Until the Day Breaks (California Rising Book 1)

by Paula Scott

  UNTIL THE DAY BREAKS

  PAULA SCOTT

  Until the Day Breaks by Paula Scott

  www.psbicknell.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Designer: Jenny Quinlan

  Editor: Jenny Quinlan, Historical Editorial, historicaleditorial.com

  Cover Image Credit: © ILINA SIMEONOVA / Trevillion Images

  Formatting: Polgarus Studio

  Copyright © 2016 by Paula S. Bicknell

  All rights reserved

  International Standard Book Number (10): 0-692-69534-6

  International Standard Book Number (13): 978-0-692-69534-0

  Table of Contents

  PART ONE CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PART TWO CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PART THREE CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  PART FOUR CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Excerpt: The Far Side of the Sea

  A Note From Paula

  PART ONE

  “Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,

  on those who hope in his steadfast love.”

  Psalm 33:18.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rancho El Rio Lobo, California

  Spring, 1846

  The stranger appeared out of the darkness. She didn’t notice him until he was standing beside the fountain, staring at her. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but bone-thin and covered in trail dust. Rachel thought him a vaquero. A long knife hung from his leather belt, and a pistol rode in his waistband. He wore the weapons gracefully.

  Aghast at his arrival, she sloshed out of the fountain on the opposite side of where he stood. As soon as her bare feet hit dry ground, she dropped her skirt to cover her naked knees. “I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, shocked at how quietly he’d arrived, even with those long spurs strapped to his dusty boots.

  “I’m not sorry. Did the fountain refresh you?” A smile softened his hard, handsome face as he slowly stepped around the fountain to her.

  Heat flooded her cheeks, and then drained down throughout her body in a slow, torturous trickle. Her dress stuck to her damp legs. Should she put her shoes and stockings back on with him standing there in front of her, or wait for him to take his leave?

  “Do you always wade in fountains?”

  “No,” she managed to answer. “We don’t have these fancy water pieces back home.”

  The scent of leather, horses, and tobacco clung to him. He appeared to have just stepped off his mount. His perfect English made her suspect he was a fellow American. She certainly hadn’t seen him thus far. Desperate to compose herself, she smoothed a loose curl behind her ear with a shaky hand.

  Guitars and violins reverberated through the darkness. The aroma of roasting meat drifted on the air. Unseasonably warm weather and a full moon added to the allure of the fiesta. It was midnight, but the party in the front courtyard continued with more than a hundred Californios celebrating her father’s marriage to Sarita Tomaso. Scores of lanterns glowed in the limbs of the live oak trees surrounding the adobe and timber mansion with its double porches. Yet in the walled garden behind the hacienda it was only the two of them.

  He stared at her intently and then glanced around. “Where is your dueña?”

  “I have no dueña.” Her father informed her yesterday that Sarita’s dueña would attend her after the wedding fiesta. Married women had no need for such servants, her father said.

  “No dueña?” The man took her measure. A head-to-toe assessment of her body that quite shocked her. His scrutiny felt as if he’d reached out and touched her with his hands. Unnerved, she dropped her gaze to her damp skirt and then to the ground to study the dirt between his boots and her bare feet. Silence reigned until she could no longer stand the tension between them. She glanced back up at him.

  His eyes, surprisingly light in color, blue or green, perhaps, stood out in his deeply tanned face. “Are you married? If you were my wife, I would not allow you to wander from my side.” His mouth quirked into a half smile that melted her defenses.

  She swallowed hard. Thoughts of Steven suddenly assailed her. Somehow she felt she’d just been unfaithful to him. As if she’d given this man something, or perhaps more accurately, he’d taken something from her. He’d certainly taken more than her measure. “I have no husband,” she admitted.

  Not yet. Steven was only her fiancé.

  “What about your mother? Surely, she would not approve of you wandering about this way unattended.”

  “My mother died when I was a babe. My grandparents reared me.”

  “Your grandparents are of English descent?”

  “New Englanders,” she clarified.

  “And they brought you all the way to California?”

  “No. They remained back east. I traveled alone by ship around Cape Horn.”

  He leaned closer, this ebony-haired man drenched in weapons and the wilderness and a dangerous desirability she’d never encountered before. His voice, already melodious to her ears, softened even more. “Alone? There is only one kind of woman who journeys to California alone. Yet you do not strike me as this kind of woman.”

  She had no idea what kind of woman he spoke of, but the way he leaned so near left her feeling dizzy. Dark, dangerous men roved California like the cattle on a thousand hills here, but this man was different. He spoke with authority and the refinement of one born to lead men, and his manner conveyed strength and confidence and impeccable breeding. He completely unsettled her.

  “Who is your padre? He is not wise to leave you unattended this way.”

  “Joshua Tyler is my father.”

