Of Gold & Blood Series 2 Books 1 & 4
Page 40
“Mia Cara. You are saying you are — as we say — la palomito sucia — a little soiled dove?”
She nodded, and a tear slid down her cheek. She dashed it away.
“Yes. Yes, that’s what I am saying. Una palomito sucia. And I felt such a fraud sitting there with you and you father last night. I didn’t deserve to be there …”
Rafael looked around him. His finely shaped brows were contracted, his eyes solemn.
“Ah Elanora, I wish I could take you in my arms right now and show you this revelation changes nothing for me.” He cast his hands out, palms open. “To save you embarrassment, I won’t do it. But I want to.” He laughed. “You might think we Spaniards are what, feudal, in our attitude to women?”
She shook her head. “No, no, not feudal. But even in America — well it’s not acceptable.”
“Elanora, you’d be surprised. We’re more enlightened that you might think. And as for me. Well, I don’t want a life without you.
“That’s one reason I wanted Father to meet you last night. He understood. I want you to be my wife, and from what you’ve just been telling me, I don’t think we should waste any more time.”
The tears were flowing down both cheeks now. She stared at him with wide-eyed disbelief, and then flung her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder.
“Rafael, I just can’t believe …” The rest of her words were drowned out by her convulsive weeping.
She’d dried her eyes. They sparkled back at him as she said that ‘Yes, yes, she would adore to become the first — and she hoped the only — Mrs Rafael Castellanos y Ordonez’. He’d returned her to her Aunt Glory’s house while he retraced his steps to Henry Travers’ Bleecker Street parlor.
He braced himself for a frigid reception, and it was just as well he did. The old man was adamant. No Spanish photographer was going to marry his daughter. Ever. He didn’t get to explain about his family’s status and accomplishments, and it didn’t matter. He suspected it wouldn’t have made any difference to the old man’s dogmatic views.
He walked away thanking God that Elanora had reached her majority and didn’t need his permission anyway. He’d arrange for a friend to take a daguerreotype of the occasion and they’d send it to him later.
Epilogue
On a fine February day with the air full of the fragrance of wedding bouquet daffodils Elanora Grayson Travers and Rafael Castellanos y Ordonez were married in a simple ceremony at St Paul’s Chapel, Broadway.
The bride wore a sparkling gown in a French design from Stewart’s Marble Palace store. The New York Tribune item the next day noted that the witnesses for the occasion were the groom’s father, the Spanish ambassador to Mexico, the Marqués Angel de Castellanos y Ordonez, and the bride’s aunt, Miss Gloria Grayson, a well-known New York educator.
The day was captured on daguerreotype by one the Mr Castellanos’ friends, the celebrated society photographer Mathew Brady. It was believed the newlyweds were to honeymoon in Central America, after visiting the groom’s mother, the Marquésa Fanny de Castellanos y Ordonez, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Amelia Taylor and William Mountfort were married in a private ceremony in Paris in June, 1848. Amelia had lost her first child three months into the pregnancy but she and William went on to have five sturdy boys who were all raised to excel at commerce.
Eustace never married, and as Rafael had predicted, bitterly regretted his whole life that he’d not wed Elanora as a young man.
Six months after Elanora and Rafael wed, in August 1848, in Nicaragua, where they were holidaying with Marquésa Fanny de Castellanos y Ordonez, Elanora was delivered of a lusty-lunged daughter she named Grayson Castellanos, in honor of her Aunt Glory, who had stood by her through her darkest days.
She’d been determined to name the child Grayson, whether it was a boy or a girl, because she said without her aunt’s wise counsel, she’d never have found a way to marry Rafael, who truly was the love of her life.
As for Grayson? She was a strong-willed little tot who was always known as Graysie. From birth, she had unusually long slender fingers. The fingers of an artist, they said, and Rafael always joked that she was going to be a photographer, just like him.
THE END
FREE PREVIEW
Unbridled Vengeance, Book Five, Of Gold & Blood
If you enjoyed Of Gold and Blood Series 2, you might enjoy following the story on in Unbridled Vengeance, Of Gold & Blood # 5.
1870, Sacramento County
When a loyal rancher is accused of a brutal double murder, only his lover’s silence stands in the way of his freedom.
