go to London, and once Sapphire is properly wed and bed to a man befitting of her station, she intends to find a rich man to see to her needs in her declining years.”
Armand tipped his gray head back and laughed. “I have no doubt you will do exactly what you set out to do, ma chère Lucia. That’s why I can see the end of my life now, because Sophie’s dream will come to fruition. You, my dear, will see to it that our Sapphire will become Lady Sapphire Wessex, or I know you will die trying.”
“Still awake?” Angelique whispered.
Sapphire lay on her back beneath the immense silk canopy of her bed, listening to the familiar night sounds of the jungle. Moonlight spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bedchamber. The bed was placed in the center of the room where it would get the most ventilation on hot summer nights. The sheer draperies fluttered in the night breeze.
“How could I possibly sleep?” Sapphire whispered back, glancing at the fine china clock on the bed table. It was after midnight.
Angelique stretched sensually beside her on the bed, raising her slender arms above her head. The bedchamber was supposed to be Sapphire’s alone; Angelique had her own room of equal size and luxury a short walk down the hall, but the two girls often shared a bed. “It is exciting, isn’t it? Tomorrow we set sail on the greatest adventure of our lives!”
“I’m not certain exciting is the word I would choose,” Sapphire answered. “I cannot imagine being trapped on that ship with Lady Carlisle and Lady Morrow for three weeks. I fear I’ll go mad with their incessant gossiping and ridiculing.” She stared at the ceiling as she lifted arm over head to rest her wrist on her forehead. “I still can’t believe Papa is sending me away.” Her initial response to her father’s decision to send her to London had been to refuse out of stubbornness, but in truth, she wanted to get away from Maurice. And though she had mixed feelings about finding her father, it was important to her that she do it for her mother.
“He’s sending you away because he knows the world has great things in store for you. He has always known it. We all have.”
“What great things? That’s ridiculous!”
“The daughter of an earl?” Angelique dangled the words as if they were a sweetmeat. “I see you as a highborn lady, making your entrance into London society dressed in a lavish ball gown, the suitors clamoring to have just one dance with the Lady Sapphire.”
“And why in heaven’s name would I want to dance with any man?”
“You must dance so that you can meet and marry a great man, of course. You know it’s always been your dream. It’s why you read those silly novels and poetry all the time, isn’t it? Because you fancy romantic love?”
Sapphire frowned. Marriage was the furthest things from her mind. She was in too much turmoil to even contemplate such a thing, even if it was inevitable. “I don’t understand why you’re so eager to go, Angel. This is our home! There’s so much I’m going to miss, and not just Papa and Orchid Manor. I don’t know that I can bear to leave my horses.”
“Don’t be silly. They have horses in London.”
“This seems so easy for you and I don’t understand. You were born here. Our mothers died in this place.”
“I’m eager to go because there’s nothing to keep me here. Our mothers aren’t in those graves,” Angelique said with her usual practicality as she sat up beside Sapphire, resting her back against the headboard. “And Armand isn’t my father.”
“You don’t know that.” Sapphire picked at the thin fabric of her knee-length sleeping gown. “He could be.”
“So could any number of white men on this island, you know that.” She looked at Sapphire in the darkness. “But that was never important to me. What’s important is the journey we’re about to embark upon.”
“You know that when we arrive in London, things will be different, there. Everyone here loves you, but—”
“Some better than others!”
“But the way you give yourself so freely to men,” Sapphire continued diplomatically, “might be…might be misinterpreted.” It seemed to her that Angelique had always been a sexual creature, even from the time they were little girls. Certainly from the time Angelique was fourteen and had climbed through the bedchamber window after lights-out to surrender her virginity to a neighboring plantation owner’s sixteen-year-old son.
“You worry too much,” Angelique told her. “I am what I am, just as my mother was what she was, and I will not apologize for either of us.”
Sapphire glanced at Angelique. “We could find you a husband, too, you know. You look more French than native and Armand has already said you must use his surname when we arrive in London. With Armand’s name and the money Mama left you, surely—”
“Marriage is your dream, puss,” Angelique said as she gave Sapphire a gentle push, “not mine, nor will it ever be.” She stretched lazily, like a cat. “I want to get to know a hundred men, a thousand, and not over biscuits and tea.”
“Angel, the sisters and Lady Carlisle were all correct. You’re quite incorrigible.”
“Quite.” Angelique turned her head, a mischievous smile on her face. “What’s amazing is that you’re still so naive,” she teased, “especially now that we know you were brought up amidst such bawdiness—your mother and Lucia’s colorful past in New Orleans, Armand and his slave women, me.”
Sapphire said nothing. She wasn’t like Angel. She couldn’t accept change so easily, especially not when she had believed one thing her whole life only to find it untrue. Three weeks had passed since Armand told her the truth about her mother and herself and she was still trying to make sense of it all. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became with her father, this Edward. Why hadn’t he tried to find her mother? Had he looked for her at all or had he just gone along with the annulment and the new marriage arranged by his family? She intended to ask him just that the moment she saw him. It had been her mother’s dream that Sapphire meet her father, to be drawn into the loving embrace of the family, but what Sapphire wanted was an apology—that and to be recognized as Edward’s daughter, but not because she wanted any sort of relationship with the man. She wanted the recognition for her mother’s sake. And for that reason, she was going to London. Not for Armand, not for herself, but for her mother.
“Now we’re off to begin the journey Sophie dreamed of,” Angelique murmured. “You to find your rightful legacy and a handsome, titled man to wed, and me to sample an entire new continent of men!”
“I’m not sure that is what my mother had in mind.” Sapphire absently reached out to stroke the delightfully smooth silk of one of the bed draperies. “Please don’t put it in quite those terms at the dinner table when Lady Carlisle asks you of your plans once we arrive in London. I overheard her talking with Aunt Lucia yesterday and she is not at all pleased that you are being included in the traveling party, though she didn’t actually say that to Papa. I think her husband’s business profits with Papa are far too great to deny the request to escort us, but she has managed to get her invectives in just the same. I do believe she suggested to Aunt Lucia that you might search for a good position as a lady’s maid.”
“I’ll try to hold my tongue for your sake,” Angelique replied with a laugh. “It’s the least I can do,