Carla Kelly - [Spanish Brand 01] Read online

  He was alive. When Marco opened the storeroom door later, knife drawn back and ready to throw, he saw the Comanche lying there watching him, eyes alert. Marco decided that a Comanche with a shaved head was hardly the warrior with long, flowing hair, paint and a buffalo-horn headdress. All the same, he opened the door cautiously and stood there, returning stare for stare.

  He thought of a hundred things to say, but discarded them all and merely asked, “Are you hungry?”

  Toshua nodded. He tried to rise in that dignified way of Indians that Marco always admired and never could imitate. He ended up on his hands and knees, head lolling, looking anything but warlike. Marco sheathed his knife and helped the man to his feet. Toshua staggered. For one moment, Marco feared the slave was going to reach for his knife. All Toshua did was steady himself, his hand on Marco’s arm. The look he gave Marco was one of shame, which made him wonder if shame made Toshua more dangerous or less so.

  But he knew Toshua was hungry. After insisting that Toshua wrap that towel around his waist, Marco led him into the kitchen. He fastened the Comanche to an iron ring by the fireplace, after making sure there was nothing nearby that could possibly be turned into a weapon. Toshua merely looked at him, then leaned his head against his arm, tired still.

  A gust of cold air meant Paloma had returned with the eggs. Her cheeks ruddy with cold, she smiled at Marco and gave the Comanche a wide berth.

  “You let him drink from your hands yesterday,” Marco reminded her. “And now you’re afraid?”

  “I’m not certain what I was thinking yesterday,” she admitted.

  You were thinking only of saving a life, Marco thought, willing to let her be as frightened as she wanted today, if that meant she would always be cautious.

  By the time Sancha came into the kitchen, followed by Perla la cocinera, Paloma had cracked four eggs into a bowl and whipped them to a froth. Well-schooled in Sancha’s moods, after all these years, Marco knew how displeased his housekeeper was to see a Comanche chained to her fireplace. He could understand; all he had ever made her contend with before were bum lambs.

  Ah, her hands to her hips. He knew all the signs. “Señor, how long will this savage remain in my kitchen?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. He knew better than to lie to his housekeeper. When he lied, there was always an automatic slowdown in kitchen efficiency, and he could count on cold water for shaving. “I will assign one of my guards here, too.”

  “So we will be stumbling over two useless men, one who would gut us and drink our blood, if we let down our guard?”

  “I don’t think it will come to that,” he replied, amused. “You have my permission to club him with your biggest pot, if he so much as looks at you cross-eyed.”

  He glanced at his wife, hesitant but eager to help, if Sancha would only ask, and had a brilliant idea. Heaving a sigh worthy of an actor, he hoped that Paloma didn’t know him so well yet that she could pick out a sham. So far, so good. “Ay de mi, Sancha, only the cold weather and the extremity of the savage’s condition made me dare subject you and Paloma to this savage.”

  He waited a moment, hoping he knew Sancha as well as he thought he did. He did, to his delight. The housekeeper put her arm around Paloma, a sudden ally against such a man as a juez de campo who brought his work home and tied it to the fireplace.

  “Come, Paloma. Let us cook those eggs and make some porridge.”

  Paloma nodded, fully aware of what he had done, if the veiled look she gave him was any indication. Dios, but he had married a smart woman. He even thought he saw tears glistening in her blue eyes at such treatment by her lord and master, when she looked at Sancha. Ah, yes. Sancha had noticed the tears, too, and tightened her grip on Paloma.

  “Shoo, now! Paloma and I will manage in spite of you,” Sancha said.

  Marco went to the kitchen garden door. He glanced at Toshua, who was regarding him with something close to a lurking smile. And the Indian is smart, too, he thought. I may actually have to explain myself to him. “I’ll be back for breakfast.”

  Proud of himself, he beat a hasty retreat.

  My husband thinks he is so smart, Paloma told herself. She enjoyed the moment, standing in the protection of Sancha’s arm, then laughed softly.

