Treasure of the Sun

by Christina Dodd

  Señora Roderiguez looked momentarily amazed by her frankness, but recovered enough to suggest, “That is an ill-bred thing to say, Doña Katherina, and an even more ill-bred thing to do, Julio. Try to conform to the dictates of polite society.”

  “I brought it up,” Damian interposed.

  Señora Roderiguez smiled at him, a cold lifting of her lips. “But the difference, dear Don Damian, is that you understand the correct way to act.”

  Damian opened his mouth, prepared to argue, and shut it as if it were too futile. Instead he inquired, “Señor Roderiguez, what do you have to say about the events in Monterey?”

  “Monterey.” Señor Roderiguez cleared his throat. “Ah, Monterey is indeed a nursery of high-minded fools. That Larkin, that Yankee trader—”

  “The American consul?” Damian clarified.

  “That’s what he calls himself,” the old man said in exasperation. “That Larkin called a meeting with all the fools who have any influence, any land. He wanted to discuss California’s future. As if it’s any business of his.”

  “He does have substantial holdings in Monterey,” Julio pointed out.

  Ignoring such logic with grandeur, Señor Roderiguez said, “That Hartnell, that Britisher, declared England should protect California. As if it’s any business of his. Then that young puppy, Soberanes leaped to his feet and said, ‘California libre, soberano, y independiente!’ And that other young puppy, Alvarado, agreed. As if those two are old enough to know anything about forming an independent, sovereign state of California.” Pacing out from behind his wife, he stood against the railing and declared, “The day California left the fold of Mother Spain was a black day in history.”

  “What did Mariano Vallejo say?” Julio asked with wicked humor. “I heard that he was in Monterey, and he’s no puppy.”

  Señor Roderiguez snorted. “That young—” He stopped before he called Mariano Vallejo, one of the most respected men in California, a puppy. “He dares call himself Californio. That Vallejo called for the government to detach itself from Mexico and to apply for admission to the United States.”

  Interested and amazed, Damian whistled. “So he said it, did he? He’s said it privately for years. Did they vote on it?”

  “No, they fought about it,” Señor Roderiguez said irritably. “This has everyone all stirred up. That young puppy who calls himself a general—”

  “José Castro?” Damian interrupted.

  “Of course, José Castro.” Señor Roderiguez pulled out a handkerchief and wiped at his nose with extravagant annoyance. “He’s the only puppy who’s calling himself a general in Monterey, although how many puppies are calling themselves generals in Los Angeles, I don’t know. José Castro has called a military junta to protect us from that barbarian. Hey!” He pointed a shaking finger at Katherine. “Does this young minx know Frémont?”

  Katherine refused to answer a question not asked of her. While Damian fumbled with his reply, Señor Roderiguez waved a dismissing hand. “Eh, of course she must know him. All these Americans are part of a nefarious plot to wrest California from its rightful owners.”

  Damian flushed a somber red, though whether from fury or mortification, Katherine couldn’t tell. “Katherine is my wife. She has no part of any plot.”

  “Ooh, here it comes.” Julio rubbed his hands together and leaned forward. “Damian’s ashamed of his American wife.”

  There was no challenge in Damian’s voice. Only the plain, flat stating of facts. “She’s not an American.”

  “She’s not?” Julio asked. He poured himself another cup of aguardiente, listening with delight.

  “I’m not?”

  “She doesn’t want to be related to such cochinos as those,” Damian said.

  Nacia blinked with complete astonishment. “Pigs? You’re saying Katherine is related to a nation of pigs?”

  “I beg your pardon, Don Damian.” Katherine’s voice rose in indignation. “What of the Americans who have married California daughters? They’re your friends. They’re welcome in your home. Are you calling them pigs?”

  Julio made an oinking noise and sang out, “Worried about your pedigree, Damian?”

  “Of course he’s not,” Katherine snapped. “I’m not a brood mare.”

  “You’re not a Spaniard, either,” Julio mocked, then drained his cup. “Damian’s always been a conceited ass about his blood-lines. The way he feels about Americans can only compound matters.”

