The Star in the Meadow (The Spanish Brand Book 4)

by Carla Kelly

  “I cannot thank you enough,” Paloma said, and never meant anything more. She looked around the tidy room, with the Villarreal children’s bedding neatly rolled into the corners and the parents’ bed made, but pushed against the table and chairs. “Peace is coming to this valley soon,” she said, as she buttoned her bodice. “I am nearly certain that Señor Mondragón will draw up plans for better houses, larger ones, outside the walls of the Double Cross.”

  “Such plans would be welcome,” Juanito’s wet nurse said. “Will the juez return soon?”

  “I hope so,” Paloma said. “I do hope so, for I miss him.” I hope he misses me, she wondered silently, knowing such a traitor thought was foolish, but still doubting. “Juanito goes to Pia Ladero now?”

  “Sí, señora,” Maria Villarreal said. She rose and opened the door for Paloma. “Go with God.”

  “And you.”

  Breathing deep of her son’s fragrance—that delicious baby smell she had missed—Paloma made her way, baby in her arms, next to the home of the curandera. She peeked in on Maria Brava, who was beginning to stir. When Maria saw Paloma, she tried to sit up, so Paloma came to her. Maria’s eyes never left her face as Paloma told her of Miguel Durán’s death by skunk, or heart attack, or divine intervention, whatever would suit the old woman who had dared to help two women who needed her.

  “But Roque?” Maria asked, her hand on Paloma’s arm now as if entreating her. “He is equally bad.”

  “El Teniente Gasca could find no sign of him or Pedro,” Paloma replied, wondering if Joaquim would authorize a patrol to continue looking for the man. “We pray he is far distant from us,” she finished, hoping she spoke the truth.

  Her words must have satisfied Maria Brava, whose grip on Paloma’s arm lessened. In a few more moments, she slept. Paloma nodded to the curandera and ducked out of the low-ceilinged cottage.

  She left her sleeping son with Señora Ladero, touched by the kindness of the women of the Double Cross, who had not let her down, or their juez. She wondered again at the goodness of some people and the evil of others.

  Tired now, and quite willing to lie down again, Paloma made her way toward her house, only to stop at the sound of laughter coming from Marco’s office, halfway between the horse barn and the hacienda. The open door invited her to knock on the frame and find herself in Catalina Ygnacio’s embrace.

  The auditor’s daughter scolded her gently for being out of bed, even though Paloma assured her she was quite fit and able.

  “You look ready to drop down in exhaustion,” Catalina contradicted. She helped Paloma to the rocking chair where she sat and knitted when Marco worked late.

  The sight of the familiar room with no Marco in it brought tears to Paloma’s eyes. She did as Catalina said, hoping to regain her composure before she came under Sancha’s scrutiny in the kitchen. Her shoulders drooped and she bowed her head, starved for the sight of her husband, even as doubts over her reception plagued her heart.

  But here was Catalina, eyes bright, smiling at her. “The teniente and I …” she began, then could not continue.

  “Good,” Paloma said, hopeful that Catalina’s own delight left her no room to worry about her companion in the adobe prison. “When?”

  “Before he left last night, he said he was going to ask the priest to announce the first of the banns on Sunday.” Her face shone with love, a far cry from her brooding, unhappy expression a mere six weeks ago when she had arrived in Valle del Sol. Where had the time gone?

  Señor Ygnacio cleared his throat and indicated the bundle of papers neatly tied with red ribbon. “Here it is, señora, only awaiting the juez de campo’s signature.” He looked at his daughter with pride. “Catalina checked my figures.”

  “And found not a single error,” Catalina said, returning his look.

  Paloma felt that odd disconnect again, wondering, before she caught herself, how life had continued around them as she and Catalina languished, starving, in a garden hut so close to everyone and yet so far. She had to say something; they were both looking at her.

  “Señor Ygnacio, will you return to Santa Fe?” Paloma asked. Life would be different for him, now that Catalina was going to become part of life at Santa Maria’s presidio.

  “I think not,” he replied. “I have nothing in Santa Fe.”

