Mystic Memories (13 page)

“Aunt Gaby?”

“Mrs. Edwards?” The captain’s voice sounded like a distant echo. Yet he must have been standing beside her because she felt his hands lightly grasp her shoulders to support her. “You are white as a ghost.”

“Wh-what?” She raised her fingers to her forehead, then realized her hand was shaking.

“You called out to your aunt. Are you feeling lightheaded?”

Her knees weakened. “I-I guess I am.”

His grip tightened just as her legs gave out under her. In a peculiar slow motion, she felt her entire body melting into a dark liquid oblivion.

From a far corner of her awareness, she heard a hoarse whisper of stunned desperation, “Dear-God-in-Heaven . . .”

Blake?
Her mind called his name, but her voice was silent.

“Cara? Cara!”

Help me, Blake
.

The mile to the mission seemed like a thousand as Blake rushed with Cara in his arms. His long strides quickly sapped the remaining strength from his muscles, already strained from their climb up the cliff. Ignoring the searing pain in his thighs, he picked up his pace. Her limbs bounced lifelessly.

Time and again he took his eyes off the ground ahead of him and glanced down into her ashen face, wondering if she was alive or dead. He didn’t dare stop to find out.

What could have caused this? She had been fine only moments before her collapse. Was it merely exhaustion? Then he recalled her encounter with the briers.

It’s only a scratch, she had said.

I’ll live, she had said.

Her sassy sarcasm taunted him now as he berated himself for not taking notice of the thorny shrubs. Perhaps they were a poisonous variety. Or perhaps they were not the cause at all.

What if she had disturbed a rattlesnake under the dry bushes? What if the rustle of the branches had masked the sound of the rattles? What if she had mistaken the slash of venomous fangs for the painful scratch of a thorn?

“No—!” shouted Blake, breaking into a run, driving his fears from his mind. He fought off the demons as he fought for every breath, sucking air into his burning lungs.

In the distance, an Indian woman standing outside a crude hut turned at the sound of his cry. Startled by his approach, she dashed toward the mission doors. By the time he reached the steps, the Catholic priest had appeared with two Indian men.

“
Buenos días, capitán
,” greeted the gray-cloaked padre, eyeing Cara with suspicion.

“
¡Socorro, por favor!
” Blake said, asking for help with the few words he knew in the Spanish language.

“
¿Es contagioso?
” Contagious disease was an understandable fear for the Reverend Father, who was unwilling to lose more workers.

“No,” answered Blake. “No con-ta-hee-OH-so. Her leg”—he nodded toward her dangling legs—”has many cuts. Maybe a snakebite.”

His English reply was met with skepticism. His mind grappled for a rough translation. “
La pierna. Mas cortadura.
”

The slender priest acquiesced. “
Adelante.
” Come in, he said, then spoke to his helpers, saying something about the “boy.”

When the two men advanced with their arms outstretched to take Cara, Blake shook his head, refusing to relinquish her. With a curt nod, he gestured for them to lead the way so he could follow.

Within a few minutes, he lowered Cara to a shabby pallet in the corner of a squalid adobe-walled room with a high, small window. In the dim light, he couldn’t determine her skin color, but he knew it could not have improved from the last time he’d checked.

Hovering nearby, the priest asked him what had happened to the child.

“
Señora
,” corrected Blake, watching her, wishing for the smallest flutter of her dark eyelashes. The sound of the padre’s shock did not surprise him.

He gently brushed his hand across her forehead. She was cold and clammy. Lowering his ear to her breast, he listened for her heartbeat. For a brief moment of panic, he could not hear anything but the rush of his own blood in his ears. Then came the faintest thump and a shallow breath that lifted her chest.

“She’s alive!” Relief slammed into his gut, pushing him into action. He turned to the padre, searching his mind for the right foreign words. Somehow he managed to convey the need for soap and water to wash her cuts.

“
Sí, señor
,” said the priest after listening to the choppy request, then motioned to the men to accompany him. As they were about to leave, Blake realized his sack was gone.