  In a low, intense tone, Damian insisted, “She became a Spaniard the day she married me.”

  Katherine moderated the alarm in her voice, fighting to impress him with the right level of good sense. “Alcalde Diaz is a very powerful deity if he can change my heritage with a simple ceremony.”

  Like two lights that stung in their intensity, Damian used his eyes on Katherine. “You’re my wife.”

  Frustrated, she groped for the rationale that would make him see his folly. “Does that preclude me from being anything else? Am I not a human, a woman?”

  She could see him distancing himself from her, putting his pride like a shield between them. “You’re all of those things, but as my wife you must forget your previous loyalties. You must cleave only to me and mine.”

  She drew a deep breath, but still she felt smothered, overwhelmed in the way Mission San Juan Bautista had overwhelmed her. Like the sand pulled before a tide, it seemed her identity was slipping away from under her feet. “Is all of me defined by you?”

  With a frightening lack of humor, he said, “Now you understand, my Catriona. Now you understand.”

  “My mother-in-law doesn’t believe in stabbing you in the back.” Katherine jumped as Julio spoke from out of the shadows, his words slurred under the influence of the aguardiente. “I always find the hilt of the knife protruding from the center of my chest where it’s easy to grasp the handle and remove it.”

  Katherine rubbed her forehead with her fingers, wishing she could relieve the ache that the evening’s hostilities had caused, wishing Julio would go away so she could retire. “Of course,” she murmured, “there is still the small matter of the wound it leaves behind.”

  “There is that.” Leaning against the wall in the hall outside her room, he grinned with sour amusement.

  “How do you stand it?” Sympathy and disgust warred in her voice. “Tell me how you can deal with being an outsider.”

  Resentful laughter lurched through him. “I’ve never been anything else. So you see, you’re a lucky woman.” Inch by inch, as if a powerful glue released him, he pulled his spine away from the wall. Catching the nape of her neck in his hand, he rattled her back and forth, staggering as he did. “Lucky, lucky woman. You’ll fit in one day soon. Even if you fight Damian all the way, you’ll fit in because you’re a de la Sola.”

  She tottered under the weight of him when he wrapped one arm around her shoulder. “Julio, I can’t hold you up.” She tried to dislodge him, but he stuck like a burr and alarm shot through her. “Julio! Let go of me. This doesn’t look good.”

  “We must look good,” he sneered. “We must do what’s proper. Mustn’t we?” Wrapping both his arms around her, he tilted her back and mashed his closed lips to hers.

  She struggled against him, but she knew it all as he kissed her: fury, hurt, pain, guilt, they tasted bitter as he passed them to her, and she suspended her own anger at his terrible retribution. A retribution not against her, but against the day, his life and the people who hurt him with no consciousness of their crime. He didn’t ask for complicity; she was only a flower to shred in his violence, the kind of violence that would end in the ashes of a friendship and Julio’s own bitter shame. Unwilling to participate, waiting for it to end, she stood quiet under the attack, her eyes wide open, staring down the hall.

  A hard hand grasped Katherine’s shoulder and wrenched her away from Julio. She found herself face to face with the blazing wrath of her husband.

  Damian looked from Julio to Katherine; his hands cl
enched and unclenched, his shoulders thrust forward in aggression. Those demonic eyebrows formed a V, his mouth snarled beneath the mustache.

  He would kill Julio, she feared. He would kill him for attacking her, for kissing her, for using her as a substitute for Nacia. Prepared to step between them, she staggered under the import of Damian’s words.

  “How dare you, Katherine?” he rasped. “How dare you kiss him?”

  She hadn’t heard him. Surely he hadn’t suggested that she had encouraged this scene. He couldn’t believe—

  “Well?” His voice rose, questioning and accusing. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Still she stared, and her insides began a slow churning. “You are not my father. You have no right to speak to me that way.”

  “Someone needs to speak to you.” Katherine jerked around and there stood Nacia, her eyes aflame with the need for vengeance. “You were kissing my husband.”

  “I wasn’t kissing your husband.” Her emotions twisted in the unexpected attack. Her pity for Nacia dissolved under the attack.

