Treasure of the Sun (28 page)

Damian caught her fist as it swung.

"You've become nothing but a brazen-faced whore." Damian's own fist found its mark, right across the narrow lips of the man from Boston. Lawrence smacked back against the chair so hard the fragile wood split and tossed him to the floor. Grabbing his oversized lapels, Damian dragged him back to his feet. Holding him face to face, Damian said, "Stupid," and hit him again. Lawrence's hands flailed as he tripped into the pedestal. The fine Grecian vase flew into the air and crashed into the fireplace.

Shards flew across the room. Katherine cried, "Don Damian, please. You're ruining Senora Diaz's attractive parlor."

Lawrence
wiped blood from his face and whined, Is that all you can say?" He stopped and moved his lower jaw. Assured that it worked, he complained more loudly. “He’s beating me up and all you can do is worry about a bunch of ugly furniture?”

"You could hit him back," Katherine advised with little sympathy. "Men do that."

Drawing himself up, he said, "Your sense of decency is dead, you hear me-dead!"

"Do you never learn?" Damian reached out again. He used more a slap than a blow, but Lawrence staggered like a drunk in a stupor and collapsed against the pedestal, which in turn collapsed under him.

The door of the parlor flew open as the wood splintered around him, and Senora Diaz screamed hysterically, "My vase!"

"I told you, you shouldn't do that," Katherine advised as Damian led her away from the groaning Lawrence and into the sitting room.

Damian ignored her. "Senora, I'm so sorry to have ruined your parlor." He bowed to the senora with such charm the lady halted in midoutrage. "That cur insulted my bride. My bride, the love of my life, and he spoke to her without respect. I couldn't allow him to continue. You understand?"

She did, of course. Clasping her hands before her chest, she half swooned. "Romance."

The alcalde put his arm around her. "You remember?" he asked.

Damian cocked an uneasy eye at Katherine. She'd stumbled into the corner of the sitting room and held her stomach with one arm. The other hand shielded her face; her shoulders shook.

The couple stepped to the door of the parlor and the alcalde clicked his tongue. "Such a waste, that beautiful furniture."

"I'll pay for it, of course." Damian started towards Katherine.

"In fact, senora, if you would go to my father's townhouse this afternoon and tell the housekeeper what has happened, you can pick out anything you desire."

"Is she ill?" the alcalde whispered, nodding at Katherine.

"I think not." An embarrassing suspicion dawned in Damian, replacing his first tremor of alarm.

"These tears," the alcalde said, "they are for-" He pointed with his thumb.

Damian pryed her fingers away from her eyes and checked. It was as he guessed, and he could hardly wait to usher her from the Diaz home. Noncommittally, he said, "The bonds of blood are strong." He thrust her face into his shirt and hugged her against him. With careful steps, he urged her from the house. "I'll take her back to the place where she can give way to her emotions." They cleared the veranda before the strangled clamor from his chest began to leak out. "Dona Katherina is sensitive to the sight of blood."

Shocked faces peered at him from the door as her sounds, unmistakably of mirth, pealed out.

Grimly he concluded, "Although not the blood of her cousin.”

31 May, in the year of our Lord, 1777

The cause of our grief caught up with us this morning. The devout among the Indian women followed us into the mountains. They were the noise Fray Patricio heard last night, and the reason for his death. The three women crept to us on their knees, obviously afraid of our wrath, but Fray Lucio and I were too heartsick to do so much as speak harshly to them.

They carried pouches on their backs, emptying them at our feet. They brought us gold, huge nuggets of gold, smooth to the touch. They brought us sacks of gold dust, and even quartz veined with gold. Clearly, they believe we can transform this quartz into the pure metal. In their primitive minds, this abundance of gold will make up for the loss of our brothers.

-from the diary of Fray Juan Estevan de Bautista

Chapter 13

"He's not a parnevu." Lawrence's pronunciation suffered from the consequences of the split lips given him by Damian. A swollen nose, acquired no doubt in his fall, contributed to his nasal Boston accent.

None of that affected his determination, and none of his determination affected Katherine as she walked around the boarding-house bed with an armload of clothes.

"Any fool can see that Don Damian's a gentleman. If I'd taken a moment to look at his boots, I'd have realized it. I mean, he's out there right now accepting his horse from some groom or another."

"The Estrada groom?"

"I suppose so. That animal is a beautiful piece of horseflesh, even I can see that. I just lost my temper when you didn't want to return immediately. I assumed you'd see it my way. It's my father coming out in me, I suppose." He chuckled anxiously and followed her to the brand-new trunk sitting, lid up, against the wall. "You won't hold it against me, will you?"

"She's not a prostitute. Any fool can see that. She's a valued member of our family. I'm sure you understand my shock when I discovered she was widowed and remarried. Perhaps I took my responsibility a little too seriously. You won't hold it against me, will you?"

Damian tightened the girths on his saddle and ignored Lawrence.

"Perhaps my anxious concern offended you. Perhaps you're still offended, and I don't blame you. I acted like an ass. But I'm acting like a concerned relative, now. There are rumors that some murderer attacked Katherine last night."

"Dona Katherina."

Lawrence
blinked at Damian. "What?"

"You may call her Dona Katherina. It's a sign of respect." "Why, she's my cousin, and I-"

Damian lifted his cold gaze to Lawrence's face.