  “Sancha, he so wants you and me to get along,” she said, deciding that Felicia’s dear servant and housekeeper wasn’t one so easily duped by a man. “He resorts to the barest subterfuge, hoping to make us allies. I wish it, too, though, with all my heart.” She put her hand in Sancha’s. “I want to be a good mistress, as I know Felicia must have been. That is all.”

  Her honesty must have caught the housekeeper off guard. Sancha sat down, her expression less stolid, or so Paloma wanted to imagine. She sat down beside Sancha, aware of the interesting tableau they were furnishing for the Comanche. She waited for Sancha to speak.

  “You cannot imagine how difficult life was here, after Felicia and the twins died,” Sancha said at last, the words wrenched from her.

  “I have a bare idea,” Paloma told her. “When Marco showed me the hacienda the other day, he couldn’t even open the door to the twins’ room. Such loss!”

  They sat together in silence, shoulders touching.

  “We have all known loss,” Paloma said finally. Silence. She glanced at the Indian, seeing something in his face, as well. And so have you, she thought, surprising herself. She thought again of the disgusting henhouse where Toshua had been locked away to starve, and wondered how a Comanche warrior could become a slave, himself.

  “Eggs now,” Paloma said to Sancha. “This man is so hungry.” She laughed again, softly. “And truth to tell, so am I. Sancha, will I ever be full?”

  “You will,” the housekeeper said. She looked around, decisive again. “Now where is la cocinera?”

  “She ran into the hall when my husband brought Toshua in here.”

  Sancha glared at the Comanche, blaming him for the sins of the world. “All of Perla’s family died in a Comanche raid.”

  “I know how that feels,” Paloma said, “but he is still hungry and my husband has put him in my care. Go find the cook. Please tell Perla that if I must be brave, she must be, too.”

  Easy to say, Paloma decided, as Sancha went after the cook and she was left alone with the Comanche. Without a word, she poured the frothed eggs into an iron pan and swung it toward the fireplace, stirring and adding salt and chilies until her mouth watered. When she finished, she put the eggs in an earthenware bowl and found a wooden spoon.

  “Here you are,” she said, setting the bowl in the Comanche’s toweled lap. She gave him the spoon.

  He handed it back to her. “You are hungry, too,” he told her, his voice low but gruff in a way that suddenly reminded her of her brother, Claudio. It was such an old memory that she wasn’t certain. Claudio had never liked to admit to a soft side, wanting to imitate his father instead, but he used to feed her from his own dish, when Mama wasn’t watching. Funny that she should think of Claudio, killed by Comanches. It startled her.

  “I am hungry,” she agreed. “I spent a lot of years with little to eat, but you are the one who was eating a rotten egg only yesterday and … probably other things.”

  Toshua shrugged and held the bowl out to her with a shaking hand. She sighed at his weakness, and wondered if there was enough food at the Double Cross to bring him back to full health. Paloma sat down again at the table, eating three mouthfuls until the edge was off her own hunger. She put the bowl back in Toshua’s lap, and gave him the spoon again. He ate this time, balancing the bowl and eating carefully, because his other hand was tied to the iron ring.

  While he ate, Paloma mixed cornmeal and milk and added more eggs for good measure. By the time it was ready to swing over the fire, Perla had inched into the room again, her eyes wide and terrified, but prodded from behind by Sancha.

  “He’s just hungry, Perla,” Sancha said. “The juez de campo expects us to take care of him.”
r />   Marco returned to the kitchen when Toshua was finishing his cornmeal porridge. “I think it will snow today,” he said, as he sat down and nodded his thanks to Perla for the plate of eggs and sausage. He crossed himself and ate, his eyes on Paloma.

  She sat beside him. Under the cover of the table, she put her hand on his leg. With a half smile, he moved her hand up his thigh.

  “Señora. Tired.”

  Paloma patted Marco and went to the Comanche, who drooped visibly, leaning against the rope that bound him to the iron ring. She sat just out of his reach, wanting to clean his wounds again, now that he was fed, but uncertain. She looked back at Marco.

  He was beside her in a moment. He took a jar from his doublet. “I mixed up some udder cream my father devised years ago for his ewes. It will be better than yesterday’s lamb medication.” He handed her the jar. “I’ll sit close while you apply it.”

