“Who are these Pilgrims?”
Her smile faded as she realized the gap between them. “They were the beginning of my nation. They were the aristocracy of the English colonies, just as you are the aristocracy of California. It means nothing to you, but regardless of my penniless state, I come from people who are moral and proud. I can’t be your mistress. It’s demeaning. I couldn’t live like that.”
“To sleep with me once, then casually turn your back on me —that’s less demeaning?”
She blushed. “I didn’t sleep with you, not like you mean.”
“To all in Alta California, you did just that.” He made a place for himself beside her, and he sat so close the warmth of his hip seemed to melt the sheet. She wanted to look down, but she found the courage that allowed her to gaze on his body evaporated with his proximity. Keeping her gaze firmly attached to his, she concentrated on his words.
“Catriona, I’ve never asked you to be my mistress. English isn’t my first language, and this . . . this ‘taking care of’ has more than one meaning. I wish to provide you shelter, food, give you children, fight your battles for you.” Lifting his hand to her cheek, he stroked it until she was hypnotized. “I want you to be my wife.”
28 May, in the year of our Lord, 1777
Fray Amadis found the journey into the mountains too strenuous. He has passed on to glory. We laid him to rest in the dirt of these California mountains with many prayers and the proper rites.
I fear the Lick of food and chill of the nights are taking their toll on Fray Lucio, also. He is old and weary. He droops as we walk and moans in his sleep. God grant him strength. If he should go to his reward, there would be only Fray Patricio and me. Fray Patricio stands as tall and as broad as the oak trees of the interior, with a hearty attitude and a cheerful belief in our mission, but the chest we carry weighs greatly. We must find somewhere to hide this gold until we can return for it.
—from the diary of Fray Juan Estévan de Bautista
Chapter 8
“Your wife?” Katherine skittered out of the sheet, over the pillow. She stopped only when she felt the headboard against her spine, then she molded each vertebra flat against the wood. Her chemise and pantalettes provided inadequate cover, but she used her hands to conceal what she could.
“Yes.” Damian’s voice was gentle. “My wife.”
“Your wife?”
This time he said nothing.
A choking indignation filled her, and an unnamed fear. Marriage—indeed, any kind of attachment to this man—would never be the easy relationship she’d shared with Tobias. Damian would demand everything she had to give. He’d hold her in the kind of love that took prisoners and never let them go. “Are you mad?”
Lifting his knee, he perched his elbow atop. One of his fingers stroked his mustache, and he sighed. “Not to my knowledge.”
His equanimity calmed her, until he added, “You have no choice.”
She jerked the pillow over her chest. Her motions revealed her agitation, she realized, but his composure rattled her. “I admit it. I’ve needed someone. Now I can’t wait to stand on my own two feet again.”
“That’s fine. As long as you do it in my bed.” His mouth quirked. “And keeping your feet while in my bed is unlikely and possibly dangerous.”
She wrapped the pillow around her like a suit of armor. “You want me to come to you impoverished, with nothing of value except a mouth that needs feeding and a body that needs shelter. You’re not mad. You think I am.”
He stared coldly down his nose. “Perhaps that’s how an American man considers his wife, but a Californio sees more than a hungry mouth and a demanding body.”
“I’ve had experience with this situation and its disadvantages. I never want to be the poor relative again.”
“Perhaps for an American man.”
“For you, there is the obstacle of my nationality.”
“Pardon?”
She put her face at eye level with his. “I’m an American. An American, descended from the English settlers two hundred years ago.”
She glared right in his eyes, and he glared back. “Do you perceive a problem?”
“You’re a pure Castilian Spaniard. Proud as the devil, bragging about your lineage, telling the world about your Moorish ancestors and ignoring any others. Do you want an American to be the mother of your children?”
“Why not?”
“Because my nationality would be a stain on your pure blood line. Do you deny it?”
He opened his mouth, but no words came out. She waited, but he could say nothing, and for the first time she realized how much she’d wanted him to refute her accusation. “In my country, the Irish immigrants are despised, as you despise Americans. Some of them are scoundrels, but most are just people seeking a better life.”
“Americans seek a better life at the expense of the Californios.”
“Americans are as proud of themselves as you are. Our ways are different. Individually, we’re governed by land hunger. As a nation, we’re governed by a sense of destiny.” She coaxed him with a smile. “Surely you, with your Moorish background, can understand destiny.”
He wouldn’t be coaxed. “American destiny will destroy a way of life I love.”
“So the Spanish destroyed the Indians.”
He was impatient with such foolishness. “In my heart, I believe the United States should annex California. The United States is a young, vigorous country. Mexico has no organization. The English lick their lips when they gaze on us, but we’ve already seen how the Old World treats the New. It’s the people of America that stick in my craw. Brash, rude, impatient. Thieves and prostitutes.” He stopped when she winced.
“My Maura’s an Irishwoman. There are those who told me she came to prostitution through the natural corruption of the Irish.”