Caleb Stewart has battled natural disasters and legal challenges to secure his land claim, and he’s finally free to court the French beauty next door. But when his own hacienda becomes the scene of a suspicious double murder, love is thrust brutally aside by the threat of the gallows..
Madeleine Laurent hopes a fresh start in America will help her forget painful memories. But even though her homicidal husband apparently returns from the dead it puts not just her but Caleb’s life in jeopardy.
Threatened into silence, as the trumped-up case grows, Caleb fears he’s running out of time to discover the real killer before he loses his ranch and his freedom.
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Jenny Wheeler
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas to round off what has been an amazing year, with the first four books — and the first Book Bundle of Books 1–3 — published in the last six months. (Of course, writing them took a lot longer than that.)
I would once again like to thank the librarians — particularly at Auckland Central and my own local Birkenhead Library — for their patient help and support with locating sometimes difficult to access research material and helping manage my prodigious borrowing, not just for the books, but also for all the Joys of Binge Reading podcast interviews (www.thejoysofbingereading.com) I’ve done as well.
I have had such a lot of positive comments on the cover designs for all of the Of Gold & Blood books and Tangled Destiny is no exception. Award-winning designer Jane Dixon-Smith at JD Smith Design (http://www.jdsmith-design.com/) has shown an unerring eye all the way through, and I have been delighted with the results, as have readers. Whenever I look at the books together I am grateful to her for her work.
Once again Marina and Jason at Polgarus Studio (https://www.polgarusstudio.com/) have been stalwarts who are completely reliable in helping set the nuts and bolts of publishing in place.
And I would never have survived the post-publication without the marvellous assistance I have from graphic designer and web assistant Jo Cheong, who has worked wonders from her Singapore home office.
Nikki Crutchley at Crucial Corrections (https://www.crucialcorrections.co.nz/) once again gave valiant proofreading support under severe time constraints.
And as usual, any mistakes are wholly my res
ponsibility. With the best will in the world little things seem to slip through, and I apologise in advance if that occurs this time.
God willing, there will be more Of Gold & Blood stories coming, but in the meantime I hope we are all going to enjoy a restorative Christmas break — and if you happen to be reading one of the books in the series, let me know what you think at jenny@jennywheeler.biz!
Happy Christmas everyone!
Jenny
AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE SERIES 2 EDITION
These two books – Poisoned Legacy and Tangled Destiny fit together, even though they do not follow one another consecutively in the series. But I do think you need to have read Poisoned Legacy before the full impact of the events twenty years earlier in New York hit home.
I’d love to hear your views on that. Would you have preferred to have read Tangled Destiny BEFORE Poisoned Legacy, or are you happy it ended up being the other way round? Love to hear what you think.
There’s still more unravelling of Elanora’s story to come in future books, so the tale is not over yet. But I think it was also fun to get a bit of a glimpse of what New York life was like in Elanora’s life before she came to her California’s Gold Rush days, when turbulence and brutal power often prevailed.
In the meantime, do keep in touch!!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenny Wheeler is the author of the Of Gold & Blood Old California mystery series:
Poisoned Legacy #1.
Brother Betrayed #2.
Double Jeopardy #3.
Tangled Destiny #4 (Christmas novella and Prequel.)
Unbridled Vengeance #5
Hope Redeemed #6
Tainted Fortune Book #7 (September 2020)
Boxed Set/Book Bundle Of Gold & Blood, Series 1 Books 1 – 3.
Boxed Set/ Book Bundle Of Gold & Blood Series 2 Books 1 & 4
Jenny’s online home is at jennywheeler.biz or email Jenny@jennywheeler.biz
You can connect with Jenny on:
Facebook: @JennyWheeler.Biz
Twitter: @Jenny_Biz
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COPYRIGHT
Published by Happy Families Ltd
Copyright © 2020Jenny Wheeler
ISBN: -978-0-9951308-1-4 (Kindle)
ISBN: -978-0-9951308-2-1 (E-Book)
ISBN: -978-0-9951308-3-8 (I Book)
ISBN: -978-0-9951308-0-7 (PDF)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies, institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.
E Book Edition First published 2020