Returning his attention to Cara, Blake attempted to roll up her loose pant leg. The cotton material was resistant to his gentle tug. With greater care, he slowly peeled the cloth away from the dried blood. Gradually, he exposed more and more of her slender calf, covered with dirt-filled, blackened scratches, some of which had begun to bleed again.

Wishing for that basin of water to hurry up so he could cleanse the wounds, he did his best to examine her skin for any sign of punctures from a set of fangs. His eyes squinted in the poor light.

Behind him, the flicker of candlelight illuminated the tiny cubicle. He glanced over his shoulder. A small white-haired woman with wide, dark eyes and coppery skin smiled warmly at him. In one hand she held a metal candleholder with a stout tallow candle on it. With her other hand she motioned to someone behind her. Two other elderly Indian women shuffled into the room, their eyes downcast. One carried a basin of water, with towels draped over her arm.

The other carried a steaming cooking pot, which filled the air with an unfamiliar aroma.

Blake reached out for the water basin. “
Muchas gracias
.”

But the first woman waved him off, still smiling at him as if she knew something he did not. “
Fuera, por favor.
”

“I’m not leaving her.”

Though she appeared to understand his defiance, her smile did not falter. Instead, she spoke to her silent friends, who set their pots and pans and cloths on the earthen floor near the bed and quit the room.

Again, he reached for the water, but she approached his side, placing her hand firmly on his shoulder. In Spanish, she gently admonished him. “You are no good here. Go, now. You wash. You eat. I care for her.”

“No, I am responsible for her.” As ridiculous as his claim sounded when spoken aloud, he did feel accountable for her well-being. His gaze was drawn back to Cara. He took her limp hand in his and stroked the back of her knuckles with the pad of his thumb.

“You must leave her with me,” insisted the old woman in a firm but tender voice. “She is one of us.”

His head jerked up. “What did you say?”

Surely he had misinterpreted her words. Mrs. Cara Edwards could not possibly be a Luiseño, the tribe of Indians that lived here at Mission San Juan Capistrano.

“She is one of us,” repeated the woman, setting the candle on a rickety little table next to the bed. She cupped her hand over his and Cara’s. Warmth radiated from her gnarled fingers as she curled them around his. Gently separating him from Cara, she lifted his hand and held it for a long moment.

Had he been right about the lies all along? Was the mysterious widow woman from the mission? Perhaps she had been sent away as a young girl to be educated, just as Keoni had been schooled in proper grammar and etiquette by missionaries.

Missionaries! Or course! Cara had spoken of her parents’ travels around the world. Perhaps she had been born here but was adopted by a couple. Perhaps her lies about the deceased husband had been part of a plan to return here. But why? For what reason? He wondered if the story about a missing child was a falsehood as well.

Blake knew he was grasping for answers to questions too numerous to count. And this old Indian woman was not the one who could answer them. Only Cara could.

He knelt next to the dark-haired woman who had entered his life only a short time ago. Unable to keep from touching her one more time, he reached out and traced the line of her jaw with his fingertip.

Without taking his eyes off Cara, he spoke in halting Spanish to the old woman, attempting to explain about the briers and a possible rattlesnake. He prayed it wasn’t a snake bite. Something inside him held on to a ray of hope that it had not been anything that would prove fatal.

The persistent woman cleared her throat with impatience.

“I won’t go far,” he promised Cara, then felt a pang of guilt over his broken vow from the night before.

A sad smile crept into the corners of his mouth.

“I will come back this time, Mrs. Edwards.”

Blake rose to his feet, his strength all but drained from every muscle in his body. The white-haired Indian woman looked up at him with eyes that reminded him of Cara’s. The similarity haunted him.

“You go rest, young man.” She patted his arm affectionately, adding something about caring for his
esposa
, his spouse, his wife.

He opened his mouth to correct her mistaken assumption, then closed it and slowly nodded. “
Gracias, señora.
”

“
De nada
,” she said softly, then turned toward the bed. As Blake was leaving the room, the old woman called out quietly, “
¿Señor?
”

He peered around the door. “
¿Si?
”

Raising her eyebrows in question, she pointed to Cara’s belly.
“
¿Está ella embarazada?
”

“
No comprendo
.”

