The Beloved Woman (36 page)

“I wasn’t dead,” Justis said grimly, staring at the letter. “But as good as dead.”

“She looked like a grievin’ widow, sir. I swear it. It was such a change in her. She’d been so kind of, well, she’d had sort of a glow in the past months.”

Had she fallen in love with Salazar
?

“But after she got the letter that day—the one that upset her—she took so poor that Mrs. Mendez moved her into the suite with herself. I think that’s when they talked about your wife goin’ to California, sir.”

Justis groaned inwardly. Whether she loved him or not, her pride had been devastated. She had wanted to be free of him all along, and his so-called marriage to
Amarintha had given her a legitimate reason to break their bargain. Still, she must have been sick with hatred for him after reading the newspaper clipping. If he let her go for good, let her start fresh without him, he’d be giving her the most loving, unselfish gift in his soul.

“What about Vittorio Salazar?” he asked suddenly. “Where was he durin’ all this?”

The porter turned and vehemently launched a stream of tobacco juice into a spittoon. “Right beside your wife, sir, bein’ the dearest gentleman friend in the world—but still beatin’ up whores at night.”

Katherine was headed to California in the company of a man she thought she could trust, a man who might see her as something less than a lady now that she had no protection. A man who liked to use women in a way that Justis could picture all too easily at the moment.

Thomas grabbed his arm. “You look like you’ve met the devil and he’s about to carry you off to hell, sir. Come sit down.”

Not himself, he thought. Katherine. The devil had her, and she didn’t suspect. “I’m all right,” he told Thomas. “I want to see what personal things she left behind.”

Thomas shifted awkwardly. “She didn’t take much with her, sir. The rest—includin’ all of your clothes and things—she gave to me. Told me to enjoy what profit I could from ’em. I’m sorry, sir. They’re sold.”

“Did she give you a gold nugget hung on a leather necklace?”

“No, sir.”

She’d never give up her memories of home. He had done the right thing by accepting Amarintha’s god-awful blackmail, and maybe Katie could forgive him for wounding her dignity. After all, the land was the thing she loved, the only thing.

“You’ll be takin’ a room at the hotel, sir?” Thomas asked.

Justis shook his head. She would hate him, hate him
even more than she did now, but he couldn’t let her go without eliminating Salazar’s danger from her life and explaining the reason behind his marriage to Amarintha. He couldn’t let her go even then. He’d have to see for himself that she hated him and that nothing he could say or do would ever change that.

He clasped Thomas’s hand in farewell. “I’ll be takin’ the first ship I can get for California.”

T
HE WHOLE WORLD
was a swaying, creaking nightmare filled with pain. Caught in a squall in the middle of a moonless night, the brig lurched from side to side. The maids staggered about Katherine’s tiny cabin, trying not to fall down with their lanterns. Adela and one of the children’s nannies kept bumping against the wall. They protested in terse Spanish and crossed themselves fearfully.

Kneeling on a blanket on the floor beside her narrow bed, Katherine watched the chaotic scene through a haze of exhaustion. She was more aware of her own body than anything else at the moment. Her hair felt enormously heavy hanging in several braided loops between her shoulder blades. She was naked except for a nightgown she’d drawn up beneath her breasts and tied in a knot. Sweat ran from under it and tickled the tight, hypersensitive skin of her swollen belly.

“Holy saints save us!” one of the maids screamed as the ship rolled again.

“Amen!” Adela said as she careened off a wall.

Katherine swayed but remained securely in place. She gripped the bed’s sideboard as another contraction stabbed her.

“This will be the one!” she said between gritted teeth as she stretched her head back in agony.

Adela toppled beside her and reached between her
legs. “Yes! Push hard! Push hard! Ah! It is here! The little one is here!”

Katherine collapsed backward as the nanny knelt and caught her. Propping herself up with the woman’s help, Katherine panted for breath as she looked at the blood and gore between her legs. In the center of it, moving weakly in Adela’s hands, was a tiny, wrinkled baby girl.

“She is so beautiful,” Katherine murmured. Love poured through her, and she was filled with a sense of awe. She had been so professional until this point, so much like a doctor observing her own delivery. Now she was purely a mother, and the sight of her blood-slicked babe with black hair and light eyes made tears slip down her face.

“Justis,” she moaned softly. “This is our
daughter.
”

After the storm finally quieted, Adela and her servants got Katherine and the baby cleaned up and into bed. As Katherine watched her daughter nurse, she vowed to make a wonderful home for the two of them. She would never let anything happen to this miraculous little angel. All the love she had wanted to give Justis was here, cradled close to her heart.

The next morning Vittorio came to her cabin to visit. He carefully studied the baby sleeping in her arms. “She will be fairer-skinned than you. And her eyes are so blue! Those eyes will not turn dark, like yours. What color were the father’s eyes?”

“Green.” Green as new leaves, she thought with a swift tugging in her chest.

“I predict that the babe will have her father’s eyes.”

She wouldn’t say the words to anyone, but deep inside she hoped so. It would be a measure of comfort to look into her daughter’s eyes and see Justis there. But Vittorio’s tone of voice bothered her. “You sound as if you’re glad she won’t look so much like an Indian.”

He nodded. “We must accept the facts, Catalina. The Californios will never consider you an equal, but your
half-caste daughter may fare well, especially if she is pretty. Perhaps she will even be able to make a good marriage.”

