Treasure of the Sun (18 page)

"For more than one reason. Your Fremont-"

Katherine sat up with a jerk. "He's not my Fremont." The maids giggled and she blushed.

"Senor Fremont," 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?

"Are you ready for your bath, Dona Katherina?" Leocadia asked.

As if she had a choice. As if she could say no, and send everyone plodding back downstairs with their burdens. "Yes, thank you. You may put it down there."

The girls filled the tub while Katherine twisted the sheets between her fingers and considered excuses. Perhaps innocence would work best. Don Damian came to my room last night to talk and accidently felt asleep on my bed.

No. Perhaps not.

Perhaps boldness would provide the best defense. Don Damian never accomplished what he came in here to do.

Ugh. Perhaps--perhaps she'd be better off if she didn't say a word and let everyone assume what they'd assume anyway.

The housekeeper tested the water with her hand, then walked to the bed. Before Katherine suspected, Leocadia ripped the cover from her hands. "Change the sheets," she ordered over her shoulder. "Bring more warm water."

Katherine fled across the room and plunged into the tub. The water covered only her hips, wet her pantalettes and the fringe of her chemise, but that symbolized her bewilderment. Leocadia and everyone under her seemed to assume that Katherine deserved to be waited on, as if she were their mistress. She didn't see the smile that the housekeeper hid, or the bar of soap Leocadia unwrapped. Yet she knew by the hustle of bare feet that the commands were being obeyed.

"It'll be good to have a new mistress to direct the doings of the hacienda." Leocadia tugged at Katherine's chemise until Katherine let her pull it off. Plunging her hand into the extra water left in a bucket, Leocadia soaped a washcloth.

"No," Katherine shook her head. "I'm going away." Shoving Katherine's long blond hair aside, Leocadia scrubbed her back and chuckled. "Of course you are."

"I am," Katherine insisted. "I'm going away."

"Don Lucian." Katherine swept into the cozy room like a winter storm. "I need transportation to Monterey."

Don Lucian swivelled around in his easy chair and stared.

"My, my. What a pretty girl."

The chill that insulated her melted beneath the mellow, beaming gaze of the older man, and self-consciousness returned in a rush. She smoothed the skirt of her new gown, then wished she hadn't given in to that revealing gesture. She folded her hands at her waist and tried, with limited success, to meet his eye. "Leocadia burned my mourning clothes."

''It's the girl that's pretty, although the dress enhances her beauty. Come sit by the fire. It's pleasant on a rainy day like this, although the sun is already peeking out."

A fresh realization of his kindness swept her. When he rose and indicated a seat across the hearth, she took the chair and waited for him to speak. He fumbled in his coat pockets. "Where have I put my reading glasses? Why can't someone invent some way for me to find my spectacles when I don't have them on?"

"I'll suggest it when I arrive in . . . Boston."

His eyebrows flew up. He squinted at her, his head thrust forward. "Here, here. What's this? You can't go now."

She didn't say anything, just handed him his reading glasses off the table at his elbow.

Taking hold of the silver Franklin frames, he settled the nosepiece and hooked them behind his ears. He took one look at her face and pursed his lips in a silent whistle. "I don't often say the wrong thing, so apologizing is good training for me. I didn't mean to offend you. You're free to do as you like, of course, but . . . I was serious when I said you were like a daughter to me."

Sudden tears hovered on her eyelashes, and she couldn't seem to call them back.

Stricken with consternation, he roared, "My son didn't hurt you, did he?"

"Oh, no, no," she denied immediately, and was glad she did.

Don Lucian looked ready to thrash Damian. "I don't want you to think that."

The color faded from his face, and he shook his head. "You don't owe me an explanation, but I wish you would tell me why you would leave us. You were happy here until last night, so I can't help but blame Damian."

"I stood at my window and watched him ride out," she said, her mind on the stern shake of the finger Damian had aimed at her as he'd left the yard.

"He'll puff and snort with all the other young bucks," he confirmed. "He was ornery as a buck in mating season, too, stomping around here." Light dawned on his face. "That's what upset you, isn't it? That he's gone to fight one of your heroes."

"Not at all. John Charles Fremont is acting like a spoiled child."

He pursed his lips. "If you called him 'John Charles' in that tone of voice, I can imagine why Damian was raging."

"What tone of voice?" she asked, bewildered.

"As if you were his fond mother. Fremont is not a boy." "No, of course not, but he's acting arrogantly in a host country."

"What is it about some men that brings out the protectress in women?" he wondered.

"I'm not protecting him," she protested, but faltered under

Don Lucian's quizzical gaze.

"Does Damian know you're going?"

Her eyes flashed at him. "He told me not to leave."

"Then I can't think of a better reason to abandon Rancho Donoso as soon as his back's turned," he said wryly.

She couldn't accept his accusation of cowardice. She'd planned this for months. Damian's absence was nothing more than coincidence. "You're trying to make me feel guilty, and I won't have it. I won't be a kept woman."

He sputtered as if he'd swallowed wrong. "If my son refused to do what is honorable, I'd be glad to act as your father would and put a gun in his back." He waved her objection aside and rose to pace before her. "A woman is not something you try out to see if she's to your satisfaction, then abandon if she is not. Young people don't understand the value of patience. If intimacy isn't ecstasy the first time, it can be developed between a man and his wife over the years."