“
¿Un bebé?
”

“A baby? No!” he answered adamantly. “No
niño
.”

The woman looked at him skeptically.

“Don’t be so sure,” she warned in Spanish, believing Blake and Cara to be husband and wife sharing the same bed. “Your wife may be with child. Maybe that is why she fainted. Too tired.”

Blake felt his stomach drop to his toes. He had only been thinking of himself, knowing the impossibility of Cara being pregnant with his own child. It never occurred to him that she might already be carrying another man’s child.

Numbed by an odd sort of disappointment, he nodded, forming the foreign words with the absence of emotion. “Yes, I suppose it is possible.”

“Of course it is possible!” With a chuckle and a shake of her head, the old woman lightly scolded, “You men . . . you act so surprised when a baby comes. Ha! As if you don’t know how it could have happened.”

“I don’t,” he muttered in English as he closed the door.

Chapter 8

C
ara slowly awakened to the cool touch of a damp cloth across her brow. Lingering at the end of a pleasant dream that was fading away, she murmured contentedly. Her eyelids too heavy to lift, she lolled her head to one side. The cloth skimmed down her temple to her neck and shoulder.

Her bare shoulder.

A hazy awareness of her state of undress tugged her mind away from the comfortable twilight at the edge of sleep. A sense of safeness permeated her thoughts, assuring her there was no cause for alarm.

The sound of a woman humming a familiar lullaby made her smile.

“
Ah, bien
,” said the woman in Spanish, Cara’s second language. “You wake up now, I see.”

Cara blinked, trying to see the woman sitting by the bed in the shadowy room. Her body quivered with a sudden chill. Soft candlelight flickered across the facial features that she recognized as her eighty-three-year-old great-aunt.

It can't be.

She squinted her eyes, focusing hard on the round face and dark eyes. “I-I must be dreaming,” she said in Spanish. Her voice was weak and raspy.

“Perhaps you are.” Wiping the damp cloth across Cara’s hot cheek, the woman gave a soft smile like a mother to a child. “Lie still now. I have some warm broth for you to sip.”

“Where am I? Where’s Blake?”

“You were brought here to the mission by the captain.”

Cara could not stop staring at the woman sitting before her. “Who are you?”

Her eyes held a serene gaze. “I am Gabriella.”

“Not my aunt,” protested Cara, though the resemblance was uncanny. Nearly two hundred years separated the lives of the two old women. It was impossible. Or was it? “You can’t be my aunt.”

Strangely, the woman didn’t answer but bent to one side and retrieved a small, deep wooden bowl, cupping it in both hands.

“Quiet, now,” soothed Gabriella, bringing the soup stock to Cara’s mouth. “Sip this.”

Cara lifted her head, tried to drink the liquid, but found her position was too awkward.

“I can’t,” she sighed, dropping back to the mattress. Then she felt a hand slip beneath her shoulders and lift her. Gabriella had a surprising amount of strength despite her age and small stature.

Just like Aunt Gaby.

Would it really be so incredible that the essence of one spirit existed at different times in history? Was it any less believable than one person defying the space-time continuum and traveling to another era? If she hadn’t done it herself, she might have argued the theory. At this point, nothing would come as a complete surprise, including her favorite aunt popping up in her time of need.

When Cara propped herself up on her elbows, the blanket slid down, exposing her breasts. Self-conscious, she grasped the edge of the scratchy blanket and covered herself, holding it while she drank a small amount of the thin soup. The warm, aromatic liquid soothed her dry throat.

Settling back onto the bed, she inquired in Spanish, “Where are my clothes?”

“I have sent them to be washed. You won’t need them quite yet. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“No, that’s too late. The ship is sailing tonight. I need to be there when they come to get us.”

Cara had a sudden thought that the captain might have already left without her. “Do you know what happened to the man who brought me?”