Lawrence
gulped, his throat rising and falling with his courage. "Of course. Of course. Married women are due respect. I suppose her real name is Mrs. Sola now."

"Senora de la Sola, but as her relative you are permitted to call her Dona Katherina." Damian strapped the bags onto the back of the saddle.

"Of course. Of course. As I was saying, the rumors say that Dona Katherina-" it clearly tasted bad in Lawrence's mouth "-Dona Katherina was attacked last night. To travel the road between here and your farm-"

"Rancho."

"Huh? Oh. Your rancho as the sun sets is a foolhardy act." "I can take care of Dona Katherina."

"I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it for a minute. I just thought that if you insist on leaving so late in the afternoon, I could ride with you and protect-"

"Do you have a horse?"

As Katherine strode up, a bag in each hand, Lawrence asked her petulantly, "Does this man ever let you finish your sentences?"

She handed Damian her new carpetbag. "Is he interrupting you, Lawrence?"

"Yes."

"Try saying something worth listening to," she advised, mounting the side-saddle with Damian's assistance.

Damian hooked the carpetbag over his saddle horn, then vaulted onto Confite. He repeated, "Do you have a horse?"

"Well, no, but-"

"Adios, then." Tipping his hat to Lawrence, Damian gestured for Katherine to precede him. They set off down the southeast bound road out of Monterey, and Lawrence jogged along beside them.

"I could get a horse." They increased their speed.

"It's not safe out there at night." He dropped behind.

"Maybe not even in the daytime."

Katherine leaned against the neck of her horse and encouraged her to move faster.

"I can wield a gun," Lawrence shouted from behind. Damian slowed. "Can he?" he asked Katherine.

"One time he shot a mirror, believing his reflection to be a burglar," she said definitely.

Spurring Confite, Damian kept pace with his wife, who rode as if the ghosts of her past pursued her. When they were well away, he signalled for her to slow. They swapped a grin of camaraderie, the naughty shame of two children fleeing an unpleasant duty. "He can't catch us now," he said.

"That worried me," she answered. "But it's my own soft heart I flee."

Damian suspected her dilemma and shook his head warningly. "Don't tell me--"

"I don't want to, but I feel sorry for Lawrence. Poor sap." "He called you a whore."

"He's always been gauche, but never brave. He's the sorriest son of the sorry Chamberlain family."

"I don't want him along. If we don't get rid of him now, he'll follow us to the ends of the earth," he warned.

"You don't know how true that is. He doesn't dare "go back to Boston without me. He's too afraid of his parents."

"What kind of family is this?" he asked, bewildered. "They're cruel to you. They frighten their son."

"He was sent after me because he's the most easily supplanted child of the family." She nodded at his appalled expression. "He's not good for much. His law work is sloppy. He can't hold his liquor. The girls giggle about him behind his back. His ruthlessness is not up to Chamberlain quality."

"He's been kind to you."

"Exactly. It's that occasional compassion that makes him so replaceable in his father's eyes." She glanced behind her. "If there's someone on our track, Lawrence would do us no good. He'd faint if presented with that awful countenance that attacked me last night."

Damian chuckled as they rode on, skirting the salt marshes that gave Salinas its name. They were well along the track beside the river when he asked, "Why do they want you back so badly?"

Katherine grinned. "They're running out of money." "What?"

"I'm truly very good with the law."

Her eyes flashed a challenge, but he only murmured, "You'd be good at anything you set your mind to."

She bent her head in acknowledgement. "Thank you." She patted her horse's neck as she considered the best way to explain without bragging. "My uncle had modest success as a lawyer before I moved into his home. He was competent enough to swindle people with no lawyers of their own out of their hard-earned wages. When faced with another lawyer, however, he lacked the verbal finesse to argue his way out of a mouse hole."

"You don't think much of your uncle."

"He's a bully, a master at finding someone's weakness and exploiting it. Witness his results. Witness Lawrence." The hand that patted the horse clenched in its mane. "Witness me."

"You?"

He sounded surprised, and she found him smiling at her.

Encouragingly, sweetly. "Yes, me. There are some people who say I have a tendency to stick out my chin and dare someone to knock in my teeth."

"Who would say such a thing?"

"My mother. She said she couldn't understand why, but I grew belligerent at fifteen." She shook her head, watching her fingers as they loosened the knots she tangled in the horse's mane then combed them out. "Bless her, I think she believed she'd been delivered of a pixie."

"Bless her, I think she was, too."

Something in his eyes made her pay close attention to her riding. Clearing her throat, she said, "Anyway. Uncle Rutherford’s fantastic success as a lawyer began when I moved into the house and started writing his legal arguments for him. I put the Chamberlain fortune on firm footing when I took over the accounting and investments. I've been gone almost eighteen months. Plenty of time for my spendthrift family to have driven themselves to the verge of bankruptcy."

He whistled.

"Of course they want me back," she added matter-of-factly. Catching at her reins, he brought her horse close to Confite.

She squawked, "Don Damian!" before she received a warning look.

"They may want you back, but I've got you. Never think you have an alternative to our marriage." He rose in his stirrups to press a kiss on her surprised lips. Turning back to the road, he set off at a gallop. As she struggled to keep up, she could hear his voice on the wind, complaining, "With such a family, you were willing to leave us to go back to Boston. A woman like you could shatter a man's pride."