  Julio interrupted, “I was kissing her.” He leaned against the wall again, all insolence and challenge.

  “You were kissing her?” Nacia questioned. “You were kissing her?”

  “Why not? I wanted to kiss someone who wasn’t so afraid of a little shouting that she couldn’t do the right thing.” He pushed himself erect, yet kept one hand out to support himself. “I wanted to kiss someone with a little courage.”

  “You want someone who can shout?” Nacia’s voice rose to a shriek. “I can shout. I can do the right thing. And I’ll tell you now, Julio, if I ever catch you kissing another woman, if I ever even hear of you kissing another woman, I’ll do the right thing and geld you. I’ll follow you into the mountains, or wherever you hide out, take a knife—”

  Damian grabbed Katherine’s arm. “Look what you’ve done. They’re fighting.”

  Katherine jerked away. “I’ve done nothing. And maybe they need to fight. Maybe they need to say a few things.”

  “—too afraid of your parents to tell them—”

  Katherine raised her voice to be heard over Julio’s bellow. “You’re trying to blame me for everything. You’re looking for a scapegoat and I’m not accepting the role.”

  “—my parents accepted you—”

  “If you had stayed at the mission, none of this would have happened,” Damian said with cold satisfaction.

  “—just so they could rule your life like they always have. When are you going to realize—”

  Katherine’s fingers bunched into fists, but she trembled under Damian’s attack. “I don’t know why I should stay at the mission. Why should I stay to be trapped by your society and your prejudice and by you, my dear Don Damian?” She poured her scorn onto him.

  “—when are you going to stop trying to prove what a hateful man you are? Can’t you see what I think? Can’t you see—”

  “—when are you going to stop trying to prove what a respectful daughter you are? Can’t you see what I think? Can’t you see—”

  “Trapped? Is that the way you feel?” Damian asked in outrage.

  The truth spilled out of Katherine. “Just like when I was in Boston. I’m a prisoner of you and your father. A prisoner of your kindness.”

  Chapter 18

  “Why should I care what you think?”

  “Isn’t what I think more important to you than what anyone else thinks?”

  The words whirled and repeated in Katherine’s mind until she didn’t know who had said what. She only knew that they defined all that was wrong with Julio and Nacia, and in some way found a response in her.

  She tucked the blanket closer around her neck, wishing she had the nerve to leap from her bed and close the window. Outside, the stars glinted in a midnight sky and a full moon bleached the mountains into stark shades of black and white. Moonbeams revealed the tumbled boulders that reached down from the heights to blend with the woods at their base. The wind pushed the oak trees and they complained, their branches creaking in sharp reproach.

  The Indians blamed their bad luck on the curse of the treasure. Did the treasure’s evil tentacles reach down the hill to this place? Did it affect her marriage, their friend’s marriage? Did it bring disagreements and misunderstandings? This hacienda, tucked into a pocket at the base of the mountain, seemed to be the home of half-wild creatures and dreadful fantasies. All of them were visiting her now.

  Where had her sensibleness fled? Was this another sign Katherine Anne had become a spineless female creature? When she had first lain down upon her ruffled bed, she’d been too angry to sleep. Over and over, she’d repeated the scene in the hall. In her mind, she’d said the right things to shame Damian. In her mind, he’d understood and apologized. In her mind, she hadn’t crumpled from the pain of his accusation, hadn’t whirled into her room and slammed the door. Locking it had been unnecessary, for the shouting, first between Julio and Nacia, then between Julio and Damian, had been too virulent to require more fuel. But lock it she did, with a loud, satisfying click. When Damian had knocked and sternly requested entrance she’d thrown a vase at the door. In cold blood, she’d broken one of Nacia’s vases, and she couldn’t even work up a sense of regret.

  Now she paid for her defiance. Sleepy and frightened, still she didn’t dare close her eyes. All she could do was stare at the open window, listen to the scuffling noises outside and wish her husband, her fickle, selfish husband, lay beside her. Not to fulfill her lust, although her body strummed with it, but to protect her against her own vivid imagination.