  “Joshua Tyler?” Disbelief edged his voice. He stepped away from her.

  “I am Rachel Tyler. Who are you, sir?”

  His face grew hard. “I am Roman Miguel Vicente Ramon Vasquez.” The name that rolled out of his lips was utterly Spanish. She was taken abac
k. He wore weapons and bore a Spanish name. Perhaps he served her father and was as mortified as she over this unseemly encounter between them.

  “Do you work for my father, watching over his cattle? Watching over me?”

  “I am not a vaquero. I would never watch over Tyler’s daughter. Your padre is a thief and a foreigner. Where is he tonight?”

  Stunned by these accusations, she glanced around for help, but the small walled garden hosted little more than the fountain, fruit trees, and several rosebushes struggling to bloom. She took a deep breath, pretending she wasn’t frightened of him at all. In truth, he terrified her. “My father and his wife retired to their living quarters hours ago.”

  “He deserted his guests?”

  “He . . . has a bride he must . . . comfort,” she murmured.

  “Your padre abandons his guests and leaves his daughter to wander about the night alone? A slip of a girl without her stockings?” He gave her bare feet a disapproving glance. “Unbelievable, even for a Yankee.”

  “Who are you to judge my father?” Hands atremble, she jerked her skirts out to cover her naked toes. “To judge . . . my . . . stockings?” She shook so badly she wondered if he could see her quaking. She’d never had an altercation with anyone in her life, least of all a man who left her fumbling for breath and reason.

  He spoke tersely, “You should not be in California. Your father isn’t wise to bring you here. War is coming. Women do not fare well in war. Especially women like you.” His gaze locked with hers for a moment, challenging, warning, entreating. Then he spun away, limping into the darkness as quietly as he’d come.

  # # #

  A forceful rap on her door startled Rachel as she knelt beside her bed the following morning, trying to pray and still upset about the man she’d met at the fountain. Her thoughts scattered as her father threw open the door and strode into the room. Heart pounding at his arrival, she smiled up at him, remaining on her knees beside her bed.

  “Why are you hiding in here? You should be entertaining my guests.” He stared at her for a moment before continuing. “You remind me so much of your mother. She prayed often too.”

  Eager to hear something—anything—about her mother, Rachel rose to her feet, her stomach knotting at her father’s impatient manner. “Tell me about my mother.”

  Turning his back on her, he walked across the room to gaze out the tiny window carved into the adobe wall. All windows in her father’s wilderness home were small for protection. No Indian or animal could enter the hacienda unbidden through these little openings, she’d been told. At the window, he sighed deeply. “Leave the past in the past, my dear. I came to talk about your future.” Her father moved to the handsomely carved writing desk beside the window, picking up a letter she’d left lying there. “What is this?”

  “A letter to Steven.” Oh, how she missed Steven. Would she ever see him again?

  Her father’s mouth formed a grim, hard line. “I’ve already said we will leave the past in the past. This young man is of your past, not your future.” He crumpled the letter in one hand. “I have a brilliant life planned for you, my dear, and it begins today.”

  He kept the ruined letter in his fist, tucking it behind his back. “Mother has written that you sing beautifully. I want you to sing for my guests this evening. Singing and dancing are very meaningful to the Californios. Most of their celebrations involve these forms of entertainment. One of my servants will arrive shortly to instruct you in the Spanish way to dance.” His voice gentled, and he turned thoughtful, even smiling. “I’m so pleased you can sing. Your mother had a beautiful voice. I used to have her sing to me when I was tired. Her voice was like an angel’s. And you are so very lovely. As was she, God rest her soul.”

  Speechless, Rachel laced her fingers tightly together, praying for an appropriate response as her knuckles turned white. Nothing came to mind concerning what to say about Steven, so she focused on the singing for now. “But I only sing at church—”

  He cut her off. “You are no longer with my parents, wasting your life on religious fancy. You will sing for my guests tonight. That is all there is to it.” He threw the balled-up letter on the floor.

  Her father wasn’t a large man, but there was something larger than life about him. A will to be reckoned with that made him utterly formidable. He looked nothing like she had expected. What had she expected? A bespectacled old man like her grandfather?

  In his prime with a headful of thick blond hair waving off a high, proud forehead, her father had the whipcord muscles of a twenty-year-old. His tanned face made his blue eyes all the bluer. Those blue eyes seared her now. “I want you to act like a well-raised Californiana. I didn’t bring you here to place you in a convent. I brought you here to make a good union. When Mother wrote that you had grown into a beautiful girl set on marrying the young man taking over for Father, well, such a waste, I decided. My daughter marrying a minister. I vowed I would not stand for it. That’s when I realized if you were appealing and untouched, you would be of great value to me here in California.”

  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, h
is 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.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  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.