Treasure of the Sun (53 page)

"Poor woman. She's exhausted" Julio held the door for his wife as they looked in on the sickroom. "If anyone can save him, just from pure determination, it's Dona Catriona."

Nacia acknowledged the use of Katherine's pet name with the scrape of her fingernails lightly across his stubbled chin. "You admire her?"

He caught her hand and kissed the palm. "Almost more than any other woman in the world. Almost."

She leaned against him and his arm went around her, their own love all the sweeter as they realized how near the long parting was for their friends. Quietly they crept away, leaving Katherine in the big easy chair they'd placed for her comfort.

One candle burned low at Katherine's elbow. Her unresisting mind had at last sunk into the slumber she so desperately needed. Exhaustion had worn her down like the drip of water on cave rock. Sleep nourished her like sunshine on a mountain evergreen.

And like a journey she couldn't resist, she followed the sunshine up the mountain and into the cave. She sought something, although she didn't know what. There was something in that cave to help her, to help Damian, and she sought it with dream recklessness.

Baffled, she turned and looked down the mountain and she could see all the way to Julio's house.

That something was in the room with Damian.

Abruptly, she was back in the chair, pressed against the cushions and staring towards the bed. He was there, leaning over Damian. She'd never seen him as more than a fog, or a diaphanous form seeking human shape, but she recognized him. Tall and powerful, he exuded the kind of "aura only men with a mission displayed. Clad in a brown wool cowl pulled close around his face, he laid a hand on Damian's chest.

Still with dread, she tried to move. She tried to speak.

She was paralyzed. That's because I'm asleep, she told herself with dream logic. I can't move because I'm asleep, and that cowled figure isn't really here.

But he looked so real. She had to help Damian.

When she heard the deep and painful breaths that shook Damian's chest, it released her paralysis. Leaping to her feet, she screamed, "Leave him alone. He's mine."

That woke her. That released her from the nightmare, only she was standing up and her eyes were open.

She could still see him. The priest. The priest from the cave.

He looked up at her, and deep inside the cowl she saw the gleam of two eyes. He lifted the candle he held and cast a light on her and on Damian.

Then he disappeared.

She blinked, but the candle left a little blot on her vision, sensitized by the darkness.

Julio and Nacia burst through the door with three servants on their heels. "What happened?" Julio shouted.

On the bed, Damian jumped and groaned, and Julio ran to his side.

Nacia grabbed Katherine's arm and shook it. "What's wrong?

Why did you shout?"

Still caught by the dream, Katherine asked, "Did you see him?”

"See him?" Nacia's hair swirled around her shoulders as she glanced around. Her eyes fixed on the bed. "He's there. Damian's there. See?"

Crouched over the still figure, Julio muttered, "Hail Mary, full of grace."

In a tremulous voice, Nacia asked, "Have we lost him?" Julio lifted his head, strong emotion twisting his features.

"The fever has left him. He'll live."

Nacia ran to the bedside and laid her hands flat on Damian's face. ''It's a miracle. A miracle, Katherina!" Sharply, she scrutinized the stunned woman by the armchair and bounded over to her. "Come here. Feel him. He's going to be all right." Dragging Katherine by the arm, Nacia thrust Julio aside and placed one of Katherine's palms on each of Damian's cheeks.

"He's going to be all right," Katherine repeated. Joy burgeoned in her, pushing aside the fog of sleep and the magic of the dream. Looking at Julio and Nacia and their stunned, blissful smiles, she laughed a little and stroked the beloved, bearded face.

"You did it," Julio told her. "You pulled him through, with your prayers and your attention."

"Maybe." She nodded, her eyes unfocused once more.

"Maybe my prayers did bring that priest to save him."

"What priest?" Julio asked. "There hasn't been a priest in the room.”

"Later," Nacia interrupted him. Hurrying to the window, she scolded, "Why did you open this? The draft is too much for a sick man."

Chapter 24

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Julio asked as he walked along the path beside Damian.

"Whatever do you mean?" Damian asked right back. "This." Julio waved his hand. "Being carried home to Rancho Donoso on a sumptuous litter by four vaqueros. Having your father ride back and forth to check on your progress. Having Fray Pedro de Jesus leave San Juan Bautista and go to your home to perform the wedding ceremony. Having Katherine hover over you like a brooding hen."

"Especially having Katherine hover." Damian grinned, relaxed in the sunshine.

"How do you feel?"

"I enjoy having Julio hover, too." Damian gave a crack of laughter at his friend's grimace. He pressed his side with his palm. "I feel tired and sore." He looked sideways at Julio and caught Julio looking sideways at him.

"Two months is a very long recovery for someone of your robust health."

"You're a suspicious soul."

"Suspicious? Suspicious isn't the right word." Julio tapped his lip. "Incredulous is a better word. Disbelieving. Skeptical."

"What would make you-" Damian hesitated "--skeptical?" "Many things can make a man skeptical. Things as simple as walking past the window of the sickroom and seeing the invalid trotting across the room. Things like watching him stretch and turn."

"Julio-"

"Things like standing out there and feeling like a fool." "Now Julio-"

"What in the hell have you been hoaxing us for?"

"Shh." Damian glanced at the vaqueros that carried his litter and ordered, "You never heard this." Their smiles flashed in reply. "I have my reasons for playing the convalescent. For one thing, it's kept Katherine close."

