Until the Day Breaks (California Rising Book 1) (17 page)

When Maria danced in front of Steven, the music played faster. His sister began her search for the pin by feeling her own body until the music rose when she neared her feet. Steven, his face red as a beet, then handed Maria the pin, apparently quite relieved to have survived the game.

Isabella snatched the pin from Maria and pushed Rachel from the room. Roman would have stopped the game right then, but Tia approached and asked him to go find Tio’s stash of brandy. “Dump the remainder of it,” she told him. “Your uncle is drunk, and so are the Americanos.”

Tio would think he’d finished the brandy himself and finally stop drinking. Roman had done this many times for his aunt and had no trouble finding his uncle’s hidden store. The brandy was nearly gone already, but he took what little remained and poured it under a rosebush.

Upon returning to the
sala
, the pin waltz game was well underway. Rachel danced shyly around the circle, but after a while, encouraged by Isabella, she relaxed and her dancing became full of grace and charm.

The musicians did not seem to want Rachel’s dancing to end, for they did not change their volume for some time, letting Rachel circle the seated ones several times before the Indians finally played louder when she passed Steven and Captain Mason, who were seated side by side.

Smiling, Rachel danced around and came back to the two men, where she danced with such ease in front of them that jealousy overwhelmed Roman. He didn’t know which man held the pin on his person, and obviously neither did Rachel because she danced back and forth between the two men until it was clear by the volume of the music who held the pin.

Initially, he was relieved it wasn’t Steven. Captain Mason grinned roguishly as Rachel danced in front of him. How could she look so lovely and innocent and alluring all at the same time?

The ship captain did not pull the pin out immediately and hand it to Rachel as Steven had with Maria as soon as the pin was discovered on his person. Instead, the captain let Rachel dance until there was no doubt in anyone’s mind where the pin was hidden. In the breast pocket of the captain’s fancy blue blouse.

Roman decided if the ship captain with all those fine white teeth laid one finger on Rachel, he would pay the devil for it.

Tio tried to stop him from pushing away from the wall, but Roman stepped around his inebriated uncle and strode right up behind Rachel as she danced in front of the captain.

The smiling Yankee removed the pin from his pocket and stood up, reaching out to hand the pin to her. Before she could take it, Roman swung her behind him and plowed his fist into the gringo’s grinning face.

A bench full of men tumbled over. Several sailors landed on the floor. Roman and the captain crashed over the bench as well.

The music abruptly stopped.

The room broke out in chaos. Servant girls screamed. Benches flew out of the way, tossed aside by scrambling sailors. Steven scooped up Isabella to protect her from the fray. Tio Pedro hollered like a wild man. Tia Josefa wailed. And in some sane corner of his mind, Roman heard Rachel pleading with him to stop, but he couldn’t stop. He was going to kill the Yankee.

It only took a moment for Dominic Mason to realize Roman Vasquez intended him serious harm. Dominic was on his back, the Spaniard punching his face, his stomach, his kidneys. Fortunately, Vasquez exuded a small amount of dignity in not boxing below the belt, but a blow to his jaw stunned Dominic. He regretted the amount of wine he’d consumed. He couldn’t seem to gain his bearings under the attack. When another blow sent searing pain to his ribs, he realized if he didn’t sober up in a hurry, he might not survive.

The sudden brawl baffled him.

Feasting, dancing, pretty Spanish girls, a redhead that captivated him, and now this madman trying to kill him.

He used all his strength to flip the Spaniard off of him. The enraged Vasquez dove back at him. Dominic flipped him again, this time springing to his feet before the Spaniard could pounce on him.

A boxing match ensued with Dominic finally landing several satisfying blows to the Spaniard’s face. Both men bled now. Dominic from his nose and mouth. Vasquez from a badly split eyebrow. Blood spattered the floor between them.

A woman screamed for them to stop. Dominic would have gladly accommodated her pleas if only the Spaniard would stop. But on his feet, with some distance between them, Dominic was in his element now, having boxed since he was a boy on the Boston docks.

It didn’t take long to soften the Spaniard up with a series of well-aimed punches. Vasquez now bled from his nose and mouth too, along with that serious cut on his eyebrow. Satisfaction coursed through him. Apparently, the Spaniard realized he couldn’t win this way and finally stopped Dominic’s bruising fists by kicking his feet out from under him. Once more, they tangled on the floor like wrestlers.

