Both brothers laughed softly.
He joined Alanza in the center of the room and took Mariah’s hand.
“Logan and Mariah will be married in October.”
Applause and cheers filled the parlor.
“I will be sending out invitations in a few weeks, so please plan on returning to join them as they start their new lives together.”
The soon-to-be-wed couple was then mobbed. The aunts kissed them, the uncles and cousins shook their hands, and the servants circled the room with more crystal flutes of champagne.
Mariah had tears in her eyes. She’d worried about being accepted, but the outpouring of goodwill she’d experienced from the moment she and Logan arrived set her anxiety to rest. Thanks to Logan she was now a member of the biggest family she’d ever had the pleasure to meet. She looked up at the man she would be marrying in a few months’ time and her heart was full.
“Happy?” he asked over the din.
She nodded but had no time to voice her happiness as more people came up to offer best wishes.
Then, Bonnie wheeled in the biggest, most beautiful birthday cake Mariah had ever seen. There were lit sparklers all over the top.
While the cake sputtered and blazed, Alanza yelled in Spanish for silence. The room stilled.
Addressing those gathered, she said, “My nuera didn’t have an opportunity to celebrate her last birthday, so I’m sharing my cake with her.”
Mariah whispered to Logan, “What’s nuera mean?”
He smiled. “Daughter-in-law.”
Her eyes widened. Alanza looked her way and said with deep affection, “Mariah, come.”
Her hands to her mouth and tears in her eyes, Mariah glanced first at Logan, and then at Alanza. Together, and hand in hand, the two amigas stood behind the big beautiful cake while calls of happy birthday, congratulations, and the toasts from the fifty guests filled the air.
Later, after the cake was cut and the slices passed around to the guests, Mariah snuck outside to the courtyard to get some air and reflect on her glorious new life. Answering the ad in the newspaper had been the best decision she’d ever made. Her past might have been filled with sadness and pain, but her future seemed as bright as the sparklers on her birthday cake and not even Queen Calafia could’ve asked for more.
A few moments later, Logan joined her. Mariah stepped to him and circled her arms around his waist. She placed her cheek against his heart. “Do you know how much I love you?”
He held her tightly. “Probably as much as I love you.”
She leaned up and kissed him passionately. As the kiss ended, she asked, “How long does this celebration last?”
“A couple of days. Tomorrow there will be jugglers and horse races, tons of food and a dancing bear or two.”
“Really?” she asked with a laugh.
“I kid you not. By mid-afternoon there will be so many people here, it’ll look like the whole state of California’s been invited.”
“Amazing. How about you take me back to the house and make love to me until I can’t walk?”
It was his turn to laugh. “You’re getting to be pretty outrageous, missy.”
“But you love me for it.”
“Damn right.”
So they snuck away, and Logan filled her request until the sun rose in the sky.
Epilogue
On April 15, 1886, Alanza Yates stared down at the small face of her first grandchild. Her name was Maria Elizabeth. She had a head full of dark hair and was perfectly formed from her tiny toes to her beautiful golden eyes. Alanza could barely see the one-hour-old baby through her happy tears.
“Mariah, she’s beautiful just like her mama.”
“And her abuela,” the very tired Mariah offered with a smile.
Being called abuela made Alanza’s eyes fill with even more tears. “Thank you for her.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m going to give her back to you, because I know Logan is going to lose his mind if we don’t let him in.”
So she handed the precious child back to her nuera, and after placing a kiss on the brows of both, made her exit.
Logan tipped inside.
“Hello,” his wife called sleepily. “Come see our Maria.”
He walked over and the sight of Mariah holding the product of their love nearly knocked him to his knees. He was so overwhelmed his emotions wouldn’t let him speak. “She’s so beautiful,” he finally managed to say.
“Yes, she is. Do you want to hold her?”
He leaned down and Mariah very carefully transferred their daughter into her father’s strong arms. “Hey, little miss,” he said softly. “Welcome to the world. I’m going to teach you how to ride, and shoot, and all the things a girl needs to know. Uncle Noah will teach you to sail and to fight pirates. Not sure what your Uncle Andrew can teach but I’ll make sure it has nothing to with bordellos.”
“Logan!” Mariah laughed.