Katherine frowned. “What would she do instead? Do you think my daughter will become some Californio’s mistress? She will marry a fine man—if she wishes to marry. Perhaps I will encourage her to take a husband from my own people, someone who will not congratulate himself for being noble when he marries a half-breed woman.”

Vittorio’s slow, patient smile annoyed her. She was finding him less likable these days. Once they reached California she would organize her future and relegate him to an insignificant part in it.

“What have you decided to name her?” he asked.

Katherine sighed happily, her pique forgotten for the moment. The babe’s real name would be Dahlonega. It was the Cherokee word for gold. “I am naming her after my parents,” she told Vittorio. “Mary Jessica.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “She will be Mary Jessica Gallatin. I shall call her Mary.”

He nodded. “Maria. A fine name.”

“Not Maria. Mary.”

“Catalina and her daughter, Maria. Yes. I like the sound of those. They will serve me quite well.” Vittorio left the cabin as she stared at him with slowly dawning concern.

J
USTIS DESPISED BEING
cooped up on the schooner, and he vowed that if he ever reached California, he would never leave again, at least not by ship. The problem at this point, however, was that the damned schooner had taken a lot of storm damage off the western coast of South America after rounding the Horn. The captain had barely gotten it to a safe harbor.

Now he and the other passengers were marooned in a
tiny village while they waited for a passing ship to take them on to California. By Justis’s calculations, Katherine’s ship must have arrived there within the past month. Even if he got another passage right away, he would be more than three months behind her.

He had never been much for praying, but now he spent a considerable amount of his time asking God to protect her from Vittorio Salazar.

CHAPTER 17

T
HE FIESTA
at Rancho Mendez was like nothing Katherine had ever seen before. After several days of near-nonstop festivities it continued in full force, with picnics, bullfights, dances, horse races, and a dozen other entertainments that ranged from genteel to wildly bawdy. The families and guests of every rancho within a two-day ride had come to the event, along with many of the Yankee traders from the coastal village of Yerba Buena and the village of Sonoma to its north.

Adela’s husband, Miguel, a sturdy, dark-skinned patriarch of medium height and cheerful, rounded face, had organized the fiesta in honor of his wife’s homecoming. Katherine had expected to be treated pleasantly by her open-minded California hosts, but Miguel Mendez’s old-world courtesy surpassed her highest hopes. Judging by his sincere and formal manner toward her, she might have been a Mexican aristocrat.

Don Miguel, as everyone respectfully called him, was typical of the men who commanded the huge cattle-and-sheep
estates of the balmy northern California wilderness. Flamboyant by American standards, he decorated his clothes with colorful braid and gleaming studs of gold and silver.

He wore fancy ruffled shirts under short jackets, and snug vests that displayed his rotund physique; his trousers flared from knee to ankle, and the insets were ornamented. He frequently and boisterously waved a wide-brimmed hat the Californios called a sombrero, and when the air grew cool at night he draped a bright-colored serape over his shoulders.

He rode his equally ornamented horses with fascinating grace, looking more like a centaur than a man. Everyone—men, women, and all but the tiniest children—rode in California, often at nothing less than a fast gallop. Horses were plentiful and spirited, like much else to be found in the region where cattle flourished untended and fortunes could be had simply by shipping the hides east.

Katherine found the California women just as exotic as the men. For the fiesta Adela excitedly outfitted her in their style, and each time she looked into a mirror Katherine was amazed by the change in her appearance. No corsets for these women—they let their curves jiggle and their waists grow. And no solemn colors. Today Katherine wore a bright blue shawl over a scoop-necked white blouse with puffy elbow-length sleeves. The blouse tucked into a gay print skirt and rustling red petticoats. On her feet she wore delicate blue slippers; on her head she wore a white lace mantilla.

Head to foot she was a California woman now, she told herself. It was a heartening notion, though she wasn’t sure whether the future promised more happiness than the past. The Californios had various social castes, just as any group of people did, and she couldn’t predict what position they would assign to her.

It was true that the ranchos existed almost entirely on the labor of her kind—Indians—and mestizos, mixed-bloods.
But the workers, everyone from house servants to the rowdy vaqueros who herded cattle, were employees, not slaves, and they mingled with their
patróns
in a way that hinted at respect, if not equality. Among the rancheros Katherine had seen one or two who had wives who were obviously of Indian ancestry.

That gave her hope. Her new home wasn’t perfect, but at least it bore signs of being hospitable.
Hospitable
. She thought of Vittorio. Lately he had returned to his more accommodating, reliable behavior, and her reservations about him had faded.

“If you are not happy at Vittorio’s home you must come straight back here,” Adela told her during the fiesta’s fifth and final night. “It is only a day’s travel.”

Seated in the cool adobe grandeur of the great room in the Mendez hacienda, Katherine smiled. She felt comfortable and optimistic. “I’m sure he’ll be an excellent advisor and host while I acquire my land grant from the governor.”

“He will. Do not let my husband’s opinion worry you. They have always disagreed on everything.”

Miguel Mendez was decidedly cool toward his deceased sister’s husband. Judging by Miguel’s cheerful tolerance of everyone else with whom she saw him, Katherine couldn’t understand his distaste for Vittorio. “What does Vittorio do that angers Don Miguel so often?”