  When a large, menacing shape loomed in the window, she no longer thought about a cursed treasure. She thought about knives, glinting black in the night and coming for her throat. She scrambled back in the bed, dragging the covers with her, and decided Damian was right about one thing at least. Screaming was the intelligent thing to do. Yet as the creature threw one leg over the casement and prepared to duck in, her vocal chords were paralyzed. Clearing her throat, she prepared to utter one piercing shriek, when the apparition said, “Dam n it, Catriona, if you scream, I’ll strangle you.”

  She let out her air with a whoosh. Irrationally angry, rationally angry, angry from the evening’s quarrel, she snapped, “Don Damian. How dare you enter my room in such an unconventional method?”

  “How else could I enter your room?” He squeezed down under the casement and hopped as he pulled his other leg in. Blocking out the moonlight with his shoulders, he put his fists on his hips. “Keep your voice down. Señora Roderiguez is guarding the hall, protecting your virtue.”

  “My virtue?” she mocked. “Perhaps your virtue. Or Julio’s. Not mine.”

  “Your virtue is beyond reproach, but why were you kissing him?”

  She bit off the words like a thread she snipped with her teeth. “Because I throw myself at every man I meet. Haven’t you noticed?”

  “After you ran away, Julio pointed out my fault to me, in most vivid language.” He raked his fingers through his hair, standing it on end. “I regret I accused you.”

  Every word of the apology hurt him as he uttered it. She could see it in the expression on his face, an expression which mirrored her own. She glared without adding her own regrets.

  He whispered savagely, “I still want to punch Julio’s nose to the side of his face. You must admit it looked bad.”

  “I admit nothing.” He put his finger to his lips, signaling quiet. She lowered her voice, if not her ferocity. “I have my defenses, but they’re feeble when put up against a drunken man looking for a fight. I wouldn’t use them against Julio, who wishes me no harm, unless he’d been goaded beyond all reason. A cold reception succeeds where anger would fail. But you’re a man. You’ll never have to worry about rape.”

  His nostrils flared, a vein beat in his forehead; he turned away as if the mere thought caused him pain.

  Lashing out at him for being invulnerable, she continued, “What looks bad to me is
a man who vows undying loyalty one day and displays pigheaded jealousy the next. What are you doing in my room? What do you want?”

  Not saying a word, he stalked towards her. She read his body language using merely his silhouette. “Now, just a minute.” She put her hand out to hold him off. “Do you think you can insult me, then come in here?”

  He leaned over her, his knuckles on either side of her. “Do you think you can humiliate me in front of the aristocrats of my country, ignore my dictates as your husband, cling to your misplaced loyalty?”

  Without thinking, without using one ounce of her intellect, she copied a gesture she’d seen the vaqueros use to indicate derision. She didn’t know if she’d done it right until he grabbed her wrists and roared, “Do you know what that means? Do you know?”

  Her face flushed. She stuck out her chin, refusing to speak to him, but he didn’t wait. “I’ll show you what it means.”

  He imprisoned her hips with a knee on each side and his weight on her stomach. He pushed her deep into the pillow; he kissed her. He allowed no resistance. When she sought to keep her lips shut, he used his thumb to open them, and he ravaged her with his tongue. Lifting his head, he muttered, “That’s what it means, only lower.”

  He stared at her, their faces so close their breath mixed. Her gaze fed on his lips, wet from her mouth. Her body, unaffected by her anger, his injustice, her hurt, lifted with the exaltation of passion. Primed by the wild rhythm of the ride, by her greedy scrutiny of his beauty, her mind concurred.

  In her mind, there was no doubt that she would have him, would have Damian this very night. Wrestling both hands free, she grabbed his ears. Pulling him to her, she fused their lips. Like an amazon determined on her own way, she thrust her tongue into his mouth. She tasted his surprise before he responded, and she licked at him like a cat caressing its mate. When she was done, he sagged against her.

  “Kiss me like that,” she whispered, but it was a command.

  “Are you sure this time?” His hands shook as he held her shoulders; his muscles tensed until the veins on his neck stood out. “You’ll come to me with real emotion, and not just because I persuaded you with my—”