gently on her arm. “Please—your father’s guests…”
Sapphire pulled her arm away. “No! Did you…did you hear what she just said about my mother? What she accused you of being?”
“Ask Lady Morrow,” Lady Carlisle said as she drew herself up in her gray flowered gown, her hideous headdress with its bird bobbing as if it were pecking a hole in her head. “Her cousin’s brother knew them in New Orleans. He and Armand were business associates.”
“Edith, that will be quite enough,” Aunt Lucia said sharply.
“It’s not true! It’s a lie! Aunt Lucia, tell them, tell them my mother was not—” But when Sapphire looked at her aunt, she realized something was amiss. Did these women know something she didn’t? “Non,” she whispered in shock.
“Sapphire, ma petite…” Aunt Lucia reached for her hand.
Suddenly the whole garden seemed to spin around Sapphire, the bright torches, the heavy scent of jasmine, the sound of the countess’s sour voices. “It’s not true. None of it is true. It’s all lies!”
“Sapphire, this is complicated,” Lucia said calmly. “Let us go inside and—”
“No!” Sapphire cried, pulling away, her heart pounding in her throat. With tears filling her eyes, she rushed off the patio and ran into the jungle.
2
Sapphire ran wildly, tears streaming down her cheeks as she shoved her way through the underbrush, taking the shortcut to the stables in the humid darkness.
“It’s not true,” she shouted over and over again. “It’s not true! My mother was not a whore!” And yet she knew in her heart of hearts that it was true; the look on Aunt Lucia’s face spoke the truth. Her mother, her beloved Mama, her father’s Sophie, had been a common woman of the streets—a prostitute. And somewhere deep inside, Sapphire realized she had always known her mother kept a terrible secret. There was a sadness Mama could never put aside, not even with the love of her daughter and devoted husband.
“But how could you do it, Mama?” Sapphire whispered as she slowed to a walk. She was panting so hard that her chest ached and her stomach turned queasy. “How could you have died not telling me the truth?” she demanded of her mother, looking up into the starlit sky, calling to her somewhere above.
But of course there was no response, neither from the heavens nor from her mother, who had been dead for nearly a year. A year…yet it seemed as though they had just buried her mother in the lovely place she and Papa had chosen. Her illness had been swift—a sudden loss of weight, blurry vision, thirst and light-headedness. A physician had been called, but he was unable to cure the strange disease he had called the sugar sickness, and she died three weeks later.…Her beloved Mama was dead and now these people were saying such awful things about her!
Sapphire immediately felt a sense of comfort as she approached her father’s vast stables. The stables had always been a place of refuge when she was sad or hurt or angry. Here, alone with the horses, she found she could lose herself in grooming and caring for them, or simply standing in their presence. Riding through the pounding surf, she’d always found a sense of release and freedom that she had seemed to crave more and more in the past year.
Ahead, she saw the dim glow of a lantern in the tack room and she felt her heart flutter. Had Maurice come, hoping she could slip away from her father’s dinner party for a few minutes? Her steps quickened, her heart beating in anticipation as she slipped in the door. Hearing nothing, she walked quietly down the worn cobblestone center aisle, setting her feet on the paving blocks that had been carried here from the shores of France as ballast on a merchant vessel decades ago, listening to the familiar sounds of the horses shifting in their stalls, the contented chuff and the occasional whinny.
A sliver of light came from the doorway that had been left open a crack, and her heart swelled with anticipation. Her beloved was here! “Maurice?” Sapphire whispered, walking slowly toward the light.
Then she heard a sound, a female voice, and she hesitated. “Angelique?” What on earth was her sister doing at the barn? Taking a horse to meet Jacques?
“Sapphire?” Angelique called from behind the door. “I thought you were in the garden with—”
“Oh, Angel.” Sapphire rushed for the door and flung it open. “You’re not going to believe—” She clasped the door tightly with her hand and stared.
Angelique pulled herself from a man’s embrace.
“Maurice!” Sapphire’s heart fell as her world came crashing down around her.
“S-Sapphire, mon amour.”
“No!” She grabbed a pitchfork from where it rested in the corner of the tack room.
“This is not how it looks, ma chère.” Maurice walked toward her, his arms open.
“Not how it looks?” Sapphire shouted.
“Sapphire, please,” Angelique protested.
Angelique was wearing a simple A-line dress that fell to just past her knees, a dress similar to those worn by the native women. It was what she always wore when she sneaked out of the house to meet men.
“Do not get in my way!” Sapphire threatened Angelique as she took a step closer to Maurice, jabbing the tines of the pitchfork in the air. “You said you loved me! You said you wanted to marry me!” Her voice caught in her throat as a rage swept over her. “You said we would make beautiful babies together!”
“I do wish to marry you, mon amour. I do love you. It is only that—”
“What?” she demanded. “It is only what? You love me, but you kiss my sister?” Her last words came out of her mouth ragged and forlorn.
“Sapphire—” Angelique interrupted, reaching for her.
“Not now,” she snapped, thrusting the pitchfork at Maurice again. “I’m going to run my true love through his black heart,” she hissed, lunging toward him.
Maurice threw himself against the wall and slowly began to inch his way toward the door, his palms pressed to the wall. “Sapphire, s’il vous plait, let me explain. This has nothing to do with you and me. What you and I have is true love—”
“True love!” Sapphire laughed bitterly. “Get out of here,” she ordered, spitting at him.
Maurice ran out the door, and by the time Sapphire turned the corner, he was halfway through the barn.
“Never come back,” she called after him. “Not ever, do you hear me?”
She stood there for a moment staring into the darkness as the barn door slammed shut, then, leaving the pitchfork outside against the wall, she turned back to the tack room.
“How could you?” she whispered, her gaze settling on Angelique. She tucked a stray tendril of damp hair behind her ear. “You knew I loved him.”
“I’m sorry,” Angelique said, looking at the ground.
“You’re