“I would never accuse you of prostitution.”
“I would have given you my body with little struggle. Even this morning, you stare out the window and wonder why.”
He sat back, his face awash with red, his nostrils flared with the white of distaste.
Never pausing to wonder how she could read him so well, she continued, “You wonder if I’d be as easy for any man. If you were my husband, every time you left me, you’d wonder who was sleeping in my bed.” She stabbed at herself unmercifully, feeling the pain but unwilling to cease until all the words had been spoken. “We have different customs, different backgrounds. I’m not even a typical American woman. I’ve studied with Margaret Fuller. She was a friend of my father’s.”
By not a blink of an eyelash did he betray his bewilderment, and for that she gave him full credit. “Margaret Fuller, like myself, was plagued with financial difficulties when her father died, but she went out into the world and made a living. She taught at Bronson Alcott’s Temple School in Boston and later conducted classes for women.”
“This excites you?”
He sounded not a bit impressed, but she paid him no heed. “I wish I could have done something so wonderful.”
“Is teaching so unusual a vocation for an American woman?”
“No, but she taught at an innovative school.” She clasped her hands together. Although she didn’t realize it, her expression betrayed her enthusiasm. “I used to sneak away from my uncle’s house, to listen and participate.”
“What restrained you from teaching, if this was your desire?”
“I didn’t want to teach,” she said impatiently. “I wanted to be independent. When my father died, I had my mother to care for.”
“At fifteen, you cared for your mother?”
His smooth sympathy lured her into confession. “Mama wasn’t well. But even if I could have supported her, she wouldn’t have permitted it. Mama was a lady, and she raised me to be one also.” She mimicked her mother with a fond smile. “‘Ladies don’t work.’”
“So you had to live with your uncle?”
Her smile faded. “Yes.”
“Did you resent your mother?” he asked.
“I adored my mother.” Defiantly, she glared at him. “Until the day she died, she was the stick with which the Chamberlain family drove me.”
“Ah.” He comprehended more than she said, perhaps more than she comprehended about herself. “Your mother didn’t approve of this Margaret Fuller?”
“I didn’t tell her about Margaret Fuller. She understood that my life with my uncle was less than ideal, and I shielded her as best I could. I presented her the image of a satisfied daughter.”
“Did she believe your image?”
“As time went on and her illness progressed, she wanted to believe it. She needed to believe it.” Her sigh wavered with remembered grief. “I stopped going to see Margaret Fuller.”
“What does this woman teach that you feared to continue your lessons?”
“Margaret Fuller believes that women deserve enrichment, deserve the education that men have. They deserve dignity for their place in society.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “What has this to do with us?”
She suspected him of sarcasm, but he displayed none of the signs. The respect with which he’d always treated her, had always treated all women, nudged at her consciousness. “I can’t stay,” she faltered. “When our children came, with their fair skin and freckles, you’d look at them—” She stopped and sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
He sniffed, too, and rose with a curse. “My cigar.” It smoldered on the window sill, burning a slow path along the polished wood.
Katherine pinched her nose against the acrid odor. “I hate cigars.” She noticed her own petulance, but her world had been tossed askew.
“Do you?” Gingerly, he pinched the brown stub between his nails and tossed it out the window into the dripping rain.
“They stink. They make me want to sneeze. They make my eyes water.” It must be the cigar that made her eyes water, she thought wretchedly.
He picked up the silver cigar case and ran his fingertips over the raised pattern. “Is this the truth?”
“Why would I lie?” Clutching the pillow, she slid back under the sheet.
“At this moment, I can think of several reasons.”
She wasn’t such a fool as to ask what the reasons he imagined. “Tobacco is nothing but an evil weed.” She shuddered as she stared at the offending case.
He nodded slowly. “Very well.” Opening the case, he pulled out every one of the long, fragrant cigars. He weighed them in his hand; he lifted them to his nose and inhaled. His eyes closed in enjoyment, then he flung the whole handful out into the rain.
Her jaw dropped.
He leaned out the window. “They’re in the mud.”
It took two breaths, but she brought in enough oxygen to say, “Why did you do that?” Only she didn’t speak, she shouted.
“You’re noticing me again,” he warned.
“Noticing you?” She gestured wildly and grabbed for the sliding sheet. “I don’t even understand you. Those cigars are expensive.”
“Too true,” he agreed pensively.
“And you love them.”
“Love them?” He snapped the case shut. “I don’t love them. I like them. I enjoy them.”
“Every man smokes in California. You can’t just throw your cigars out the window.”
“How scandalized you are. Is it the waste of money?”
“Yes,” she said with wholehearted agreement.
“I can afford it. Is it the message behind my action?”
She blinked. That wasn’t a question she could answer. At least, not now. “If it is your plan to refrain from tobacco, you should have given the cigars to your father.”
He noted her evasiveness with a chuckle, and the answer he gave replied to more than she’d said. “Ah, but if they were mine I’d crave them . . . as I crave you. If there’s a choice between you and the cigars—” He waggled his fingers out the window.