  I didn’t either, Paloma thought, remembering her journey here, alone at first and then in the company of the one person who now meant more to her that any other in the world. “I am confident the juez will think of something,” she said, before returning to her room to sleep because she felt too miserable to face anyone.

  We all depend on the juez de campo, she thought that afternoon. Her children came and went, bringing her food, cuddling up for a nap, then running outside to play. She nursed Juanito, grateful down to the depth of her heart for his gentle suck that brought her milk back, then let sleep reclaim her as dusk approached. Before her eyes closed, her one coherent thought was that her husband must return and soon. Everyone needed him, but no one more than her. Perhaps no one deserved him less, despite what Eckapeta had told her about his supreme unwillingness to leave her and go traipsing across Comanchería.

  She woke to a darkened room and a quiet house, as though everyone had deserted her. Was she ever going to wake again without sudden fear? She took several deep breaths to remind her she was breathing the sweet sage and rosemary of her pillow. It was late; everyone must be asleep.

  She breathed deeper and smelled another familiar odor of wood smoke and leather. She sat up in surprise and woke up completely when she realized her husband knelt by the bed.

  With a cry of delight, Paloma touched his familiar face, wondering how a man could sleep on his knees like that, especially with his bed right there, with clean sheets and blankets and her.

  “Marco?” she asked, her voice hesitant. “Marco?”

  He opened his eyes and she saw the tears in them. She came closer until she had wrapped herself around him as he knelt there. She smelled the dust of the trail on his clothes, his unwashed state, not unlike her own of mere days ago, and held him close.

  “Please forgive me,” he whispered.

  Forgive him? What was he talking about? “Marco, let me help you into bed,” she said, tugging on him, wanting him next to her.

  “I failed you so badly,” he said, the words tumbling out. “I didn’t know if you would even want me in the same room, let alone in our bed, but I had to find out. Please tell me you understand. I did it for the colony.”

  She tugged harder on his arm. “I am certain I owe you the apology,” she said, her lips close to his ear. “I was so silent and withdrawn and wore you down until you must have been happy to send me to your sister’s for a week.”

  He sat up then, leaning back on his haunches beside their bed, his eyes wide in amazement. “But I did not even look for you!” he exclaimed. “Toshua insisted I ride to Río Napestle, and here you were, lost somewhere. Good God, my wife, the mother of my children, and I rode away!” He leaned forward against the edge of the bed. “Paloma, I only did it for New Mexico.”

  “That was no offense,” she reminded him. Why did he not see the enormity of her offense? “I love our colony, too.”

  Heaven knows she hadn’t the strength or the energy to coax her tall husband into a bed if he didn’t want to be there, but Paloma tried. She stood up and grasped him under his arms, grunting and straining to pull him up. “You are the most stubborn man I know,” she said finally, and lay down on the bed again, worn out with tugging on a dead weight. “Marco Mondragón, get in this bed. Now.”

  “You really want me, even after I left you lost?” he said, his voice filled with disbelief, but something else now. She had heard that same wistfulness in Maria Brava, in Catalina Ygnacio, and in her own murmurings. It was hope, that tiniest and most fragile flower of the heart.

  “Marco, sometimes I think you are an idiot,” she said, sitting up and ready to try again. “Take off your clothes becau
se they stink and get in this bed! Right now!”

  He still sat there. There was just enough moonlight coming through the closed shutters to show her a ravaged face. Paloma let out a long breath and leaned forward for a better look. The vestiges of a black eye remained, but Claudio had warned her of that. This was more.

  She put her hand on his chest, ready to remove his vest. “Marco, you look so worn out, so tired. This was more than a trip with Comanches. What happened?”

  In answer, he took her hand and brought it around to the back of his neck, where she gasped to feel a large bump behind his ear. “Marco, my love, what did they do to you?”

  “Someone was an excellent shot with a rock,” he said. “You remember what it was like when we rode into the encampment of the sacred canyon, with warriors milling all about and throwing stones.”