The two men were nearly the same size, though Dominic outweighed the Spaniard by about ten pounds. That ten pounds of muscle helped him flip his attacker onto his back. He was about to get the upper hand when a wild woman sprang on him. Maria screamed and scratched and even clamped her teeth into Dominic, startling the two men enough to stop their fighting.

Steven attempted to pull Maria off Dominic. The girl, like her brother, was out of her mind with uncontrolled fury. When she dove into the fray, Doña Josefa screamed. Dominic waved Steven away from the fight. Steven let go of Maria and leaned down to help Roman, who was badly bleeding.

Dominic tried his best to restrain Maria without hurting her. He may as well have been attempting to tame a tiger. The girl’s ferocity amazed him. Pinning her to the floor was not easy. He used his big body to hold the slim girl beneath him until she came to her senses.

“Easy,” he told her. “Take it easy, Maria. I don’t want to hurt you or your brother. I’m just trying to protect myself here.”

Her red hair had lost every pin. It tumbled long and lush around her, tangling across her face. He considered brushing the hair off her cheeks, but he didn’t dare. The girl would probably bite his hand off if he touched her.

“Do you understand that I have no intention of hurting anyone here?”

She responded in Spanish. He had no idea what she said, but she certainly was cursing him. They had conversed at dinner in perfect English, and while they waltzed, they had spoken to one another in English too. He didn’t understand why she wouldn’t speak English now.

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak Spanish. You’re going to have to use English, girl.”

She cursed again in her native language. As soon as he released her, she sprang to her feet and ran out of the room.

It hadn’t taken long for his sailors to sober up under the bloody circumstances. They crowded around him like boys seeking his guidance.

Steven spoke with Vasquez in a corner of the room. The Spaniard had his head bowed and was using his shirt to stop the blood spilling from his face.

“What was she saying?” Dominic asked one of his sailors who spoke Spanish.

Jamie, his favorite deckhand, tried not to smile. “That you will surely go to hell.”

“Is that all? She attacked me.”

“She’s probably never been beneath a man before.” Jamie offered him a handkerchief for his bleeding nose.

“Just like that brother of hers. She got more than she bargained for in that brawl,” said another chuckling sailor.

“You box just like my cousin from Ireland. Not a man in Boston has beaten him yet in the ring,” Jamie said proudly.

Dominic placed his hand on Jamie’s shoulder as a father would quiet a son. “All right, boys. That’s enough. Let’s get this place cleaned up.”

The music kicked in, and Dominic was surprised to see Don Pedro and Doña Josefa begin a graceful waltz. Don Pedro waved to the musicians to play louder, and the Indians did so.

Roman Vasquez left the room with Steven.

Rachel held Isabella’s hand and walked her from the room, both of them crying. Dominic and his sailors watched the older couple dance with dignity across the
sala
’s blood-spattered floor. Maria did not return. Neither did Roman and Steven or Rachel and Isabella.

After waltzing with nobody joining in, Don Pedro called an end to the fandango. He invited everyone to a picnic the following day, explaining feats of horsemanship would be displayed for their entertainment, and then everyone said a subdued goodnight.

Dominic couldn’t wait to get away to his room. He’d been raised in a good Christian family but had wandered away from that narrow road. In his business of running a clipper ship, he spent long periods of time at sea with ungodly men. Meeting Steven on this voyage had affected him tremendously. They’d become fast friends. He deeply admired Steven’s devotion to God. It was just like Steven to aid the Spaniard. He still wasn’t sure what had caused the fight, though he suspected he’d gotten a little too close to the women, particularly Steven’s ex-fiancée, now set to marry the Spaniard.

Wasn’t this a fine mess? Steven spending months on the ocean and days on horseback searching for his fiancée, only to find her betrothed to that hotheaded Spaniard.

Discouraged and bruised, Dominic lay on the bed fully clothed, staring up at the beamed ceiling. He didn’t douse the candle burning beside the bed. The last thing he wanted was to be in darkness. A spiritual darkness had settled over him. Darkness he felt like a physical presence. He thought of his mother. More than once, he’d awakened to find her praying beside his bed when he was a boy. Even after he was grown, sometimes he’d find his mother on her knees beside his bed in his room.