“I’m going away,” she insisted, although she was beginning to lose sight of her reasons why.
“What of last night?” he asked. “What of the gifts we have to give each other?”
She had no reply to that; she didn’t want to look into his dark eyes anymore, nor at his amber body.
He strolled across the room. She scooted backwards, but he flashed her a grin and leaned down beside the bed. He came up with his shirt in his hand.
He pulled it on with such a slow, unmistakable sensuality she couldn’t help but think about removing it again. Of course he knew it; she didn’t like the way he kept anticipating her reactions.
Buttoning the shirt from the bottom to the top, he rolled the sleeves up over his elbows. “Better?”
“Yes.” But it wasn’t. Somehow the sight of his muscled legs beneath the long tails of the shirt made her wish to see it all, even if she no longer dared to peek.
“What of your family? What of this uncle and aunt? Once you’re back in the bosom of your family, you’ll again be at their mercy.”
She shook her head at him. “As I’ve said before, I can take care of myself.”
“As I’ve said before—” a knock rattled the door, and he moved to open it “—that’s no longer necessary.”
Katherine wilted down into the feather mattress as Leocadia walked in. She wanted to pull the covers over her head. Why didn’t Damian just lean out the window and shout that he’d graced her bed with his presence? How could he ignore his own half-clothed state? How could he ignore the implications of his presence in her room? He seemed not at all embarrassed as Leocadia handed him a paper and said, “Your father insisted I give you this right away.”
Glancing at it, he frowned. Glancing up at the housekeeper, he frowned more.
With a graceful gesture, she waved toward the door. “I bring a bath for Doña Katherina.”
Damian read the scrawl on the note and stiffened. “Damn him to hell.”
“Don Damian?” Leocadia questioned.
“What?” He looked up at her. She indicated the servants, the bathtub, the steaming water. “Bring it in.”
“Don Damian,” Katherine protested. “I don’t want everyone in my bedroom.”
He looked at the maids filing in. “Oh, that’s not everyone,” he said absently, his mind elsewhere.
“Close enough,” Katherine choked. He paid her no attention. “What’s happened?”
He tapped the paper with his hand. “This is an announcement from General Castro. It would seem your band of adventurers has done more than shoot out a lantern at my fiesta.”
“Frémont?”
“Oh, yes. Your beloved Frémont has managed to make Castro so angry he’s calling out every citizen to—” he raised the paper and read “—lance the ulcer which would destroy our liberties and independence. . . .”
“But that’s a declaration of—”
“War.”
Clearly, Damian was in a fury, and clearly, this was the moment to explain to him—
He pointed a finger at her. “If you tell me that this is an indication of our national differences, I’ll demonstrate to you the real differences between us.”
“Don Damian, this really is—”
“That’s it!” Flinging the paper aside, he marched to the bed and picked her up by the shoulders. “Our differences are male and female, man and woman, not this political nonsense with which you seek to separate us.”
“Don Damian, be reasonable.” This time she would use logic, she resolved, even though he could have intimidated a lesser woman. “Your reaction to Mr. Frémont is an indication of your deep revulsion for Americans.” His mouth smothered her protest. She fought him until logic fled, until she responded to his fever with a fever of her own. When he dropped her back on the bed, she tingled from head to toe and clutched at him.
Grasping her chin in his hand, he stared into her eyes. “Be here when I get back. Don’t you dare try to get away from me. We have too much to prove to each other.”
She clo
sed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was gone. Seven of the house maids stood and stared at her, laden with steaming buckets and bent beneath the weight of the high-backed tub. Leocadia tapped her toe and shook her head at the foolishness.
Katherine’s thoughts righted themselves, and she pulled the sheet around her in belated decency. “Don Damian might be wounded!”
Leocadia shrugged. “Not likely. Our battles in California involve much clashing of swords and swearing, and little bloodshed.”
“But this time—”
Picking up the paper from the floor where he’d flung it, Leocadia handed it to Katherine. “See what it says.”
She scanned the note. “It sounds serious enough to me.”
“Don Lucian knows all about it. He talked to the messenger. Those ruffians have encamped in the Gavilán Mountains not far from here. They built a fort and raised the flag of your United States.”
“No.” Katherine groaned, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes.
“I believe that’s what Don Lucian said.”
“I’m not doubting you, I simply cannot believe they would be so foolish. Don Damian will be frothing.”
“For more than one reason. Your Frémont—”
Katherine sat up with a jerk. “He’s not my Frémont.” The maids giggled and she blushed.
“Señor Frémont,” Leocadia emphasized his title, “has pulled Don Damian from the bed of his lady, and he’ll not be in charity with the man.”
There wasn’t the slightest hint of disapproval in her tone. When Katherine gathered her nerve and examined the maids, they all smiled and curtsied as if she were nobility. It wasn’t something she cared to encourage, but how could she prevent them?
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