Until the Day Breaks (California Rising Book 1) (2 page)

Value?
Disillusionment swept over her. She searched her father’s face for love, but found only ambition.

“Value,” he repeated. “Land has value. Cattle have value. A beautiful, fair-haired virgin has incredible value in California.” He motioned with his hand in her direction. “I want you to show the
gente de razón
you’re one of them. These people are proud Spaniards. The blood of the conquistadors flows through their veins. Rosa will instruct you on our Californian customs and what is expected of a landowner’s daughter. You will learn to ride and sew instead of spending all your time wandering along the river singing to the sparrows, as my vaquero has informed me you do each day. Did my good mother teach you to sew, perhaps? I recall she was quite a seamstress.”

He didn’t wait for her response. Didn’t seem to care what she said or felt, just as long as she obeyed him. Walking over to the trunk at the foot of the bed, he threw open the chest and tossed several dresses onto the floor. Pulling out a peacock-blue silk gown, he shoved it into her trembling hands. “You’ll wear this when you sing for my guests tonight, my girl.”

She swallowed her apprehension, trying to remain calm as her father gave the simple black skirt and white peasant blouse she wore a disgusted glare.

“Change your clothes. No more servants’ garb for you. You will dress like my daughter from now on. A refined young lady of the east.” He handed her another gown, a modest but expensive yellow frock. “Put this on and meet me in the hall. You are not too old for a beating,” he warned. “Californios whip their grown children with rods when they disobey.”

He yanked open the bedroom door. “Rosa!”

A servant Rachel had never seen before rushed into the room. With her creamy brown skin and exotic caramel-colored eyes, she was striking. A few strands of silver ran like ribbons through hair as black as midnight. That thick mane was coiled tightly on her head in a regal way. Clearly, she was of mixed heritage, Indian and something else—English or Spanish, perhaps.

“Here is my daughter, whom we discussed this morning. See she dresses appropriately from now on,” her father ordered as he left the room.

Rachel stared at the thick wooden door, stunned by the exchange. The thought of never seeing Steven again made her heart constrict. Terror washed over her. Marriage to a man she didn’t know? Didn’t love?
How impossible.

“He is not so bad if you obey him,” Rosa said kindly. “Hurry,
chica.
Señor Tyler hates to be kept waiting.” She rushed Rachel out of her simple clothes and into the canary-yellow gown. The servant quickly pinned Rachel’s long blond hair up in an artful display, then herded her from the chamber.

“Your daughter is beautiful now, no?” Rosa stepped out into the long, tiled hallway with Rachel in her wake.

Joshua inspected her briefly. “She’ll do. You have three hours to teach her to dance. Then I want her out amongst my guests.” Spinning on his heel, he disappeared down the hall, his spurs tapping the tile in dismissal.

Rosa squeezed Rachel’s arm as she led her back into the bedroom and quietly closed the door. “I served as your father’s señora before he married his new wife. Does this shock you,
niña
?”

Rachel’s eyes widened. Even in her innocence, she knew what Rosa meant. “Yes,” she whispered. “I am shocked.”

“Good.” Rosa patted Rachel’s cheek. “You have a sweet spirit and your father’s magnificent blue eyes.” The servant’s own amber eyes glistened with tears. “The
patrόn
can be kind when he has need of a woman, but kindness is not his nature. I did not think he would keep me here with his new wife. My sister lives in Monterey. I’d hoped to return there and live near her.” Rosa picked up Rachel’s shoes and motioned for her to sit down on the bed so she could place them on her feet.

Rachel stared at Rosa’s bowed head as she knelt on the floor. She was closer to Rachel’s father’s age, the kind of woman she wished her father had married instead of the haughty, young Sarita.

After deftly placing the slippers on Rachel’s feet, Rosa looked up at her. “You and I will dance because we are told to dance. We are women. Men rule over us. My mother was also a kept woman. And her mother before her. My grandmother was brought all the way from Spain by a conquistador who left his wife and children behind but could not live without my grandmother. This life as a kept woman is not so bad.”

“Do you have children with my father?”

“No
pequeños
.” Rosa smiled. “My womb remains barren all these years. A daughter will not share my shame, nor a son be unacknowledged by his padre.” Rosa walked to the door, moving with quiet grace, her head held high. Alejandro, our musician, awaits us. Come, I will teach you the Spanish way to dance.”

