Until the Day Breaks (California Rising Book 1) (3 page)

“Rachel . . .” When he breathed her name, she sighed with regret so deep she felt it in her bones. Surely, he’d kiss her now, but when his lips landed, warm and full of longing, they settled on her forehead. “I will find you. No matter how far you go, I will find you,” he said after pressing his mouth to the vein that throbbed in the center of her forehead when she cried. She’d always hated that faint blue vein under her fair skin, revealing her anger or grief or any other deep emotion like a river pointing to the sea.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and wept uncontrollably for a moment with her face buried against his chest. He was tall and lean and felt like an oak, the solid presence of everything good and right in her life. How could she leave him? She couldn’t see how God meant for this to happen now, after all these years wishing in vain for a summons from California.

Steven slipped his fingers into her hair and held her gently as she cried. Eventually, she settled down and looked up into his face, mapping his features into her memory. The aristocratic cheekbones and fine nose acquired from his English father. The dark, ardent eyes of his French mother. Never before had he taken her into his arms. Never before had he dared to kiss her or even put a hand to her hair. Even now, he touched her hair tentatively, like a shy child.

She hated to broach the subject of his mother, but if Yvette Gains succumbed to the wasting disease ravishing her once hardy frame, Steven could have his pick of sailing ships come spring. It was such a dreadful thought, really. How would they reunite after his mother passed on with a twenty-thousand-mile ocean voyage between them? Mrs. Gains remained steadfast that Steven not marry while she was sick, but the fervent Frenchwoman wouldn’t live forever. She might not live a week. Then again, she’d lived several years now with one foot in the grave. The other foot was firmly planted on Steven, keeping him for God and God alone.

Late October sunshine warmed Rachel’s back, but inside she shivered. She’d not felt warm since this unexpected journey was foisted upon her a month ago.

“Our Lord works everything together for the good of those who love him.” Steven regretfully nudged her out of his embrace as he pointed to the vessel anchored in the harbor, soon to sail her away. “The
Rainbow
is new and fast, a clipper ship named for God’s eternal covenant with us. Look at her sails. Isn’t she grand, Rachel? We must search for our Lord’s good plan in all this. The same hand that has protected us on dry land shall protect you on the mighty deep, my dearest.”

Tears cooling on her cheeks, she glanced at the ship. Two middle-aged women boarded the steamboat that would convey them to the
Rainbow
. A weary-looking, red-haired woman holding the hand of a little redheaded girl, both too thin and dressed poorly, trailed the well-dressed ladies. A horn sounded, startling Rachel with the last call to board the steamboat. Tearing herself away from Steven, she moved in behind the red-haired woman and child. Passengers, all men now, surged forward, pushing her out of Steven’s reach. Out of Steven’s life.

After boarding the steamboat, she edged her way to the railing, searching for Steven where she’d left him on the dock. He wasn’t there and her heart sank, but soon she found him not far off, waving to her from the dock as if in welcome instead of departure. That gentle smile she so dearly loved brightened his face. She waved in return, fresh tears flooding her eyes.

“Is that your husband?” The little girl, about seven years old, Rachel guessed, stood beside her, gripping the railing. The child’s mother hung back, looking bone-weary, resting on the steamboat’s deck near a pile of coiled rope.

“Not yet, but someday, I hope.” Rachel blinked hard, her eyes stinging.

“We’re searching for my father. He sailed for California three years ago. If we don’t find him, Ma fears we’ll starve to death come winter.”

Rachel tucked a wisp of the little girl’s tangled red hair behind her ear. “Then we will pray you find him.” The girl’s wide, despairing eyes were the hue of a stormy sea.

“Does God answer your prayers? ’Cause he don’t answer mine.”

“How do you know he doesn’t answer?” Rachel did her best to keep Steven in view while acknowledging the child at the same time.

“He don’t bring us more food. Don’t give us a warm place to sleep. We barely get by, and he ain’t brought my pa home. My sister just passed. God never done us any good. Ma had to sell her soul to purchase passage on this here ship for us.”

Rachel didn’t want to hear the details of a woman’s soul selling. She put her hand on top of the child’s head, trying to stop the flow of heartbreaking information spilling from that rosy little mouth.

