Three Wishes (33 page)

I turned my head before I saw the bullet’s results, confident that it had to be a lethal—or at least crippling—blow. Another man grabbed me from behind, pinning my arm against my chest as he pulled me toward him. I managed to wriggle my left arm free, reached behind me, and grabbed his nose, tearing away the soft flesh at his nostrils. He screamed and let me go.

But the next man tackled me, driving the breath from my lungs. I was just thinking about a move in which I might be able to get my leg up and in front of his neck—if it weren’t for my cursed skirts—when he lifted a fist and belted me across the cheek.

I felt the blow as if I were outside my body. I recognized the pain, but it was distant. And my last thought as I lost consciousness was this:
I’m sorry, Javier. Mateo. So, so sorry
…

I felt the rise and fall of waves before my other senses finally helped me figure out where I might be. Slowly I lifted my head. It was throbbing so hard, I could hardly bear opening my eyes.

I was at sea. As in,
on-board-a-ship-at-sea.

“Ahh, there you are, my dear. At last,” said the captain, stroking my cheek, making me wince from the pain there, even though his touch was light.

I forced my eyes open. Or one eye, actually. The other refused to open—because it was swollen shut? I struggled to remember what had happened. But, as I blinked, I saw that I faced an enraged and red-faced, gagged Javier, bound in a chair before me. And to my side was Mateo, similarly bound, but unconscious.

Slowly, I took stock of my situation. I was in a chair, bound heavily around the chest, wrists, waist and feet. Totally immobile.

I struggled against the scratchy ropes for a sec, which seemed to amuse the captain. Then I tried to talk and realized I was gagged, a filthy rag in my mouth, held there by a band around my head.

Recognizing the salty taste of sweat, disgusted, I began to choke. The captain watched me a moment, waited until Javier began to rock his chair in agitation and fury, until he casually reached forward and untied my gag. I spit out the wad in my mouth, retching for a moment, dizzy. I gasped, regained my composure, and sat up straight, closing my eyes and forcing myself to breathe slowly.
Get a grip, Zara. Think. Think!

I felt his finger swipe across my lips. “She has lovely lips, does she not, Don Javier? How much are those lips worth to you, intact?”

I blinked, and stared up and over at him as he moved to Mateo, trying to pull four images into one. “Or how much is your little brother’s life worth?” he asked, waving to Mateo’s inert form. He was still unconscious. “It must eat at you, thoughts of your elder brother, gone, and now this one, so near to his own death…”

“What did you do to him?” I spat out, my voice raspy and dry, wanting nothing more than to cease his taunting of Javier.

The pirate captain glanced back at me before studying Mateo again, as if appraising artwork in a museum. A curiosity. “The boy thought he might be a hero,” he said, glancing back at me over his shoulder as he continued to pace in a circle around us. “Let’s just say he’s young yet.”

My eyes met Javier’s.

I’m sorry. So sorry,
I said to him silently. If I had done what he’d asked…gone home, rather than stay and try to fight…Well, he and Mateo might have still been captured, but I would likely not have been a part of the stakes.

He frowned, but his whole expression was protective rage. Love. Worry.

Which
encompassed
me, in an odd sort of manner.

“And you—Señorita Ruiz, I take it? You, my dear, have
cost
me. Two men dead. Injuries to two others.” He refused to admit that I’d hurt him too, but I saw him lift a hand to his collar and pull the starched edge away from a purpling bruise.

I wanted to laugh.

“Who are you?” I said, my voice still raspy. “What do you want?”

“I am Captain Santiago Mendoza,” he said, waving a small circle in the air as he bowed. “I’d kiss your hand,” he added, rising, a wry look in his dark eyes, “but well, you recognize my difficulty in that.”

My skin crawled as he looked down my body and up again. I knew it was a scare tactic. Menacing, somehow, to Javier, more than me. When his eyes returned to mine, I was staring straight at Javier.
It will be okay. Somehow, some way, it will be okay,
I willed him to know.

Because something in me, in spite of these crazy odds, told me it was so.

Had God brought me back a couple of centuries to fall in love with a man and his family, only to die at the hands of a pirate?

No way.

The knowledge of it sent a surge of adrenaline through me and lifted my chin.

But Javier stared back at me with nothing but fear and righteous, impotent rage.

Which made me feel the same, of course.

“What do you want, Captain Mendoza?” I rasped out.

Wordlessly, he poured a cup of wine and brought it to me.

I sipped, desperate, feeling the tart wine fill my mouth to the full and slop down the corners of my mouth and down my cheeks, chin, and neck. But oh, the relief of that liquid sliding down my parched throat! I swallowed with relish, leaning my head back against the tall, deeply carved face of the chair.

Captain Mendoza took the opportunity to run his fingers up my throat and jaw—making my eye spring open—and then lifted his red-stained fingertips to his mouth, licking them.

I swallowed hard. Hated him, with every fiber of my being. How could someone be so horrible?

Then he gave Javier a meaningful look and resumed his circuit around the three of us, hands clasped behind his back. “You asked what I want, Señorita,” he said, as if still trying to figure out his demands, when it was more than clear that he’d long since determined them. “And as near as I can fathom it, the vast potential of Rancho Ventura is at my fingertips,” he said, pausing to lift my chin and look over at Javier for a long moment. Then he moved on to Mateo, grabbed hold of his dark curls, and roughly raised his head.