Logan thought his daughter just perfect. “She has your eyes, querida.”
“And will probably have your height. The midwife says she’s quite long.”
He tenderly handed Mariah back the baby and kissed his wife softly. “I’ll let you two sleep. Get some rest.”
“Logan?”
“Yes.”
“I love you so.”
“I love you more. I’ll be back in a little while. There’s something I need to do.”
“What is it?”
“Start gathering rocks.”
As he left the room, the happy Mariah looked down at her beautiful daughter, thanked heaven for both her child and her husband, and drifted into sleep.
In a small boardinghouse in San Francisco, another baby was born—a little boy with dark hair and dark eyes. His tired mother, a stranger to Mariah and Logan, peered down at him sleeping so peacefully and smiled at him lovingly in spite of all her worries. Because of her profession, determining who the father might be had been a conundrum, until the midwife showed her the small birthmark on the child’s back. It resembled a sunburst, and the mother knew of only one man similarly marked. He wouldn’t be pleased to learn he’d fathered a child, especially not with her, but the baby was his, and she’d not let their son be denied. Kissing her son’s tiny forehead, she snuggled him close, and she, too, drifted off to sleep.
Note to the Readers
Dear Readers,
Destiny’s Embrace is the first of a three book series featuring Alanza Yates and her sons. My editor and I thought it might be fun to break away from the older characters we all know and love so well and create something new. This book, featuring oldest son Logan and his Philadelphia seamstress Mariah gave me a chance to not only bring a new family to life, but also allowed me to sprinkle the story with nuggets of the fascinating history unique to the State of California. As schoolteacher Daisy Stanton pointed out to Mariah, few people know about the great mythical Queen Calafia, but she’s been depicted not only as the modern-day Spirit of California, symbolizing the untamed bounty and beauty of the land before European settlement, she’s also been the subject of paintings, sculpture, stories, and films.
A 1926 portrayal of the warrior queen can be found in a mural in the Room of the Dons at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, and in 2004, the city’s African American Historical and Cultural Museum put together a Queen Calafia Exhibit featuring works by various artists.
In 2001, Disneyland in Anaheim opened a twenty-three-minute multimedia attraction based on the founding of California titled “Golden Dreams.” The great Whoopi Goldberg narrated it as Queen Calafia. Sadly, in 2009, “Golden Dreams,” which featured a bust of Ms. Goldberg as Calafia, was demolished to make way for a ride based on the Little Mermaid.
Demolished or not, her myth lives on and I hope you enjoyed learning about her as much as I.
Below is a partial list of the sources I consulted to bring Destiny’s Embrace to life and that you can use to learn more about Estabanico, Biddy Mason, the Bla
ck forty-niners, and others.
Beasley, Delilah L. Negro Trail Blazers of California. University of Colorado at Boulder. 1918.
Graaf, Mulroy, Taylor. Eds. Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California. Autry Museum of Western Heritage. 2001.
Lapp, Rudolph M. Blacks in Gold Rush California. Yale University Press. 1977.
Lapp, Rudolph M. “The Negro in Gold Rush California.” Journal of Negro History. V. XLIX April 1964. No. 2.
Queen Calafia. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
In closing, I send many thanks to my editor, Erika, and the great folks at Avon/HarperCollins; my agent, Nancy, who works so tirelessly on my behalf; and last but not least, you, my readers. Without your support this author would be nothing. Peace and Blessings!
See you next time.
B.
About the Author
BEVERLY JENKINS has received numerous awards, including three Waldenbooks Best Sellers Awards, two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times magazine, and a Golden Pen Award from the Black Writer’s Guild. Ms. Jenkins was voted one of the Top Fifty Favorite African-American writers of the twentieth century by AABLC, the nation’s largest online African-American book club. To read more about Beverly visit her website at www.beverlyjenkins.net.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Romances by Beverly Jenkins
Destiny’s Embrace
Night Hawk
Midnight
Captured
Jewel
Wild Sweet Love
Winds of the Storm
Something Like Love
Before the Dawn
Always and Forever
The Taming of Jessi Rose
Through the Storm
Topaz
Indigo
Vivid
Night Song
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DESTINY'S EMBRACE. Copyright © 2013 by Beverly Jenkins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062031266
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062032652
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