Roman pushed his way through the crowd as Tyler’s daughter sang a ballad, accompanied by the Mutsun Indians trained to play the violin and guitar as youngsters at the missions. The music proved evocative, the night alive with the pulse of creation. Torches blazed in the courtyard, haloing Rachel Tyler and the Indian musicians in flickering golden firelight. Overhead, a million stars illuminated the night sky.

“What an angel. Listen to her sing. Have you ever heard a sweeter voice than that?”

“She is magnificent,” another upper-class, hot-blooded young man answered the first. “Look at her. She sings for God, amigo.”

Roman stared at the
criollos
for a moment before muttering, “Beware, boys. The beauty has the cross on her chest and the devil in her actions.”

Everybody knew this saying; many claimed to serve God in California, yet their dealings often displayed a different bent. He couldn’t pin any wrongdoing on her yet, but she was Tyler’s daughter. Though he had to admit he agreed with the drunken sons of the
gente de razón
. Rachel Tyler looked and sounded like an angel with her face tilted toward the sky. For a second, he too turned his face upward in search of something greater than himself, but only the stars piercing the darkness filled his plaintive gaze.

After several uncomfortable moments contemplating the heavens, Roman left the courtyard to continue his search for Sarita. He recognized many people at this fandango, some more influential than others. General Mariano Vallejo of Sonoma stood among the partygoers. Outrage burned through Roman that a man like General Vallejo, commander of the northern forces, would patronize this gringo gathering. Then again, many prominent Californios were here, thronging together like trusting sheep as the Yankee wolves prowled among them.

Roman shoved a hand through his hair, his hatred boiling over as he recognized Thomas Larkin. The wealthy, mutton-chopped merchant from Monterey stood under a large oak in conversation with several buckskin-clad frontiersmen. Noting the large bowie knives strapped to the frontiersmen’s belts, Roman rubbed a hand across his shoulder, which now ached in cold weather. He knew the damage those big knives could do.

He tried to put Rachel Tyler from his mind, but her voice pursued him. Striding faster, he weaved through the fiesta until he could no longer hear her singing, the wound on his thigh pulsing with pain as he skirted the crowd, carefully avoiding those he knew.

He wandered behind the hacienda to the walled garden, where the fountain reflected the moonlight. Tonight it was filled with flowers instead of the Yankee
pequeña
with her shoes and stockings removed like a cantina girl. Far too often, she’d occupied his thoughts since finding her here alone last night.

In the tiny courtyard, he found dark shadows and lit a cigarillo, lounging impatiently against a cool adobe wall, pondering how to manage a meeting with Sarita. Should he even seek her out now that she was another man’s wife? In the south, he’d learned from cousins that his family thought him buried in Texas after a number of men died in his regiment and a false report of his death made it all the way to California. Apparently the news of his return to the living hadn’t made it this far north yet.

The scrape of wood as someone entered through the courtyard gate interrupted his contemplation. He crushed out his cigarillo
,
hoping the girl slipping into the walled garden hadn’t noticed him. Rachel Tyler ventured so close he could smell the scent of her. Fresh and sweet and vexingly memorable.

She continued on through the walled garden, out another gate, and down a narrow path into the darkness. Against his better judgment, he followed her. The screech of owls came now and again, and music from the fiesta lingered faintly in the distance. He worried the scent of roasting meat might bring in a grizzly or two. Didn’t she know how dangerous it was to wander off alone in these woods? Not only were wild Indians about, bears, wolves, cougars, and coyotes roamed these hills. The grizzlies proved especially fierce. The only safe place for women and children on the frontier, especially at night, was inside the hacienda’s thick adobe walls. He edged closer to the foolish young woman
,
staying in the tangle of trees and vines along the path, where he hoped she wouldn’t notice him.

The full moon on the horizon made it easy to navigate the surrounding countryside. This was the kind of night when Indians from the Tulares thieved horses and killed those unfortunate enough to interrupt their thievery.

The girl walked to the riverbank and stood at the water’s edge, staring out at the moonlit current, a silver strand running all the way to the sea. She looked like a marble statue, the blue silk of her dress turned silver like the river under the moon, her blond hair shining silver as well. Roman waited in the trees, doing the very thing he said he would never do, watching over Tyler’s daughter.