  You are determined I will care for this Comanche, she thought. “I won’t hurt you,” she told Toshua as she inched closer.

  He seemed barely aware as she dabbed the cream on his neck sores. She flinched along with Toshua, even as she tried to be gentle, but he said nothing. His eyes closed. If he had not been roped to the iron ring, Paloma knew he would have collapsed on the floor.

  “I wish we did not have to put him back in the dark room, but I suppose we do not dare leave a light in there for him,” Paloma said.

  “We either have to trust him or think of a secure place to keep him, where there is light.”

  “I do not trust him,” she said quietly.

  “Nor should you.” Marco went to the kitchen door and motioned with his hand. Two of yesterday’s guards came into the kitchen, helping the slave to his feet as Marco untied the rope. They half-carried him back into the storeroom.

  “That will do, men,” Marco said after they lowered Toshua to the pallet and just stood there. “Paloma?”

  The archers went no farther than the door, alert to any movement, which gave her courage. Paloma knelt beside the Indian, applying another layer of udder cream. When she finished, she tugged the blanket higher on his shoulder. She had to rise, but Toshua put his hand on her arm. She heard Marco’s knife leave its scabbard and the archers step into the room.

  “No, wait,” she told them. Toshua’s touch was light. Again she was reminded of her brother. She suddenly knew he meant her no harm. “Yes?”

  “I did not take his boots.”

  Toshua’s voice was faint but she heard the intensity behind his statement.

  “Then we need to find them,” she said. “Rest now.”

  Paloma stood in the doorway by the kitchen window, watching her husband cross the courtyard to his office by the horse barn. He stopped at the sound of the gates opening, his hand by habit going to the knife at his belt. She looked toward the gate to see a troop of riders pass through, surrounding a carriage pulled by two horses. By Santa Fe standards, it was not much of a conveyance, but it was painted a lively blue and yellow.

  She glanced back at Marco, who was sidling along the wall of his office, trying to make himself invisible. She frowned at his odd behavior, and glanced at the cart again. It had come to a stop, and two of the outriders dismounted. One of them opened the door to the carriage as the other let down two steps and a lady descended.

  Startled, Paloma glanced at her husband just as he opened the door to his office and hurried inside, closing it behind him. To her amusement, he stood by the window peering out like a wary child.

  She knew who this must be: Pepita Camargo, the fearsome daughter of Señor Muñoz, the woman that her cowardly husband, the man of her dreams, had said other men in Santa Maria avoided. “Apparently you do, too, Marco,” Paloma murmured. “And here I thought I had married a brave man, un caballero muy fuerte. I will show you how this is done, my lord and master.”

  Squaring her shoulders, Paloma crossed the yard to the wagon. Marco had told her that Pepita was the widow of a blacksmith, a man of some importance in Santa Maria—if the funny little carriage and numerous outriders were any indication.

  The lady teetering toward her on improbable high heels was no taller than her little father, but with a comb of some altitude in her hair. Her face was lined, but her hair was the bright red achieved by henna. Fascinated, Paloma stared at her bouncing sausage curls as the woman minced along.

  “My goodness,” Paloma murmured to herself. She considered the matter, and curtsied just low enough to acknowledge deference to age.

  “Pepita Camargo,” the woman said, wasting not a word. “I have come from my father’s hacienda and he demands his slave.”

  “Toshua is not fit to travel.”

  “My father is missing him and pining and carrying on and that wretched slave is my father’s property!”

  So this is how you work, Paloma thought. You stand practically on top of your victims and breathe on them. No wonder the men run.

  Her heart pounding, Paloma stood there in silence until the woman backed away slightly. She felt small and young until she thought of her sandals nailed to the wall in the sala.

  “Your father forgot where he put Toshua, so I cannot feel that he missed him at all,” she said quietly. “We found him nearly dead yesterday.”

  Paloma clasped her hands tight in front of her as Pepita Camargo shook with anger and began a lengthy diatribe. In a voice that trembled with righteous indignation, she expressed her opinion of the district’s juez de campo, demanded justice, implored half a dozen saints, wheedled and cajoled and ended with another appeal to the saints.

