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“Of course I do. I wouldn’t ask you to risk money if I didn’t think it would be profitable down the road. Why?”
“I don’t know.” Manford sipped his scotch. “You just don’t seem as enthusiastic about this as you were a few months ago.”
Blake shrugged and looked down at his glass. “I still believe in it. I’ve just been preoccupied.”
Manford shifted forward in his chair. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Blake sighed, pushing back in his chair, staring out into the room at nothing in particular. “No.”
“Please tell me this is not about Clarice. She swore to me that there would be no more private calls and I truly believe she understands—”
“It’s not Clarice.” Blake looked at the amber liquid in his glass, then up again, but he did not meet Manford’s gaze. “It’s—” He stopped and then started again. “It’s just that I think I might have made a mistake.”
27
“Hey, Sam, wanna go sleddin’?” Paulie called from the stable door.
Sapphire was just finishing watering down the last of the horses and she looked up as she transferred water from one bucket to another, trying not to slosh water onto her overalls. “When you goin’?”
The small freckle-faced boy shrugged. “Dunno. After evenin’ chores. ’Fore supper.”
“Up on Big Hill?” It was one of the favorite sledding hills for everyone in the valley and Sapphire had been there several times with the five other stable hands. She didn’t do a lot with them, like play cards and sit around and talk at night when they built a bonfire in the paddock, but being from Martinique, snow still fascinated her. Surprisingly enough, she didn’t mind the cold too much, although the other stable boys did tease her about always wearing one extra layer more than they wore. Even though it was still early December, there had already been several snowfalls. Sledding was the one activity that allowed Sapphire to be one of the boys.
“I reckon that’s where we’ll go, least if Adam gets his way.” Paulie grinned.
Adam was the oldest and the largest of the stable boys and generally what Adam said went. Sapphire didn’t mind. He seemed nice enough. Not terribly bright, but he was a har
d worker and he didn’t press her about joining the group most of the time. He seemed to understand that “Sam” was a loner, which made it easier for her to hide her identity. He’d even taken up for her when Red had offered to allow her to continue sleeping in the tack room alone rather than joining the other boys who slept dormitory style over the grain shed when several of them had protested.
In the tack room, she could be closer to Caribbean Prince, Sapphire had proposed to Red—and he had agreed. The horse had obviously taken to her and it wasn’t unusual for someone, either a groom or a jockey, to sleep near an expensive horse, especially one of the skittish ones.
“I’ll see you shortly,” Sapphire told Paulie as he heaved the last two buckets of water onto her shoulders, balanced on a pole.
“Want help?” Paulie asked, pulling on the hand-knit mittens his grandmother had just sent him from Pennsylvania.
“Nope. Got it.” Sapphire headed for the farthest stall.
Alone with the horses again, she wiped out the last buckets, filled them with water and then moved from stall to stall saying good-night. She offered a scratch behind the ears to this one, a pat to that one. And to Caribbean Prince, she offered a wrinkled apple from the pocket of her overalls, beneath her canvas coat. Then, with a strong sense of satisfaction at having put in a good day’s work, she retired to her tiny room at the end of the barn to write a letter to Lucia and Angelique and one to Armand. Tomorrow, which was Saturday, she would ride Prince all morning and get the afternoon off, then she’d catch a ride into town on one of the household wagons going that direction and post the letters.
Inside her cozy little room with its cot covered with a plaid wool blanket, wooden crate turned on its side that served as a nightstand and a chest of drawers for her meager possessions, Sapphire lit a kerosene lantern and settled down with paper, pen and ink. She knew her family was worried about her and she knew she had to write, but the question was, what would she tell them?
She sat back on the cot and called to Stowe, who was asleep in a box of straw on the floor near the door. She was happy to see him because he often wandered off to follow Red, whom Sapphire suspected lured the dog away with food.
Stowe leaped onto the cot and curled up beside her. “What do you think, old boy?” she murmured, scratching the dog behind his ears. “What do I tell them about this place? About our life?”
Stowe yawned and rested his head on her knee, closing his eyes.
After several false starts, she began her letter to Lucia and Angelique by telling them again that she was safe and begging them, once more, not to contact Blake Thixton. That was her biggest fear at the moment, even more than being discovered for a girl at Carrington Farm.
The first week she arrived at the stables she sent Lucia a letter explaining that she had left Boston alone, without giving many details, including where she was. All she had said was that she and Blake had parted ways and that if he contacted Lucia, she was to say she hadn’t heard from her niece. Sapphire still felt guilty about not telling her godmother specifically where she was, but she couldn’t risk Lucia sending Blake word of her whereabouts. Lucia would have to trust her until she could return to London, at which point she would tell all, she had explained. If her godmother was angry with her, she would just have to be angry.
Sapphire kept her letter to Lucia and Angelique short. She told them that despite her separation from Blake Thixton, she was still enjoying her adventure in America, which was entirely true. She told them about how much she loved the snow, about how she didn’t mind the cold, but that she wore something called a union suit. She told them about sledding on Big Hill and she even mentioned Caribbean Prince, though not by name. She did not mention her broken heart or the fact that though the wound seemed to be healing over, there were days when it was still quite raw. Of course she didn’t tell them that she was pretending she was boy.
Sapphire ended the letter by saying she didn’t know how often she would have time to write. In truth, she found the letters difficult to compose. But she promised to see them by summer’s end, and sent all her love.
While her salary as a stable hand came only to a few dollars a month, Red had promised her that if she and Prince won the races he was betting she would win, Sapphire would take home a small portion of the winnings each week. Surely by summer’s end, she thought, she would have the one hundred and ten dollars required to book passage back to London.
Sapphire’s letter to Armand was more difficult to write. She had put off contacting him long enough. She knew that if he didn’t hear from her soon, he would be worried. Fortunately, she had not given him Blake’s address in Boston when she had written him on arriving in America. Her letter to Armand was even shorter than her letter to Lucia and Angelique. She told him she was well, that she was spending the winter in New York City and that she would be returning to London in the summer. She told him not to worry about her and that she was enjoying her time in America. She sent all of her love, and with dry eyes, sealed the letter and dressed to go sledding.