Mateo stirred, squinted, and squirmed, starting to rise to consciousness.

Javier grunted and struggled against his bonds anew.

“Free Javier’s gag,” I said to the captain. “This is
his
deal to make, not mine.”

Mendoza stared at me, and, behind him, I saw the swing of the light on a chain, moving in an arc with the waves. All at once, I became aware of the creak of the timbers all around us, the thrum and energy of sails unfurled, carrying down here, to the
hold
. The washing sound of water moving past, surging with each wave, deep enough to make us all lean one way and then the other.

We were on the move. Far from Rancho Ventura. Farther with each wave.

How long had we been at sea? How far were we from home?

Home
, I acknowledged internally.
Rancho Ventura.

The captain moved to free Javier’s gag, and he spit out the rag from his mouth.

He turned away when Mendoza offered him a cup of wine, sneering in his direction. “When I am free—”

“When you are free,” the captain easily interjected, resuming his pacing around us, “you and I shall sup on occasion as good friends. Perhaps even accept a friendly wager? I hear of your fondness for a hand of cards. But for now,
Don
Javier, you are
not
free, and these are the terms of my demands…”

We waited, the three of us, the gradually rousing Mateo, Javier, and me. Surrounded by four burly, armed guards in the shadows—my brain finally took them in—and the pacing captain.

“I am going to set you free, come daybreak, in a rowboat, to make your way to shore and back to the rancho to collect the same sum you handed to the presidio scum, my price for your precious little brother,” he said, miming an arc across Mateo’s throat with Javier’s own dagger. “And as for
this
sweet, intriguing creature,” he said, lifting my chin with the cool flat of the blade.

I stared only at Javier.

“I take it she has stolen your heart? This girl, whom no one knows?”

“
De veras
,” Javier whispered, staring back at me, pledging his love with those two words in a way that I didn’t think any other might ever match.
Indeed
.

He hadn’t had to say it, admit it. But he had.

“Be careful of such women,” Mendoza said. “There is a reason that our mothers wanted to know those we might pledge our hearts to—and their kin.”

“I know all that I need to know,” Javier ground out, still looking only at me.

“Well then,” Mendoza said wryly, “her freedom shall cost you another chest of gold.”

Javier’s eyes moved to Mendoza, deadly still a moment. “I shall not give you two chests of gold for these two…I shall give you four.”

“Javier!” I gasped.

“
Four
,” he repeated. “But you shall deliver them to me in Monterey. Unharmed.
Unmolested
,” he emphasized, looking to Mendoza with a deadly intensity that sent a shiver down my back. “And I shall never see you or your crew again. Ever.”

The captain cast him a wry grin, brows lifting. “Four chests of gold when I asked for but two? Clearly, you are not the gambler that others said you were,” he scoffed.

“You, Captain,” Javier said, staring at him with a sneer, “have no idea
who
I am and
what
threat I might be. Harm either of these two, and I shall
hunt
you down.
Destroy
you. No,
kill
you…in slow,
exacting
measure,” he grit out.

“Such grand talk!” Captain Mendoza scoffed. “May I remind you that it is I who hold your loved ones’ lives in the balance? To say nothing of what might transpire for your widowed mother, sisters, and brother, far behind us? Ahh, yes, Señor Ventura, I am well aware of
all
who hold your heart.”

I closed my eyes again, unable to combat the fear of what I might have brought down on those I loved.

Those I loved.

I
loved
them.

Not just Javier. But Estie. Francesca. Jacinto. Mateo. Doña Elena.

I loved them as my own.

My own
family
.

And Javier?

As I stared at him, I couldn’t imagine him gone. Away from me. It baffled me that I had ever been ready to leave him for my own time.
What had I been thinking?

It came to mind, then, my third wish.
Adventure
.

My blood was pulsing at a faster rate than I could ever remember.
Okay, Lord, maybe this is a bit too much adventure
…

Somehow we had to get out of this. Some way.

Because this love that I felt for Javier, for his family, couldn’t end here or now.

Or ever.

HISTORICAL NOTES

Most of my research came from these five books: Hayes’s
Historical Atlas of California
, Dana’s
Two Years Before the Mast,
Beebe and Senkewicz’s
Lands of Promise and Depair,
Robinson’s
Land in California,
and Cleland’s
The Cattle on a Thousand Hills.

However, I took fictional license on a variety of fronts for the sake of the story. To begin with, my depiction of the Venturas’ villa is likely highly romanticized. There were vast ranchos like this, as well as villas that housed big families and many servants, but I somehow doubt that many in this time would be quite this pristine and sophisticated. Alta California, of course, was still a pretty rough frontier, and a family was more apt to concentrate on survival than impressing visitors. Still, with cities like Monterey within reach, I didn’t think it entirely implausible…which is enough for most fiction writers.

Along that vein, I placed the Venturas’ rancho
north
of Santa Barbara, somewhere along the Central Coast (intentionally vague!), and gave them Bonita Harbor, when according to
Two Years Before the Mast
, there were no such wonderful, perfect landfalls for ships wishing to trade with the rancheros, between Santa Barbara and Monterey. They
did
anchor and trade here and there along the coast—it just was much more arduous than I depicted in this fictional, idyllic harbor. Even though I named the family “Ventura,” it should not be confused with the real Ventura, or the San Buenaventura mission, which is actually
south
of Santa Barbara.