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But she didn’t even know whether she’d have the opportunity to ask him. Since they had parted the previous morning, Blake had made no attempt to contact her, and even if her so-called duties had not prevented her from seeking him out, she didn’t have the faintest idea where to look for him. She’d heard, by way of Myra’s boyfriend who worked in the stable, that Mr. Thixton had left early for his offices in the shipyards. If she was going to find him and give him a piece of her mind, she didn’t want anyone to notice her missing because she didn’t want to be the one to explain all this foolishness. He had created this farce; it would be up to him to explain it to his staff. For now she intended to complete her duties as best she could, despite the blisters on her feet from the crude, ill-fitting shoes and the calluses developing on her hands from the unaccustomed housework.
The first bedchamber Sapphire entered had obviously not been used recently, but she stripped the bed linens, anyway, as instructed. Just inside the second bedchamber door, she realized that this was the bedroom Blake used. Not only did it look like him—dark wainscoting, dark green brocade bed curtains and draperies—but it smelled like him, too.
Sapphire left the laundry basket in the hallway and walked to the bed, but instead of stripping off the linens, she leaned over a pillow and inhaled deeply. She felt her pulse flutter as she breathed in Blake’s scent, and images flashed through her mind. She remembered lying beside him in the tiny bed built into the wall of the ship’s cabin, the taste of him, the feel of his hand on her bare hip as she drifted off to sleep in his arms.
She cursed him under her breath and yanked the bedcovers off. “I don’t know who you think you are, Blake Thixton, but you are no match for me,” she muttered as she balled up one of the sheets and tossed it in the direction of the door. “Have me carry your slop bucket, wash your sheets, polish your silver, why I—”
The sound of Blake’s voice outside the bedchamber door startled Sapphire and she froze.
“Give me half an hour, Givens, and I’ll meet with you in the downstairs office,” he said.
Sapphire felt her heart leap in her chest. She wasn’t ready to see him yet; she didn’t have her speech prepared.
“I’m sorry,” he said, catching a glimpse of her as he walked in the door. He took a step back. “I can come back in a second.”
“No, please,” Sapphire said, tossing the pillow onto the bed. “By all means, come in, my lord. I’m almost done here.”
It wasn’t until she began to speak that he actually looked at her. Then he seemed as startled by her sudden appearance as she was by his. “Sapphire.”
She let her hands fall to her sides.
He glanced at the bed and the sheets strewn on the floor. “What are you doing here?”
She suddenly felt very vulnerable. She’d spent every day for more than two weeks with Blake and now she missed him. Not just the way he touched her or the way he made her feel, but the sound of his voice, his presence. Their conversations, their laughter. “What am I doing? What does it look like I’m doing, Mr. Thixton? Laundry, of course. A task befitting of my station, apparently.”
He reached behind him and closed the door. She watched it swing shut.
“All you have to do is say it, Sapphire,” he told her quietly, walking toward her. “All you have to do is admit that you sought me out for my money, for my title. That’s all you have to do. It’s very simple, really. You want something from me.” He touched his chest. “I want something from you. It’s a business agreement, pure and simple.”
Sapphire shook her head. “That’s not true. I sought you out because you are my father’s heir, because I knew no one else to plead my case to.”
He halted, looming over her. “There are courts for such pleas.”
“I know, but until I have tangible evidence, evidence beyond the letters my father wrote to my mother—”
His voice was cool and matter-of-fact. “None of which state they were married.”
“None of which state they were married,” she agreed reluctantly. “But—”
“Sapphire. This is absurd!” He grasped her arms. “Look at you!” Letting go of her, he jerked at the hem of her apron, stained earlier by the rotting vegetables in the slop bucket. “This isn’t you. You should be wearing the finest gown money can buy. That my money can by. You should be sitting on that balcony right now—” he pointed to the double glass doors on the far wall “—sipping lemonade and deciding how the ballroom should be tiled when the Italian arrives in the fall.” He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, his face reddening. “Just say it, damn it!”
She held firm. “I will not. You demand that I be false to what I know is true. Well, you’ve met a woman you can’t bend to your whims, Blake Thixton. I won’t do it. I’d rather die!”
He glanced away, scratched his chin, then looked back at her again. He was so close that she could smell his shaving tonic; she could see the tiny
wrinkles that creased each side of his mouth as he frowned.
“You are the most stubborn, most—”
Suddenly Blake was kissing her, pulling her roughly into his arms. She lifted her hands up to push against his chest, keeping her lips tightly pressed together. She had no intention of letting him do this to her, not again. But the scent of his skin, the feel of his arms around her was too much, too much for her to fight—and she knew that he knew it.
A sob escaped from her lips as she threw her arms around his neck, parting her lips and thrusting out her tongue to meet his. “I hate you,” she said as she pulled away, breathless. “I hate you!”
Everything happened so fast.
Blake snatched off her apron, nearly tearing it from around her neck. He pulled the blouse out from the waistband of her gray skirt, and finding the buttons down the back, lifted it over her head. Kissing him again and again, Sapphire removed his cravat and tossed it onto the floor. She unbuttoned his pressed shirt until she could slide her hand beneath the fabric and caress the bare, silk-and-steel muscles of his chest.
Blake groaned as her thumb found his nipple and she rubbed it, wanting to torture him, taunt him the way he taunted her.