"He asked me to marry him," she interrupted in desperation.

Rubbing his brow as if his head hurt, he murmured, "I will never understand women." Aloud, he said, "Then what is the problem?" She didn't answer, and he sighed. "Perhaps you are the one who needs to be told about intimacy."

"No!" she flared. "We did nothing." He indicated disbelief in the tilt of his head, the amusement in his eyes. "Almost nothing," she amended.

He sank back into his chair as if he were confused, and stretched his hands towards the fire. "Young girls these days sometimes expect to love their husbands before the wedding, so I'm told. Perhaps--"

"No. I'm too sensible for that." She looked at the older man.

How could she be speaking about such a carnal matter with him? Yet she owed him an explanation, and with averted eyes, she said, "I'm a sensible woman. I've always been sensible. I can't live like this, always thinking of one thing, always enslaved by some emotion I don't understand."

"This emotion is the emotion you feel in the bedroom?" he asked softly.

She spread her hands, palms out. "It's too powerful. Don't you see? I have to leave. I can't stay."

"You are running from something most women would give anything to have," he marveled.

"What is that?"

"If I have to tell you, I suppose you may as well go. I'll arrange everything." He stood and kissed her forehead. "Everything."

Damian leaned against his saddle horn and glared at the makeshift fort atop Gavilan Peak. "I'm sick of this waiting."

Alejandro scratched his stubbled chin. "Si. I could use a shave. So could you."

Running a hand over his bristles, Damian shrugged.

"Don't worry, Damian," Ridey said. "Katherine will love you anyway."

Damian shifted his glare from the flagrant American flag to his impudent friend.
Ridey
laughed protestingly and lifted his hands in the sign of the cross to ward off evil. "Hey, I was just joking."

"Maybe all's not well with love's sweet blossom," Hadrian suggested.

Damian ignored them. The wind whipped his hair, the sun warmed his shoulders, the smell of the morning coffee drifted to his nostrils. Behind him, soldiers' voices called out with authority.

None of the normal pleasures dented Damian's dissatisfaction. Not even the early morning gallop on Confite had eased his tension. That man, that Fremont should be horsewhipped for creating this kind of tension-ridden situation when Damian needed to be home, reinforcing his claim on a woman too proud of her mind to be aware of her body.

Three days he'd been here dose by Mission San Juan Bautista under the command of General Castro. The first afternoon, the sun had come out and the landowners had arrived, their bed rolls strapped onto their horses. They'd stood about in dumps, growling about the arrogance of this Fremont. They'd admired the three pieces of artillery that would blast those fools off the mountain. They'd bragged about their fighting prowess.

The cavalrymen from Monterey rode up in their brightly colored uniforms. General Castro and his men marched up and down, creating a great display. Indians joined them, persuaded by liquor and free meals. Everyone had camped on the flats of the Salinas Valley. The congeniality reminded Damian more of a friendly bear hunt than a war.

The second day had been more of the same. Steaks cooked over a fire. Coarse jokes and sweet reminiscing. Friendships renewed and forged. The only excitement in the whole day had occurred when the wind whipped up and blew the defiant flagpole over. The Californios had cheered; the Americans hadn't put the flag back up.

This morning the novelty had palled. The early morning sun still shone, the wind still blew. On a dare, Damian had put Confite through his paces, showing off the intelligence of his prized stallion. Alejandro had tried to buy Confite; Ricky had offered to gamble for the horse. When Damian wisely refused, his friends teased him about his love affair. Damian wanted to spur his horse and ride where his whim took him.

Back to the rancho.

Nothing could hold his thoughts here. He thought about Katherine every moment.

Stirring uncomfortably, he remembered her objections to his proposal of marriage. She used pragmatism to avoid love and some surprisingly clever insights to hold him off. How had she known about his feelings of Spanish pride? How had she known it amounted to a virtual prejudice against her bloodlines? He hadn't even realized it himself.

It wouldn't affect their union. He fidgeted with the reins. He knew it wouldn't. Katherine would become a Spanish Senora: plying a fan with ease, bearing his children, becoming a devoted Catholic. Of course, he couldn't imagine her without that drive and efficiency . . .

She wielded that efficiency like a weapon, and she presumed it kept him at bay. If only she could have seen herself the morning he left her, sitting there on the bed, her soft shoulders emerging from the sheets, her hair tousled with sleep, her eyes languorous and her mouth marked from his kisses. Irresistibly, a smile crept up on him. How could he not smile? She played the part of the pragmatic housekeeper with vigor. Because she didn't realize her own frailty, she sailed through life coercing and convincing people to do as she ordered. Only he saw the gentleness in her.

Only he knew her desires. .

Only he understood that if she should decide to board a ship and sail away from him, she'd leave without a backward glance.

He drummed his fingers on the saddle, then stilled his horse's restless response. They didn't need him here, he argued to himself. There was the tempestuous General Castro for rhetoric. There were soldiers to oust the invaders. There were his friends to avenge the scene at his fiesta.

"Damian, stop daydreaming. Pay attention." The urgency of Hadrian's words penetrated his reverie. Lifting his head, Damian listened.

"They're gone!" A soldier came galloping down the peak, shouting with glee. "They're gone. They snuck out in the middle of the night."