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Sapphire flew over the finish line on Prince’s back and slowly pulled back on the reins, circling him around the group of people all waiting to be the first to run their hand over Prince’s glossy neck and offer Mr. Carrington their congratulations.
Red appeared at her side and clipped the lead rope onto Prince’s halter. “Good job, lad! Told you you’d keep your seat.”
She smiled, thankful for Red’s friendship. She’d kept to herself all winter, avoiding the other stable boys and grooms, mostly because she was worried someone would realize she wasn’t one of them. But Red had been kind to her, keeping his distance but supporting her, boosting her confidence.
“Well, son,” Mr. Carrington said, limping toward her, a wide grin on his weathered face. “Looks like you have the seat of honor at my dining table tonight.”
Two months later
“Come with us,” Manford said, standing at Blake’s hotel room door, his hand resting on the door frame. “It will be fun.”
Blake stared at him. “It won’t be fun. And just the other day, wasn’t it you who told me I was never fun anymore? That all I did was work?”
“Come on.” Manford laid his hand on Blake’s shoulder. “I was just trying to make you see what you’re doing to yourself. You’re getting as bad as your father.”
Blake scowled. “Well, Manford, old friend, that certainly makes me want to dress and attend this dull dinner party with you.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I apologize.” Manford ran his fingers through his hair, seeming frustrated. “I just don’t know what to do for you, Blake. I’m serious.”
Blake stared at the hand-painted wallpaper in the corridor of the Martin-James hotel in New York City where he and Manford had come to meet with some gentlemen concerning the shipping of cloth. The trip coincided with a well-publicized horse race that took place on Long Island each year and Blake had been able to avoid attending with Manford. He had no interest in gambling on horse racing; he never gambled, not on cards or dice or the number of rats a crew would find in a particular crate when it was pried open on the dock. He wasn’t a man of odds. He liked a sure thing.
“Come on,” Manford prodded. “The gentleman hosting the supper party is quite a businessman. I think you would like him.”
“He raises horses for a living, races horses for a living. I know nothing of horses beyond which side to mount,” Blake said drolly. But he was beginning to waver. Manford was right. He was working too hard, spending too many long hours alone with his thoughts, haunted by regrets over Sapphire.
He’d spent the entire winter looking for her, but to no avail. It was as if the night she had left his house, she had simply been swallowed up. Several times in the past few months Blake had considered writing a letter to Mr. Stowe inquiring as to whether she had returned to London; once he’d even drafted one. But he never sent it. Perhaps he feared the answer. If something terrible had befallen her, he didn’t know what he would do, if she had come to harm through his selfish desires. No, he had a feeling none of those possibilities had come to pass or he would have heard from Stowe or her godmother. Sapphire was out there somewhere. He could almost feel her. She was the ache in his chest that kept him awake at night. She was the tremble in his hand that made him unsteady when he reached for a glass or a book. She was what made his mind wander when he tried to concentrate on business matters or a conversation at the dinner table.
“Did you hear me, Blake? The reception is right here in the hotel, downstairs in one of the parlors. If the conversation is dull, you can climb back into your cave.” Manford poked his head through the doorway. “Though quite a cave you have here, I must say. A suite.” He stepped back into the hallway. “Please don’t let Patricia know you’re staying in such magnificent rooms or she’ll wonder why I didn’t spend the money to get a suite for us, as well.” He looked back at Blake. “Tell me you’ll join us.”
“I’m not hungry. I have those new reports on—”
“Just a drink, that’s all I’m asking. Just join us downstairs for a drink.”
Blake drew his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “What time?”
“Eight. Excellent.” Manford began to walk away. “I’ll tell Patricia. She’ll be pleased. She’s been worried about you, as well. Now that she’s accepted the fact that you are not marrying Clarice, she continually wants to introduce you to young women. You know what a matchmaker she is, and she has always been fond of you.”
Blake ignored Manford’s reference to his recent social habits. It had been months since he attended an affair with a woman on his arm; in fact, he’d not done so since his return from England, but the subject was not up for discussion.
“Perhaps you’ll see me at eight,” he said as he walked into his room.
“I had better.”
Sapphire fumbled with the knot of her white silk cravat, groaned, pulled it loose and began to tie it again. It was the third time she had attempted to tie the ridiculous contraption, and there was no way she could ask anyone to help her. Who would she ask?
She had come in one of Mr. Carrington’s carriages all alone and had been shown to this room to change into the trousers, frock coat and linen shorts he had purchased for her to wear to affairs such as this. And there had many recently. It didn’t make a great deal of sense to Sapphire—after all, Prince was the one running the race, all she had to do was simply try to hang on—but she was somehow being toasted as the jockey of New York.
All winter Sapphire had enjoyed her time with the horses, time spent mostly alone with her thoughts in the warm, quiet barn where the only sounds she heard were that of horses munching on their oats, the occasional squeak of a mouse and the beating of her own heart. It had even been fun pretending to be a young man, not caring what she looked like or how dirty she got. She enjoyed the freedom the clothes provided as well as the freedom to come and go where she wanted without an escort as she had needed in London, but all of that grew dreary more quickly than she had thought it would. Then spring had come and the racing had started. It had been so exhilarating at first. She and Caribbean Prince had begun winning races and suddenly they had been the talk of the stable, then the talk of the town. Mr. Carrington had even invited her and Red to dinner in the big house and then their neighbors had begun to invite them to dinners and parties. Mr. Carrington had bought her a man’s suit. Fortunately, he’d allowed her into the city alone to purchase it in a store where a person could buy clothes already made rather than tailored.
The weeks had flown by, one race running into another. Mr. Carrington had been true to his word and she had been given a few dollars with each purse the black horse had taken with their win, allowing her to add slowly to her savings. But as the months passed, so did the excitement. Lately, everytime she stepped into a room to hear the applause of her admirers in the horse-racing circuit all she could thi
nk of was how desperately she wanted to wear a lace ball gown and how much she hated cutting her hair each month.
But by the first week of June, she realized that with just a few more weeks of riding, just a few more dollars, she would have enough money to buy some decent women’s attire and her passage back to London. As much as she had enjoyed her time with Prince and all of the nice people she had met at Carrington Farms, she yearned to see Lucia and Angelique, and to touch the precious letters and the sapphire her mother had left for her.
There was a knock at the door and Sapphire quickly pulled the ends of the cravat. “Coming,” she called in the voice that she was now accustomed to using.
“Mr. Carrington awaits you downstairs, sir,” said a young man through the door.
