Maurice and I—” This time, he only had to give Sapphire a look and she was silent.
“You will go to London with Lord and Lady Carlisle and Lucia has agreed to go as your chaperone.”
“But what about me? What am I to do?” Angelique rose, suddenly as upset as Sapphire, obviously for a different reason. “Can’t I go to London, as well?”
“Well, I suppose you may,” Armand said, taken by surprise. “I wasn’t certain you would want to, my dear. To leave your home village, to—”
“Of course I want to go!” Angelique clasped her hands together excitedly. “Oh, Papa, you don’t know how much I’ve always wanted to go to London.”
Sapphire glared at Angelique, unable to let go of her anger toward her yet. “I thought you wanted to go to New York. No, wait, that was last week. Where was it you wanted to go this week? Athens? Paris? Or was it Brussels?” Sapphire mused.
“I want to go to all those places,” Angelique responded, nonplussed. “But most of all, right now, London. Oh, thank you, Papa!”
Sapphire turned to look at her father again. Her mother used to say that Angelique was always so easy to please, unlike Sapphire. Nothing was ever good enough for Sapphire, nothing was ever entirely agreeable—unless it was her idea. “I don’t want to go to London, Papa.” She looked down. It was hard for her to give in. She glanced up at him again, her arms still crossed over her chest. “If this is about Maurice—”
“This is not about that loathsome boy!” Armand said abruptly, turning on his heels to look at her. “Sapphire, you don’t understand. You don’t know who you are.”
“Oh, we’re back to that again, are we?” She moved away from the bed. “I’m still nothing but a child to you, still unable, in your eyes, to make my own decisions, unable to decide for myself what is best for me?” She took a step toward him. “Well, you’re mistaken. I know precisely who I am and what I want out of life. I am Sapphire Lucia Fabergine, daughter of Sophie and Armand Fabergine, and I want nothing more than—”
“You are not my daughter,” Armand said, looking her in the eye.
Sapphire’s throat constricted and her knees went weak. “What?” she managed to say.
“Sapphire, come sit beside me,” Lucia said calmly, trying to take her hand and lead her to the bed.
“No.” Sapphire pulled her arm from her aunt. First this terrible thing about her mother—and now this? She stared at her father. “Is my entire life a lie? Has anyone ever told the truth in this house? Papa, what are you saying?”
Armand’s lower lip trembled. It was obvious he was in pain, not just emotionally, but physically, as well. “Please,” she said quietly, reaching out to take his arm. “Sit and tell me what you have to tell me.” Surprisingly, he allowed her to lead him back to the chair.
“It is true,” he said when he was seated while Sapphire sat on a footstool at his feet. “I am not your father, but you must believe me when I tell you that you are the child of my heart. You must know that, Sapphire, before I go any further.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she stared out the open windows into the dark jungle. Lucia came to stand behind her and pushed a white handkerchief into her hand.
“I’m listening,” Sapphire said, watching the filmy gauze drapes fluttering around her bedposts. A giant green moth had found its way into the room and now fluttered about the lamp, lured by the beauty of the dancing yellow flame, perhaps to its own death. I am like that moth, Sapphire thought. I know that what I am about to hear will destroy me, but I cannot resist knowing the truth.
“I met your mother and Lucia in New Orleans.”
“He was as handsome a man as either of us had ever seen,” Lucia offered, looking to Armand with a smile. “But from the first night he had eyes for no one but your mother.”
“But she was a prostitute,” Sapphire heard herself say, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “That’s how you met her. That’s what Lady Carlisle was talking about, wasn’t it? That’s what Mama was always trying to hide from me. It was her secret.”
Armand folded his hands together and was quiet for a moment. “Oui,” he said finally. “I met your mother in a bordello in New Orleans. We fell in love and I asked her to marry me, though she had given birth to another man’s child without the benefit of a wedding ring. She agreed to marry me and came here to Orchid Manor, bringing Lucia as her companion.”
“And that’s it? You’re telling me that I’m merely the product of some chance encounter between a stranger and a…a night-blooming flower?”
Armand studied his daughter’s face and thought to himself that she had always been so strong, stronger than him or Sophie. Her eyes were red but she did not cry. It had been like that always, even when she was a child; the time she had fallen from her horse when she was seven and had broken her arm, she had not cried. Nor had she cried the hundreds of times she’d skinned her knees or elbows, either. She was strong, his Sapphire, stronger than anyone he’d ever known.
Armand sat back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Listen before you make judgments. Do you not wish to know why your mother was in that place?”
“Do I?” she asked, setting her jaw.
“It doesn’t matter,” Angelique declared, sliding off the bed and coming to stand beside Lucia. “She is Sapphire, and she is as good as anyone on this island. Women do what they must to survive—isn’t that right, Aunt Lucia?” she asked. “Tell her.”
Lucia looked into Angelique’s dark eyes. “It is why I found myself in Madame Dulane’s in New Orleans. I was a common street whore in London and was given the opportunity to travel to America with a kind benefactor. When he grew bored with me, I took to the occupation I knew—but this time, instead of working the streets, I found a place where I would have a bed and food.”
Sapphire felt her head spinning. It was all so much to digest that she didn’t know which question to ask first. Aunt Lucia and her mother selling their bodies to men? Her sweet, quiet, gentle mother, a whore? It was an impossible thought, and yet the look on her father’s and aunt’s faces revealed the truth.
“Did you really meet my mother in New Orleans, or was she also a London whore?”
“I did meet her in New Orleans,” Lucia answered calmly, “but she, too, sailed from London, though not of her own choosing.”
“Not of her own choosing?”
“Sapphire, it will do you no good to be angry with your mother now. She did what she thought was best at the time,” Armand said. “She thought you should not know the truth of your birth until you were older. Then she became ill so suddenly and there was no time…”
The room was silent. Angelique had returned to sit on the bed. Sapphire stared out the window for a moment and then turned back to her father. “So whose daughter am I, if not yours?”
Lucia rested her hand on Armand’s arm and murmured something. He looked at her and nodded. Lucia waited until he had taken a seat in the beachwood chair again and then she spoke, opening her arms as if introducing a performance or work of art. “I
