Veiled Joy
Page 14
He talked so rapidly Joy shook her head and Brit ordered, “Wait, Carlos. Let her be for getting her breath.” He gently took her arm and led her to the house.
It took a full hour to make the tired traveler understand everything that had happened and to accept that she was Jessica Montoya. But her happiness died when she learned her real father lay ill in Monterey. She sprang to her feet, eyes flashing. “We must go, now.”
“Si.” Carlos nodded and talked with their host and hostess.
“If we hasten we can catch the stagecoach not far from here.” He looked doubtful. “What of Sol and Shamrock? They are tired and need rest.”
“Leave them here,” the round-faced Mexican suggested. “We will care for them and let them roll in rich grass until you return.”
Before he finished speaking, Brit handed him far more money than such a service required, ignored his protests, and urged Joy to eat the quickly prepared but delicious meal set before them.
They caught the stagecoach with only minutes to spare and all the way north and west discussed the bizarre turns of fate that led the three of them together by such strange paths.
“It is not fate but God,” Joyous declared.
“Si.” Now that the excitement had died down, Carlos tactfully pulled his sombrero low over his eyes, slumped in the seat opposite Brit and Joyous, and either slept or gave an excellent imitation of snoring.
Brit turned to her and said in a voice low enough not to reach the wily Carlos, should he be playing possum, “Could you ever be for caring about a man who loves you with all his heart but bears the weight of ten extra years?”
Her lips trembled. Her eyes looked like twin stars. “Mister O’Donnell, I’ll be for confessing,” she mimicked in his Irish brogue. “Daddy Angus and I prayed for someone to come, and God sent you.” A flush of color made her gilt freckles more pronounced than ever on her straight nose. “I hadn’t bargained on it being a man who would one day be my. . .my husband,” she faltered.
A quick glance at Carlos showed him relaxed and sprawled across the opposite seat. Again money had ensured privacy. Brit cupped Joy’s chin with one hand and lowered his face until his lips touched hers.
A snore broke off in the middle and changed to a delighted laugh. Then Carlos winked at the red-faced pair. “Ah, if only my Sadie could be here! ’Tis a grrrand day it is, forrr the Irrrrish.”
Even Brit’s irritation with Carlos’s hopelessly high spirits couldn’t withstand the young man’s terrible Irish accent. He placed an arm around Joy, drew her closer, and ordered, “Go back to sleep, you spalpeen.”
“What’s a spalpeen?” Carlos demanded, then grinned when Brit told him it meant an Irish rascal, in this case a Spanish rascal named Montoya.
Yet love and teasing couldn’t overshadow the fear of what awaited them in Monterey. Joy’s heart ached. Was she to learn her parents’ identity then lose her father so soon? What would it be like to become Jessica Montoya again? A sob rose to her throat. No matter how much she came to love her real family, no one could ever replace Daddy Angus. Still, he would be happy that at last God had restored her to her family. She also knew that before long she would be neither McFarlane nor Montoya, but Mrs. O’Donnell—and she had a feeling he would never call her anything but Joyous. It comforted her, even when they reached Carlos’s home and discovered that Ramon had briefly roused at the news Jessica had been found, only to pluck at his fine linen sheets and cry continuously for his lost child.
Don Carlos took one precious moment to fulfill his vow before hurrying them into a closed carriage to rush through the night to his brother’s hacienda. “Can you ever forgive me?” he cried. His face twisted. “I did not know.”
Joy had been prepared for this moment by Carlos, who frankly told her the whole story and added it was because of Dolores’s jealousy that his papa had been swayed against her, along with his mama.
“There is nothing to forgive,” she told the distraught, penitent man. “Please, take me to my father and mother.” She barely noticed Dolores, who held back, or Inez, who had flown to her, entreating her forgiveness.
A swift journey delivered them to a hacienda whose door stood wide open in spite of the night’s chill. Mary Montoya had put aside her mourning and stood in the warm, yellow glow of a fan light, wrapped in a white shawl, holding a torn, lace-trimmed dress. “Jessica.” She held out her arms. “My daughter.” The next instant Joyous stood wrapped in a mother’s love for the first time in a long time, unable to do anything except cling to the tenderness even Brit’s love for her could not surpass.
“We must go to Ramon,” her mother whispered. She led the little party up a grand staircase whose fading splendor could be restored through the good fortune of the others and into an enormous bedroom dominated by a richly canopied bed.
The man in its depths looked more dead than alive except for his burning black eyes turned toward the doorway.
Joy saw the years of agony since she had been stolen engraved forever on Ramon’s face. “Father?” She walked to the bed and knelt.
“Jessica.” Life returned to the waxen face. A man who must be a doctor grunted approval. “Is it you?” Healing flamed in his countenance.
She threw back the old gray veil she still wore to keep out cold and too bold glances. Her glorious hair shimmered in the light of the hundred candles. “Father, I have come home.”
From his vantage point near the door, Brit heard the sound of soft weeping. A verse from the Thirtieth Psalm that his mother had quoted many times in the hard years swept into his mind and blinded his eyes with mist not unlike that of Irish dells. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Joy had come to them all, a gift of God in the form of one in the morning of her life.
The veils that had hidden the past were cast aside, as one day earthly veils would be, leaving them face-to-face with the heavenly Father who awaited their homecoming.
About the Author
COLLEEN L. REECE is a prolific author with over sixty books published including seven Heartsong Presents titles. With the popular Storm Clouds over Chantel, Reese established herself as a doyenne of Christian romance.