  Paloma didn’t have to look around to know that everyone, including Pepita Camargo’s outriders, had disappeared. It was just the two of them in the courtyard. She stood her ground, curious to know if Pepita even wondered who it was she was addressing.

  Finally the woman looked at her and frowned. She took in Paloma’s simple clothing in a glance that would have withered someone less resolute than the wife of the brand inspector. Pepita ran her fingers though the elaborate and wholly unnecessary fringe on the shawl she wore, as though seeking comfort from her obvious prosperity.

  “Are you the sudden wife of our district’s juez?” she demanded, her voice filled with equal parts of disdain and amazement. “Word has gotten around.”

  Sudden wife. Paloma thought about that. “I suppose I am,” she replied, startled at the speed news could travel in such an isolated place.

  “What was he thinking?”

  “You will have to ask Don Marco,” Paloma told her, letting that one roll off because she had a strong and unexpected urge to protect a Comanche. She began her own quiet attack. “Tell me, Señora Camargo: is your father in the habit of misplacing boots and people?”

  She knew this would begin another lengthy gust of indignation, because she was familiar with women like this from her years in Santa Fe at the mercy of her relatives. She looked for it, and there it was—just the smallest hesitation on the face of Pepita Camargo, daughter of a fuddled man who misplaced boots and people. It was only a second’s worth of worry, but Paloma saw it.

  She listened in silence to the noisy complaints that followed, choosing instead to hear a daughter worried about her father but unwilling to admit anything to a “sudden wife.” Paloma put up her hand finally, just a small gesture, a test of her own quiet power, since Marco Mondragón thought she was so brave. To her surprise, Pepita Camargo stopped talking.

  “We will return Toshua to Señor Muñoz when he is healthy again and we have solved this little mystery of the missing boots, but not one second before. Señora, I have work to do.”

  She turned on her heel and went into Marco’s office, where her husband smiled at her from his sheltered spot by the window.

  “You are as cowardly as the men in this district,” she said, amused. “I think she will leave now, because her audience is gone.”

  Pepita Camargo did. The gates had scarcely opened and closed on all that indignation when they opened again, this time to admit Do
n Alonso Castellano and his bride, Maria Teresa Moreno, Paloma’s own cousin.

  “Dios mio,” Paloma said under her breath. It was her turn to stand well back from the window.

  “Now who’s the coward?” Marco teased. He took her hand, kissed it with a loud smack, and towed her toward the door. “Don’t you just love relatives?”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  In Which the Mondragóns Discover a Wedding Present

  “I don’t love these relatives,” Marco’s wife said under her breath. She tugged back on Marco’s hand. “I dealt with Pepita Camargo. You can handle these.”

  “Could we face them together?” he asked.

  “Oh? The way we faced Pepita Camargo together?” his observant wife teased.

  Father Damiano had advised him to do what Paloma wished. “I’ll do better,” he promised, hoping his handsome good looks and prowess between the sheets would ease him through this next crisis, a mere five minutes after the prior one. He suspected that was the last resort of many a husband. As he recalled, it hadn’t worked any better with Felicia. He blamed himself for marrying intelligent women.

  “I’ll give you another chance,” Paloma said. “Probably one of thousands in the decades to come.”

  He kissed her hand. “You are wise beyond your years,” he murmured, which made her laugh, even as she crowded closer to him when he opened the door.

  The Castellanos had come on horseback—not Maria Teresa’s favorite mode of transportation, Marco decided quickly, judging from the sour expression on her face. He wondered how long it would be before she teased and pouted her way to a carriage as silly as Pepita Camargo’s.

  He had to admit to a pang of envy as he saw the beautiful cape of fox furs that covered Maria Teresa’s angularity. Paloma would have looked much better in it. He resolved to speak to the town’s crazy dressmaker, the next time he went to Santa Maria. He could trap the foxes this winter, when winter pelts were at their peak.

  “Welcome to the Double Cross,” Marco said formally. “Would you care to …”