As they steamed across the harbor, a bell ringing over the water from the ship reminded Rachel of bells across the snow. Just last winter, after an astonishing blizzard, she’d accompanied Steven in a horse-drawn sleigh to minister to snowbound parishioners about the countryside. She still thought of it as the finest day of her life, for he’d asked her to marry him that afternoon. Steven said she’d make a wonderful minister’s wife, and he wanted her by his side always and forever. But Mrs. Gains continued to stand in their way.

Drowning in longing, Rachel waved to him one last time before kneeling beside the child unleashing her life story in spite of Rachel not wanting to hear it. “God is real, and he loves you. He will help you. I am Rachel Tyler. What is your name, young lady?”

“Molly O’Brian.”

“Well, Molly O’Brian, you will have a warm place to sleep on the
Rainbow
.”

“Ma don’t think so. We’re stuck in steerage with the rats.”

Rachel swiped her cheeks dry before taking Molly’s little hands in hers. “Well, we must see what we can do to remedy that. God has made us friends for a reason.” She squeezed the little girl’s hands in reassurance.

It shouldn’t be too hard to tuck Molly and her mother into her stateroom. Paying to improve their meals would also help alleviate their misery. Her father had sent her plenty of coin to complete this six-month journey. She grew excited just thinking about writing to Steven to tell him how she’d rescued these poor Irish immigrants on the voyage.

“Do you know I am going to California in search of my father as well? It has been many years since we parted. I don’t even remember what he looks like,” she told Molly.

Molly’s wide eyes widened even more. “Your pa done left you too?”

“He sure did. He went to make his fortune on that faraway shore, and he did just that. He’s a landowner now in California.”

“A landowner?” Molly was awestruck. “Only the rich own land. Does he keep slaves too?”

“I don’t think so. Indians care for his cattle and crops.”

“Indians?” Molly’s eyes filled with fear. “Do they scalp white folks in California?”

“Of course not. Your pretty red hair is safe and sound on your head.” Rachel stroked the girl’s tangled tresses, hoping it was true. California Indians certainly didn’t scalp folks, did they?

She considered the two fine-boned, ivory-handled brushes that had belonged to her mother. They were her greatest treasure. Every night before bed, she brushed her hair a hundred strokes while saying her prayers. She should give one of her brushes to this deprived little girl, but her heart recoiled at the idea. “Do you brush your own hair?” Rachel inquired.

“We don’t own a brush. Ma says luxuries like that are for women who don’t work their fingers to the bone. Ma’s fingers are strong as cedars from scrubbin’ folks’ wash. When she combs my hair, it feels like tree limbs scrapin’ my scalp off. Finola cried when Ma brushed her hair.”

“Finola is your sister?”

“She was five and small for her age. Measles took her a month ago,” Molly said in an adult-like fashion, as if it hardly mattered at all. “Mine weren’t so bad. Only got me one pox on my face.” Molly showed Rachel the small pinkish-white scar on her temple.

Rachel glanced over at Molly’s mother. She could see the woman still grieved for her lost child. She had that hollow-eyed expression of having suffered a great loss. Helping Molly and her mother survive this ocean passage became Rachel’s utmost priority at that very moment.

Rachel had nearly died on that voyage, growing weak and unwell as the journey progressed. Cocooned in a comfortable farmhouse with her grandparents outside of Boston, she’d never in her life faced trials such as on board the
Rainbow
.

She’d parted ways with Molly and her mother in Monterey, leaving one of her cherished brushes with Molly, and now here she was alive and well in California about to be bartered away as a bride to a man she didn’t know and didn’t love. Perhaps death on the ship and a swift journey to heaven would have been better.

Roman awoke with Texas on his mind. The territory had been annexed to the United States and was now flooded with U.S. Army soldiers. Surveying his bandaged leg, he contemplated how long it would take the war to reach California. After two years fighting on the Texas front, getting home before American ships sailed into Monterey Bay was all he could think about. He had forgotten what it was like to wake up in California. Another day of feasting and celebrating did not appeal to him. Especially considering he rose from a bed of hay in Joshua Tyler’s stables. He’d rejected the long, low adobe building that quartered the vaqueros. Some of Tyler’s male visitors were bunking there
.
Families that didn’t fit in the hacienda were housed in tents inside Tyler’s high adobe walls.