“Captain Masters has not abandoned you,” Gabriella answered as if Cara had spoken her concern aloud. “He is a good man. But he has closed himself off from his heart far too long to know how to love. Within two weeks, you will receive a proposal of marriage.”

“From Blake?”

Shaking her head solemnly, the woman added, “But you will have no choice but to accept,
mi Cara
.”

The familiar endearment startled her. “It is you. Aunt Gaby.”

“Quiet now. You finish eating. Get your strength back.” Gabriella offered more of the thin herb-laced soup.

Reluctantly Cara complied, even though she wanted to talk with Gabriella . . . or Aunt Gaby? Little by little, she consumed the entire bowlful. Toward the last of it, she felt her muscles turn to mush again.

Trying to keep her eyelids from closing, she asked, “What was in that broth?”

“Something for your chills and fever,
mi Cara
.”

Her vision blurred. The shadowy walls swirled around her. From somewhere came the soft and gentle voice of her aunt Gabriella, “
Estoy aquí, mi Cara
.”

Her eyelids drooped. She snapped them open. “I want to tell you—”

“Hush now. Sleep.”

“So much has happened . . .”

“I know everything about the storm and shipwreck, my child.”

“You do? But how—” She cut off her sentence, realizing the absurdity of asking her clairvoyant aunt the how’s and why’s of psychic phenomenon. The mickey soup must have been the cause of this major brain-fade.

“How do I know these things? I am here with you, aren’t I?” said Aunt Gaby, as if the rhetorical question explained everything.

But it didn’t. Was she really here?

“You have been through so much, but you have so much more ahead of you. Don’t give up now, Cara.”

“I’m not!” Her adamant denial forced a cough from her lungs, weakening her further. After enduring hours of exposure in the icy water, she shouldn’t have been surprised that her body had called it quits. “This flu or cold or whatever I’ve got, it’s only temporary.”

“You have brought this on yourself. You needed the rest. And you needed my help.”

“I called upon you?” Her memory was a blur.

“Yes, in your own way. Tomorrow you will be back on your feet.”

“Good, because I need to see Andrew. Is he here, Aunt Gaby?”

“No.”

Disappointed, Cara started to lift her hand to her eyes, but her arm would not respond. Her entire body was shutting down, unable to stay awake any longer. She fought against it, willing herself to find out the truth.

“Was he the boy the sailors rescued from the
Mystic
and brought here for his safety?”

“Yes, but he was taken away by men from another ship.”

“What?” Cara struggled to hear the words fading in and out. “Kidnapped?”

“Yes . . . gone . . . you will find him . . . sleep now.”

“Don’t go. Not yet.”

“I am here, my Cara.”

In the waning light of late day, Blake sent his men back to the
Valiant
with orders to come again the following afternoon. Returning from the beach with the leather satchel that he’d dropped, he passed the rustic huts, shooing off a couple of mongrels that sniffed at the food bag in his hand.

He entered the mission grounds and walked unescorted toward the chamber where Cara lay sleeping. He had been turned away twice by the old Indian medicine woman. Each time she told him his wife needed rest.

His wife . . .

A strange feeling of affection welled in his chest. How was it that Cara Edwards, a woman whom he had not known two days ago, could cause such a stir inside him? Never once had he thought of taking a wife. Mistress, yes. He’d had a few. Fortunately, none of them wanted a seafaring husband any more than he’d wanted to be tied to a lady living half a world away. Nor had he wanted to sire children who would grow up without their father’s presence. He knew that loneliness in a boy’s life. He would not subject his own son to the same sadness he had suffered.

Reaching the door of Cara’s temporary room, he raised his hand and quietly knocked. The old woman came out, closing the door behind her. She looked up at him with kindness in her eyes.

“
Ella está cansada
.”

“Yes, I know she is tired,” he answered in English, frustrated with the difficulty in communicating. He had learned nothing about her condition during the entire day he had paced back and forth outside her door. Wanting to know if he could go in now, he asked, “
¿Se puede entrar ahora?
”

Shaking her head, the woman mentioned
escalofríos
and
fiebre
. Chills and fever were terms he knew. But surely the scratches could not have struck her down so quickly. And he’d found no evidence of a snakebite. Perhaps Cara was infected with a contagious disease. If so, he had already been exposed to it, so there was no reason for him to be kept out of her room any longer.

