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“This is not about what I want, my dearest daughter. It cannot even be about what you want.” He turned to the window. “It must be about what your mother wanted. It was her dying wish that you find your father, that you seek out your inheritance and what is rightfully yours.”
“And why are you telling me this after she has been gone nearly a year?” Sapphire demanded, wiping at a tear that threatened to spill. “Why do you decide now to tell me all this? Why send me now? Why with those awful people?”
“Because I am a weak man and it has taken me this long to get up my courage to send you away from me. I am sending you with Lord and Lady Carlisle because I know you will be safe with them, because I can trust Lord Carlisle, and because I know they will help you make the proper social associations in London. You won’t have to stay with them long, dear, only until your father invites you into his home.”
“I still don’t understand. Why are you doing this now? Why must you send me away now?” she flung at him.
“Because it is time.”
Sapphire thought for a moment and then lifted her gaze to meet Armand’s. “And if I don’t want to meet him?” she asked, defiance in her voice. “If I refuse to go?”
3
Three weeks later
“There you are, ma chère. I thought you had gone to bed.” Armand stood barefoot in a silk dressing robe on the edge of the garden patio outside his bedchamber, staring into the darkness. Torchlight behind him cast shadows over the stones at his feet and the end of his slender cigar glowed in the night.
“You are not supposed to be smoking or drinking—you know that.” Lucia strode up to him and snatched the cigar from his lips to place it between her own, then inhaled deeply.
Armand chuckled and lifted his other hand to take a sip from his crystal tumbler. “Ah, Lucia,” he murmured thoughtfully, enjoying the burn of the rum. “I will miss you.”
“You certainly will.” She exhaled and the smoke curled around her head and rose, dissipating in the warm night breeze. “With no one to keep you from drowning yourself in rum, you’ll be dead in six months’ time.”
Armand grinned, continuing to stare out into the jungle beyond the house, swirling the last of the rum in the crystal glass. “Sometimes, I think, ma chère, I should have married you and not Sophie. You, I think I could have made happy.”
“You’ve already had too much rum, haven’t you.” She inhaled on the cigar again. “And I am far too old to be anyone’s chère, certainly yours. Besides, you had your chance with me in New Orleans years ago.” She moved to stand beside him. She spoke again after a moment, softening her voice. “She was happy, you know, perhaps not in the same way you might have hoped, but she was happy with the life she chose with you.”
“The life that was forced upon her, you mean.”
“You are mistaken, Armand, if you think Sophie married you unwillingly. She would not have disrespected you or herself or Sapphire in that way.”
“I loved her, you know, very deeply. And even after a year, I still miss her so much. Though she never loved me as she loved her Edward, she still made me very happy, and now that I’m without her, each day seems hollow and empty. Even the native girls I bring to my bed cannot…” He sighed. “The loneliness remains.”
“She loved you, Armand. Surely you must know that.” Lucia said. “And Sapphire loves you.”
“Which is why she must go now,” he said firmly. “I do not care what she says, she will be on that ship tomorrow when it sails.”
Lucia groaned. “You know I have not been in agreement with this idea of yours from the beginning. Because she loves you, Armand, I think you need to reconsider. One year, what would one more year matter? She would be a year older, a year wiser and—”
“Non,” he said, clasping the glass tighter in his hand. “I will not have Sapphire throw her life away to the likes of Maurice Dupree or any man like him, and I will not allow her to sit here and watch me waste away.” He looked at her shrewdly. “And I will not have you tell her about my illness, either, do you understand me? If she knows I am sick, I will really have to tie her and crate her to put her aboard that ship tomorrow. Non, it is time my dear daughter had her wings and I will not clip them with my human frailty.” He drew his hand over his abdomen. “It seems as if a fire burns in my stomach day and night, and now I am spitting up blood. I will not allow her to watch me die!” The exertion of his conviction made him cough furiously.
Lucia sighed. “Oh dear, Armand.” She reached out to smooth his back with her hand, waiting for the spasm to pass. “Don’t work yourself into a fit.”
“I’m not,” he wheezed, struggling to catch his breath, pressing his hand against his stomach. “But neither you nor my fille will coax me from my path this time. My wishes will be done. Sapphire will return to London as my dear wife wished, and her father will lay her rightful claim upon her.”
He cleared his throat, allowing his mind to drift as he thought of the lovely young woman who was his daughter. Since he had first seen that precocious three-year-old in the New Orleans parlor, surrounded by courtesans, he had known she was destined for great things. He had fallen instantly in love with Sophie, in part because of her sad eyes. Sapphire had been a striking beauty, even as a child. She had the lovely face and the remarkable rich auburn hair of her mother, and the piercing eyes—one blue, one green—that he later learned were her father’s. She had grown into an even lovelier young woman, and was desired by many, but conquered by few, he realized. “My only regret, ma chère,” Armand mused aloud, “is that I am not able to take Sapphire to London myself.”
“I shall care for her as my own daughter, you know that.” Lucia drew the cigar away from her lips. “I promise you. I’ll see that her father recognizes her or he’ll have me to contend with, and Lord Wessex doesn’t want to challenge a girl from the London docks, I promise you that.”
He smiled and reached for Lucia, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Come to my bed, ma chère. There is no reason why two old friends cannot keep the sheets warm for each other.”
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.”