Years ago, the wily foreigner had settled in these mountains with the mighty redwoods, sealing his fortune selling lumber, a precious commodity in California. Then he bought all the cattle he could get his hands on. With the missions secularized twelve years ago, men such as Tyler found their footing in earnest in California. The Catholic Church’s plan had been to civilize the converted Indians—neophytes, as they were known—to allow the Indians to take over the mission lands themselves. This never happened. The mission resources—vast assets of cattle, sheep, and horses, orchards and vineyards, fertile fields of wheat and vegetables, and greatest of all, the neophyte workforce—fell into the hands of the
gente de razón
and those foreigners who took Mexican citizenship and became Catholic, “leaving their conscience at Cape Horn,” as the Americans in California liked to say.

Roman had no respect for men who bartered away their citizenship and their religion so freely. Tyler, with his insatiable hunger for land and cattle. His empire growing as he bought out his neighbors one by one through the years. Only Roman’s family had managed to hold their boundary lines in the valley against Tyler’s merciless onslaught. But not without bloodshed. Hundreds of Indians and rancheros had been killed in the night raids stealing horses. Nothing could be proven, but he held Tyler accountable for his father’s death in one of these raids. He couldn’t believe Sarita had married the Yankee.

Having slept in his clothes, he got up and saddled Oro and then led his golden stallion from the stables at sunrise. Outside the grandest redwood stables Roman had ever seen waited Joshua Tyler, dressed like a Spanish don. He wore the unique garb of the privileged
gente de razón,
fitted trousers with flared legs and a short jacket of thick velvet over a billowing white shirt, topped off with a silk-lined sombrero decorated with brightly colored braid. Tyler spoke to an excited group of mounted
criollos
, superb horsemen in their teens and twenties, boys brash and bulletproof in their own eyes. Roman used to be this way as well, but no more. His father’s death, followed by the battles in Texas, had changed him. He wondered if his carefree countrymen had any idea what awaited them once the United States’ march of Manifest Destiny culminated on California’s sleepy shores.

With Texas now annexed, the siege for California was all but a matter of time. Yet nothing seemed changed here in this pastoral land of lighthearted people. The
gente de razón
loved their fiestas: dancing, picnicking, gambling on everything from monte
,
a wildly popular card game, to horse races, cockfights, and other sporting events. This morning, the men planned a bear hunt, hoping to capture a beast for a bear baiting anticipated this afternoon. While yesterday seemed almost like summer, this spring morning dawned crisp, with an ocean fog besieging the sun.

Tyler leaned on a fence, telling the men how to find a canyon on his ranch where a grizzly had been sighted a few days prior. The group’s concentration suddenly shifted across the field to a figure emerging from the woods. A breeze stirred the woman’s simple black skirt. Her white peasant blouse was draped by a rough woolen shawl that covered her head, but one long blond tendril had escaped, streaming down her back. Only one woman had hair like that.
Tyler’s daughter.

Joshua Tyler cut short his speech upon seeing her. “You all have hunted bears before. I needn’t say anymore,” he finished abruptly. “
Vayan con Dios
, amigos.”

Go with God indeed. Roman swore under his breath. Was the Yankee girl always wandering about unescorted in these mountains? The men stared at her openly. She was so fair and fetching and did not conduct herself as a proper señorita should.

What was she doing out so early this morning? Had she met someone down at the river? Why did her father all but ignore her presence? And above all, why of all wonders was an unmarried girl left without a dueña’s protection? This was unheard of in California—unless she no longer had any virtue left to protect.

Roman longed to ride over to the river to see if she’d met someone there. A man, perhaps? Did she think the
paisano
clothes concealed her identity? Even dressed like a peasant, her blond hair proved a banner in the breeze. In a few more minutes, she would be out of his reach, safe inside the walls of her father’s Yankee fortress. Allowing his heart to overrule his head, he spurred Oro after her as the rest of the men raced off to hunt bears.

Rachel Tyler saw him coming and hurried toward the hacienda in an attempt to escape him. She didn’t stop and wouldn’t look at him as he reined in his stallion beside her. He refused to speak to her until she acknowledged his arrival. He could see his stallion made her nervous. She kept moving sideways to distance herself from his horse. He urged Oro shoulder to shoulder with her, the way he herded wild mustang mares. She continued to ignore him, and his frustration grew.