“A battle is going on for your heart, Dom. Please, son, pray with me,” his mother said last year when he was home and found her kneeling beside his bed as he slept. He was too embarrassed to crawl out from under the covers in front of her so that he could kneel beside her. He preferred sleeping without clothes and couldn’t imagine what his devout little mother would say upon discovering this. Feeling like a small, chastised boy, he reached out his hand to her.

For what seemed like a very long time, his mother prayed, holding his hand. It was cold that night, and he worried for her kneeling on the plank floor of the two-story New England cottage he’d grown up in.

He tried to offer her a blanket from the bed, but nothing seemed important to her but praying for him. Certainly, she prayed because her youngest son had not married and wasn’t raising a respectable family like the rest of his siblings. His two older brothers were fine Christian men like their father. Married to sweet, submissive women like his mother. His two older sisters were also married. They too reared busy families. Only Dominic’s little sister, Chloe, remained single, as he was. She lived at home and begged him to take her on one of his voyages, which of course their parents forbid. Chloe was only fifteen years old.

Dominic knew he was a disappointment to his parents. A wry smile crossed his lips, and he winced. His lower lip was swollen and throbbed when he smiled. Out of all his siblings, he was the most successful. In a worldly sense anyway. He was by far the wealthiest. His brothers worked the Boston docks beside their father, making a living, feeding their families, going to church on Sundays, and reading their Bibles. They were soft-spoken, hardworking men. Dominic admired them, but he didn’t want to be like them.

When he was thirteen, he’d decided he wanted to be wealthy. He remembered the day he’d asked his father, “Why don’t we own a sailing ship like that one?” The beautiful ship had sailed into the harbor, her decks loaded with tea from the Orient, cattle hides from California, and fur from the Russians.

Dominic’s father smiled, admiring the ship with her tall white sails full of wind and sunshine. “She’s a fine ship, no doubt, but the Good Lord hasn’t blessed me with my own ship. He’s given me sons instead and daughters to raise up for the kingdom of heaven. These docks give me a steady income, and I never miss a Sunday in church with your mother. It’s a life good enough for me, Dom.” Patrick Mason ruffled his son’s sun-bleached brown hair.

“I’m going to own my own sailing ship, Father,” Dominic told him. “And when I do, I’ll call her
The White Swallow
, and she will have an angel on her helm to guide me on the open sea.”

“Those are fine plans, but remember, angels help us, but it is the Good Lord who guides and protects us. Don’t ever lose your way, Dom. The devil is always waiting for a man to take the wrong road.”

Now Dominic hurt in a hundred different places, especially his face. His nose was bruised. His mouth ached. Perhaps he’d cracked a rib. The only thing that brought him any consolation was the thought that the Spaniard may have taken a worse beating than he did. Those boxing matches on the docks when he was a youth had paid off in more ways than one. Boxing made him a lot of money back in Boston. And a lot of friends. Friends in high places who helped him become captain of a clipper ship. A ship he now owned all by himself.
The White Swallow
with her angel on the helm. His boyhood dream.

So why wasn’t he a happy man?

Upon his return to Boston, he was all set to marry Sally. A sweet young woman who sat between his parents and hers each Sunday in church. Sally was kind. Smart. Appealing. So why didn’t the prospect of marrying her quell his interest in other women?

Feeling a trickle of warm wetness, he rubbed his hand over a deep scratch on his neck. His fingers came away bloody. The redhead had done nearly as much damage as her brother in a much shorter time. Great seagulls, Maria Vasquez was something else. The moment he’d laid eyes on her, he could hardly catch his breath.

Now here was sin knocking on his door. The Spanish girl erased every memory of Sally from his mind. He groaned, rolling over onto his stomach, staring at the wall for a while, trying not to think about the redhead.

But it was no use.

A short while later, he rolled again onto his back to stare at the ceiling before turning his attention to the painting on the wall of Jesus being removed from the cross by several weeping men. Maria Vasquez was surely Catholic. His Protestant family would never understand if he ended up in California married to a Catholic girl.