  She gently touched the knot on his head. “I remember too well,” she said as he traced the small scar on her face from a stone. “I remember Eckapeta and others shielding us as best they could. Oh, Marco.”

  “I was unconscious for a while, then I pled the governor’s case before a highly skeptical audience,” he said. “You’d have been proud of me. I’m too tired to tell it. When we left, I could only travel half a day. I would have fallen out of the saddle, if Toshua hadn’t caught me.”

  “He was watching you just for that, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t remember a thing for several days,” Marco said.

  He rested his head on the edge of the bed again, as she stroked his hair. “Toshua built a brush shelter for me, shot a deer, and we stayed there for I don’t know how long. I would have been here sooner—truly I would have, Paloma.”

  He put both hands behind her neck and drew her closer. She forgot about the vest and kissed him. He kissed her back with a fervor that reminded her all over again just how much she loved this juez de campo, who bore everyone’s burdens, up to and including those of the entire colony of New Mexico and its royal governor. He had worked so patiently for years now to bring the Comanches into the fold of Spain, even as Spain’s grasp was slipping.

  Never mind that she had prayed and dreamed for those awful days that he would find her, unaware how far away he really was, and in danger of his own. Eckapeta had spoken truly. Only a force greater than all of them could ever have dragged him away. She knew it as surely as she knew every crease and scar on his body.

  As she started on his vest again, she explained all that to him as carefully and slowly as if he were Soledad or Claudito. “Let there be no mistake, my love,” she said as she helped him from his vest and then his shirt. “I hold no grudge. Juanito’s birth was easy enough, but I felt so gloomy. I don’t know why, but I did.”

  He sat beside her now, his arm around her. He leaned his head against hers and murmured something about being so wrapped up in spring planting and events to the east that he overlooked her dark time after Juanito’s birth. “All you wanted was some respite,” he said. “Believe me, Paloma, I understand that.” He gave her head a little rub, a wordless, familiar endearment between them that brought tears to her eyes. “I apologize and you apologize. Let’s be done with it. Right?” He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Right?”

  She nodded and threw her arms around him. He pulled her back with him onto the bed, held her there, and fell asleep. Paloma laughed out loud, which didn’t even cause her exhausted husband to stir. She worked her way out of his grasp and took off his clothes, dumping them in a pile by the door. Tomorrow they could argue about whether the nasty things should go to the laundress or the burn pit.

  He lay there sound asleep as she fetched warm water from the kitchen, smiled at Sancha with no embarrassment whatsoever and returned to clean him off, gently washing away the grime of travel and with it, her own dismay that she had failed him, or even thought she had.

  She scrubbed him gently, marveling at how one man could bear so much for so many. She remembered what Sancha had told her about this dear man carrying their nearly dead son from mother to mother on the Double Cross, begging their help, and then managing to leave with Toshua before he knew any outcome of their son’s life or her whereabouts.

  She liked to kiss his ear, but she cleaned it first, knowing that a real bath loomed in the morning. She kissed him on his clean ear and let her tongue rove a bit. He woke up.

  “There now,” she said, her voice gruff, which made him smile. “You’ll do for a night in my bed, but tomorrow, it’s the bathhouse for you. We’ll have the curandera look at your head, too.” She sniffed him. “No more dung poultices.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, and let her help him under the covers.

  His eyes started to close again. She asked him what had been the outcome of his time in Casa de Palo, but he was too far gone to tell her. Shaking her head, Paloma sat beside him until he sank into deep slumber. When he was breathing evenly, she got up, found her shawl and tiptoed through the darkened hallway, hoping someone might still be awake.

  A light from the sala made her knock on the door, eager to see Toshua.

  The Comanche opened the door and took her hand, pulling her inside. “Is he asleep?”

  She nodded, pleased to see Toshua. “I want to know what happened.” She came closer and held out her arms. “Toshua, thank you for keeping him alive.”

  “He’s tough,” Toshua said as he hugged her back. “Almost as tough as you are. Do you know he has not had a good night’s sleep since we left? All he did was worry about you, when he wasn’t raving with a fever.”