"Oh, it's done that," Julio snapped. "The girl is pale from lack of sun."

"I know and I'm sorry, but I'm not in any condition to go chasing after her should she decide to travel to snowy Boston or sunny Los Angeles."

Julio grunted.

"For another thing, I recovered so rapidly that I felt a fraud. I can't remember when I've felt so good."

"Surely an exaggeration."

Damian rolled his neck on the pillows. "A little achy, perhaps, but good. Katherine and I aren't as fortunate as Nacia and you. There are still things that need to be settled between us. With Katherine, I prefer to have the upper hand. The element of surprise."

"All right," Julio said, the grudge fading from his voice.

"That's what I thought. My first instinct was to come in and punch you in the nose, but I decided I'd done enough of that."

Damian covered his nose with one protective hand. "Please, no. I couldn't take any more weeks of recuperation."

"Amen to that," Julio agreed fervently. "You're a dreadful invalid."

"Yes, well . . . at last I've been cured of my craving for cigars."

"Totally cured?" Julio started laughing at the irony that slanted Damian's mouth.

"I came too close to smelling the fires of hell to wish for a flaming leaf in my mouth."

Julio laughed until the ladies turned around and smiled at the sound of mirth, until the vaqueros joined in out of sympathy.

Damian punched Julio's arm. "If I don't get a chance later, I want to thank you."

Julio waved a dismissing hand. "Think nothing of it. I liked it when you were cranky and lucid."

"As a contrast to unconscious? I'm flattered. But Julio, I will not allow you to de6.ect my gratitude. Katherine told me about your rescue that night and Nacia's efforts the next morning to revive me.”

"It was all Katherine," Julio answered. "I've never seen anyone so determined."

"She's lost weight."

"She would hardly eat. I tell you the truth, Damian, Nacia and I had given up on you. That last night when you were so sick. I didn't expect you to see the morning. When Katherine screamed-"

"She screamed?"

"I don't know that I should tell even yet. It was odd." Julio observed his friend. Damian smiled at him reassuringly, and he confided, "She screamed, 'Get out.' When Nacia and I ran into the room, she was staring at you as if she were insane. The window was open. Your fever had broken."

"It's very confusing," Damian murmured. "And probably meant to stay that way."

"Look." Julio put his hand on Damian's shoulder. "There's the hacienda."

"Rancho Donoso." Damian told the vaqueros, "Stop and let me look.”

Before them, the Salinas Valley rolled out, fertile and green with the 6.ush of June. The hacienda stood decorated with the colorful banners of his homecoming. The servants waved white handkerchiefs from the porch. It had been over two months since he'd ridden away from it. More than once he'd thought he would never see it again.

"I must be weaker than I thought," he murmured wiping away the salt water he found on his cheeks.

Propped up on the bed pillows like an Arabian potentate, Damian complained, "I could have washed away on a river of tears."

Katherine smiled as she progressed around the attic bedroom, settling her belongings once more.

"Everybody-the servants, my father, Nacia-wept and wailed as if I had died," he said.

Wrapped in one of her secret little silences, Katherine glanced at him. Since the morning he'd awakened in the de Casillas bedroom, she'd been restrained and quiet. Nacia told him about Katherine's devotion, and he'd put her peculiar quiet down to weariness. Now he wondered.

Using his querulous invalid voice, he demanded, "Come here."

On a cloud of powder and soap, she came to the bedside. Her hands smoothed his brow. He didn't even think she knew she had done it, but it gave him hope. "Lie down on the bed with me.”

"What?"

"Come on, come on." He waved his hand at her. "You rode half the morning. You were in charge of getting me carried up the stairs. You bathed me and put me in my nightshirt. You got rid of the soggy servants. Take off your shoes and lie down. You're tired."

She stared at him as if he'd gone mad.

"Don't you think I can tell if you're tired? Take off the dress, too. I need a nap. So do you."

"You'd sleep better alone," she said gently.

"That just proves you're not always right. Turn around and let me unbutton you." He shoved at her. "What happened to your riding habit?"

"My riding habit?" She sounded amazed, and she turned obediently. "What riding habit?"

"The royal blue one. The one you wore to become a heroine."

"It's in a bag somewhere." She shrugged under his hands. "I thought I'd bum it after I showed it to your father."

"The state of it should shock him. The next riding habit he gives you will be made of iron." He patted the bare skin above her chemise. "Don't bum it. I'll save it to show our grandchildren, to prove what an extraordinary woman their abuela is."

She didn't say a word about that. She dragged the new dress off her shoulders and kicked off her shoes. He examined her remaining clothes. The chemise, the corset, the petticoats, the stockings. "You'll never be comfortable in all that." He snagged his fingers in her corset strings as she tried to move away. "I'll loosen your corset, you put on your nightgown."

"Don Damian, it's just after noon."

"What better time to take a siesta? If it were nightfall, we'd be going to sleep. Hurry up. I'm getting cranky."

Turning, she watched him thoughtfully. "You do a lot of that when you don't get your own way."

He widened his eyes.

Removing her nightgown from a chest of drawers, she moved behind the screen and he heaved a silent sigh of relief. Katherine was too clever. Now that her shock and distress had eased, he had to move fast. Settling himself on the pillows in an artistic pole of suffering, he closed his eyes and waited.