On the bank, she didn’t move for a long time. Had she not been standing, he might have thought she’d fallen asleep. When she finally raised her face to the stars and began to sing, his suspicion melted away. He hadn’t been sure about the song at the fiesta, but he knew for certain this song was religious. A plea to God. And he was mesmerized.

The frogs and crickets and night birds stilled as her voice carried down the river. Goosebumps rose on his arms in response to her singing. A gentle breeze arose, whispering through his hair, cooling his fevered cheeks. He touched the bullet wound on his thigh, felt the hot dampness of the infection seeping through his trousers.

In Texas, he’d removed the ball himself with a white-hot knife and a bottle of brandy. He should have used more brandy on the wound instead of drinking most of it to ease the pain. It hadn’t been much more than a flesh wound four months ago, but the lingering infection brought fevers he couldn’t shake. The wound looked worse than when he’d acquired it.

With a deep sigh, he sat down, leaning his back against a large cottonwood tree, where he could watch her from the thicket. The peace that overcame him allowed him to close his eyes and rest like he hadn’t rested in years as she sang that beautiful song.

How could this girl be Tyler’s daughter?

His eyes snapped open when her song ended. She did not sing another, which disappointed him. He rubbed the back of his hand across his clammy forehead. Lupe would know how to treat the infection, but he wasn’t ready to return home yet. He needed to speak with Sarita. And much to his chagrin, he’d grown utterly distracted by his enemy’s daughter.

When the crickets and frogs reclaimed the night, joined by a nighthawk calling somewhere down the riverbank, Rachel Tyler slowly made her way back to the hacienda. He kept his distance, trailing silently in her wake like a shadow.

Once she reached the hacienda, the location of her bedroom surprised and incensed him. Her room was downstairs, near the walled garden where he first met her. The upstairs proved the most fortified part of any hacienda. Women and children always lodged on the second floor for the greatest protection.

She strolls alone to the river. Has no dueña. Is kept in a downstairs room.
Was her father a fool as well as a
bandido
?

Why should this upset him so?

Scores of people were here to keep an eye on this slip of a girl who had sung his demons away. Certainly, this was how she found the freedom to come and go as she pleased—a person could disappear in numbers. Wasn’t he here at this fiesta doing the exact same thing?

A battle waged within him as he went to her bedroom door. If he frightened her enough tonight, perhaps she would return to New England before the U.S. soldiers arrived in California. After that, it would be too late for her to travel safely anywhere. Too late for any woman to venture out on the roads. He’d seen it often enough; men had two sides, good and evil, especially in war. What happened to women in war was unspeakable.

The Yankee p
equeña
wasn’t much older than his sister. And just as foolish as Maria. But unlike Maria, chaperoned night and day by her diligent dueña, with every man in her family more than willing to die for her, Tyler’s winsome daughter went wherever the wind blew, like a fawn without its mother. This wasn’t the civilized east. Or even Monterey. This was the frontier. Tyler’s folly in the wilderness.

At least her door proved solidly constructed. Planks of timber a foot thick. A man without a hatchet would have a difficult time getting through this entry when it was barred. To his relief, her latch string was pulled in when he checked for it.

Sweat trickled down his chest, and he shivered. Perhaps his fever was affecting his mind, standing here at her door like a besotted suitor. That he found her so appealing filled him with frustration. He needed to see Sarita. He knew she’d married Tyler because she thought him dead. He wanted to show her he was very much alive.

Upon awakening to a room full of sunshine, Rachel lay in her bed, remembering that autumn day six months ago with Steven on the dock in Boston. It had been sunny that day too. A breeze off the ocean billowed her sky-blue skirts. She squeezed fists full of satin, willing her gown and spirits into order. Steven’s trembling hands cupped her face. She couldn’t believe he would finally touch her in the midst of so many. After all these months—years really, after it was too late to linger in his embrace. She opened her eyes to look up at him, and the tears slipped free, though she tried her best to rein in her emotions. Steven’s thumbs captured the drops of grief and brushed them away, but he didn’t remove his hands from her face. More tears coursed onto his fingers.