  “I believe it,” she replied as she sat beside him and smiled at Eckapeta, who sat cross-legged on their pile of bedding. “He was certain he had failed me, even as I was equally certain I had failed him. Do you know two more stupid people?”

  Toshua laughed out loud. “This woman and I have been equally foolish,” he said, gesturing to Eckapeta. “And probably every man and woman who ever slept together under the same blanket. Go to bed and be glad you are normal.”

  Chastened and yet content, she stood up and blew them both a kiss. She looked back at the door. “I must know: will there be peace in this colony that probably even King Carlos himself could not find on a map?”

  “There will be peace, Paloma, if not this year, than next. Ask your worthless, good-for-nothing, cry-baby husband you can’t seem to manage without. Goodnight, my daughter.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  In which some loose ends are tied up, others not

  Marco had never been a man to sit in a bathhouse, not when a perfectly good acequia flowed through his fortress, easily accessible after dark. He did enjoy washing Paloma in the wooden tub brought to their chamber when it was too cold for her in the bathhouse he had built for her. He had not thought to use the place himself, not such a healthy man as the juez de campo of Distrito Valle del Sol.

  But there he sat, enjoying the warmth of the water. Leaning back, he rested his arms on the edge of the tin tub as Paloma went over him with a cloth and soft soap. He tried not to smile when she scolded him for worrying about her when she and Catalina had been perfectly capable of rescuing themselves.

  He let her carry on, enjoying the scold because he knew she didn’t mean a word of it. He suspected she had been afraid for her life, and even more fearful for Juanito’s life, because he knew her. He was content to feel her hands on his body and realize that, provided neither of them felt too decrepit tonight, they would enjoy each other as only a husband and wife could.

  “Our faithful commander of Presidio Santa Maria is going to become a husband, you say?” he asked, breathing a little quicker when dutiful Paloma seemed to think his private parts weren’t clean enough already. “And to a reformed shrew and master storyteller who will keep him walking a straight line?”

  “Absolutely,” that dutiful wife replied. She worked over his private parts in a most soothing fashion, the dimple in her cheek at play. Dios, but he had married a rascal. “She has already started rearranging his
personal rooms in the presidio.”

  “Will she regret marrying a penitent scoundrel?” he asked.

  “Not even slightly,” Paloma said. “Someone told me once that women like to marry scoundrels, but I never did, Big Man Down There.”

  She sat back and looked at him, her eyes gentle and filling with unshed tears. “I didn’t mean a word of my scold,” she told him. “I’ve never been so afraid.”

  “I have never felt so helpless,” he said. “You pushed back the fear and found a way to freedom, though.”

  She nodded. He watched the frown leave her face, and the tears retreat. She had more to tell him and he waited.

  Finally she spoke. “I’ll say this once. I am not one to tempt fate. When things were at their worst, I had a lovely dream. Perhaps it was more than a dream.”

  “How so?”

  She rested her arms on the tub now, close to him. “I saw three children playing by the acequia.”

  “Soledad, Claudito, and Juanito. He was old enough to play with his brother and sister?”

  “Yes. And guess what else?” She touched his face, and he could have died with the loveliness of the gesture. “There was another baby at my breast. Just a little one. Whether son or daughter, I do not know.” She took a deep breath that caught. “I knew then I was going to live.”

  He looked deep into the blue eyes of his wife, thankful that a man could be so fortunate twice in his life. He prayed silently that he would be the only husband Paloma Vega ever had, even as he knew without a doubt that if something happened to him, she would carry on, likely remarry, and protect the Double Cross with all of her infinite resources. A man could do worse than know that about the woman he loved.

  He rubbed the top of her head and her hand went to his arm. “Paloma, te adoro,” he whispered.

  “Y yo a ti,” she replied. She tipped his head a little to one side and started in on the dirty creases in his neck. “Tell me again what we are to do this fall, you and I?”

  “Juanito, too, of course, and probably Soledad and Claudito,” he added. “I am not about to go anywhere again without all of you.”