Refusing to be turned away again, he insisted upon seeing her. “
Yo quiero verla
.”

She answered reluctantly, “
Sí, capitán
,” then told him she would go to eat while he visited with his wife. She offered to bring him a plate of food. He considered the contents of his bag, then nodded appreciatively.

“
Gracias, señora
.”

As the woman left, Blake entered the sparsely furnished room. The east-facing window offered barely a hint of light in the lateness of the day. On the table, the candle had burned down to a short stub, which cast an eerie glow across the sagging rope bed.

Shaking off the macabre feeling of entering a tomb, he quietly approached the bedside and sat down in the chair. The blanket had been tucked under her chin. Her hair had been smoothed away from her forehead. Her lips looked cracked and sore.

Blake leaned forward. Bracing his elbows on his knees, he folded his hands under his chin.

Watching her.

Waiting.

She stirred. He dropped his hand to the edge of the bed, expecting her to open her eyes.

Hoping.

Wishing.

A slight frown creased her forehead. She gave a soft moan, then fell quiet again.

His shoulders sagged and he returned to his previous position, elbows on knees, chin on folded hands, eyes on her.

Even in sleep, she possessed a mystique like no other woman he’d known. Now here she was with an inexplicable illness that had him keeping a bedside vigil as if they were truly bound together for life.

He had fallen under her spell, and he didn’t know how or why. One minute he wanted to shake her senseless and demand God’s honest truth about who she was. The next minute he wanted to seduce her thoroughly, hear her cry out his name, and let the truth be damned.

She angered him. She enticed him. She frightened him.

But he had never felt so alive in all his life.

He dropped his face into his hands. “Dear God-in-heaven, what is wrong with her? I feel so useless just sitting here. There must be something I can do to help her.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw her face from the night before, pleading with him to let her help him. He’d been unable, unwilling, to accept the compassion in her dark eyes after his repulsive treatment of her.

Shame descended on him once more, flogging him with well-deserved ridicule. He had no right to be here at her side. He should have sailed away this afternoon when he’d had the chance. She would be better off without him. He had nothing of worth to offer her, not even himself. She deserved better. She deserved more.

He gazed upon her face, grateful to see that the frown had vanished. Somewhere in her darkness she had found peace. In the minimum light of the candle, he noticed a soft serenity that seemed to almost glow from her smooth skin.

The face of an angel.

The still, small voice in his head made him smile. Perhaps she was just that, he mused, not really accepting the childish belief in celestial beings. And yet . . . What sort of real person could have such a kind and generous heart? What sort of walking, breathing human being could reach out to someone like him as she had done? He envied her. To be able to reach out to another person. To be vulnerable. To be exposed. To be hurt, yet respond in love. She brought out a protectiveness in him he had not known existed until now. He wanted to guard her goodness, shelter it from the darkness in this world.

His throat tight with emotions he didn’t understand, he warned softly, “If you don’t watch out, Mrs. Edwards, you just might make me fall in love with you.”

“No . . .” came her quiet reply, though her eyes were still closed. Had she heard his confession or was she dreaming again?

“Cara?” He touched the blanket on her shoulder. Her head lolled to one side. He lowered his face close to hers. “I am here.”

Floating in a warm pool of oblivion, Cara heard the sound of two voices—one male, one female—speaking in unison, I am here.

Aunt Gaby? Blake? Together? How could it be? She struggled to open her eyes. Her vision cleared. Deep-blue eyes peered at her, first with concern, then relief.

“Blake?” she managed, barely making a sound.

He nodded, his dark eyes suddenly bright with moisture. His hand cupped her head. As his lips brushed hers, she felt something pass between them. A nebulous infusion of radiant heat flowed through her body.

“Welcome back,” he said, his voice as raspy as her own. The faintest smile settled into the tiny creases at the outer corner of his eyes. The pad of his thumb stroked her temple, soothing her.