Brit anxiously watched Joy to see if she could read anything more into Carlos’s tale than what lay on the surface. Not a wrinkle marred her white forehead. Praise be. Anger at the insufferable Montoyas rose again and a new thought. Did Dolores agree? Would she also revile Joy? He wished for an instant he had never come back and seen how truly beautiful the Spanish woman had become. Once, they had faced the need for wealth. Now, if he kept his third vow and carried the mantle of responsibility that Angus McFarlane had bestowed on him, it would mean the loss of Dolores forever. If she is all you believe and want, she will not let you go, a voice inside whispered. If not. . . Brit refused to consider it.
Long after the men had said good night, with Carlos graciously insisting that Sadie remain with Joy so she wouldn’t be afraid in a strange place, the orphan of the desert lay wide-eyed. Something about Carlos’s performance had not been true. Why should the Montoyas object so strenuously to their son’s marriage? Yet what else could have driven him and Brit back long after the appointed time with the news they would not go to the hacienda? Brit and his riches most certainly would be welcome. That left. . .her. Insight flooded her mind. Carlos’s family must have refused to meet her.
Joy stifled a sob. She had no time to waste in crying. After everything Brit O’Donnell had done for her and her father, she must not stand in the way of his happiness, even if Dolores were as selfish and vain as her brother claimed and unworthy of Brit’s devotion. Hour after hour she lay planning. Where could she go? Not to the Millses’. It would be the first place they would look if she disappeared. If only it hadn’t been necessary to sell Jenny! But, there were other Jennies.
What if she crept from the inn at daybreak, hid herself until time to seek a burro, then rode south, back to the little farm?
She mentally surveyed her resources, pleased that a goodly sum of money lay stashed in the hem of her petticoat. For a long time she wrestled with the knotty problems. At last, she decided. Running away meant giving up her share of the profits from the mines, and the Virginia City house, other than what she carried. She dared not let her friends know her destination or they would never consent to her going. Besides. . .her mouth twisted. Brit would need all he could gather to win Dolores Montoya. In a twisted way, her relinquishing her legacy would help him.
“Is this right?” she whispered, so low Sadie didn’t even stir. “Father, go with me, I pray. If it be wrong, let them discover and stop me.”
For the rest of the dark night hours, Joy lay planning her escape. Her heart ached, especially when she realized she could not take the trunks that housed pitiful mementos of her childhood. Only the clothes she wore would go with her. She considered the dangers of a woman traveling alone and remembered how she hadn’t been able to bear parting with Angus’s clothes. A warm jacket, pants, and shirt lay in the trunk. With her hair stuffed into his old hat, the heavy gray veil wrapped around her throat, she could pass for a boy. People would pay little attention to a boy on a burro, idly poking along.
Joy’s heart pounded until it threatened to choke her when at first light she groped in her trunk, selected what she would need for her long ride to southern California, and donned Angus’s clothes. She hastily ripped the stitches from her petticoat, hid her money inside her shirt, and stepped from the room after a glance at Sadie, whom she had grown to love. Would she ever see her again? Her gaze turned to the battered old trunk. Surely, they would see that it got to the Millses’. Someday, when Brit had married Dolores and she could face the pain, she would come back and get her small treasures.
She had read stories of girls and women running away and secretly considered them improbable. Yet her own escape went more smoothly than she could believe. Joyous found a sheltered nook where she could wait and be away from the early morning chill, the corner of a deserted patio screened by flowers. Not until the sun climbed high and warmed the earth did she leave her haven, set boldly forth, and seek to buy a burro. She had wisely kept enough money out that by haggling with the owner through shaking her head vehemently and shrugging her shoulders she paid a surprisingly low price and rode away on her new Jenny. She stopped a few other places, purchased supplies here and there including a canteen, then turned Jenny east. Later, she would go south. A thrill of achievement lifted her spirits. The spectacular autumn day promised adventure, perhaps excitement, and she rode feeling she had done the right thing. It dulled the pain of parting to a low throb and gave her courage to lift her chin up and look ahead, not back.
❧
Consternation remained behind the runaway. Brit and Carlos arrived at the inn after spending most of the night talking about the future. “We can’t just be for imposing on the Millses,” the older man said. “Unless we up and buy them a house big enough for us all!”
Carlos fitted the tips of his fingers together and showed a shrewdness much like his father’s. “We will visit for a time, then—I know!” he leaped into the air, face lighted. “We will go to my Uncle Ramon and Señora Mary. They will rejoice and make the fiesta.”
“Are you sure?” Brit thought of the quiet man and sad-faced woman he had met so long ago at the Montoyas.
“Si.” Carlos sounded sure. “You wait and see. Now, Señor Brit, let us hasten to my Sadie and Señorita Joyous.” He paused. “About Dolores. What will you do?”
“Nothing now.” Brit’s lips firmed. His Irish blue eyes looked more gray than usual. “Are you ready?”
“Si.” Carlos snatched his hat and bounded out the door of their room. He chattered all the way to “his Sadie” but when she opened the door to his knock his mouth dropped open. Hair disarranged, eyes swollen and red from weeping, she flew into her husband’s arms.
“She is gone. Joyous,” She cried.
“What?” Brit stood petrified, staring about the room.
“It is true,” the weeping girl managed to say. “See, her things are strewn.” She pointed to the open trunk that bore mute witness of Joy’s flight.
“Don’t cry,” Carlos softly said. “She cannot have gone far. Why did she leave? When?”
“I don’t know.” Sadie shook her fair head and misery filled the soft blue eyes. “I fell asleep with her here and when I awakened she was gone.”
Carlos and Brit exchanged a steady glance before they crossed to the trunk. “Perhaps this will tell us something,” Brit said. He awkwardly laid garments and a few books in neat piles outside the trunk, thinking how little she had, although Joy owned wealth. In the bottom of the trunk lay a small package covered by faded brown wrapping paper. He hesitated. What right did he have to uncover her possessions? He set his jaw. The right of a guardian worried sick over his ward outweighed other considerations.
“What is it?” Carlos crowded close with his arm still around Sadie, who clung to him.
Brit fumbled with the knotted string, then jerked and it fell apart. He pushed back the wrapping paper, reached for its contents, and held up a small, white dress. Torn lace hung from it like floating cobwebs. “Why. . .” Brit peered at the lace. A thrill went through him. “The lace. Carlos, I have seen lace like this somewhere!” He wrinkled his forehead and tried to remember, but it eluded him.
“Lace is lace, is it not?” Carlos asked dubiously.
“You don’t understand.” Brit fingered the delicate stuff. “In Ireland we learned to know whose lace it was by the slight differences in the workmanship. Each lacemaker has a distinct style.” He frowned again, feeling he held the key to not only Joy’s whereabouts but much more in his hands. Why must knowledge elude him as a dancing butterfly?
Carlos took the garment from him, almost reverently. “It is old. It must be the dress Señorita Joyous wore when Señor Angus found her in the desert.” He touched the lace. His eyes bulged. “But why would a lost waif wear a gown trimmed with real Spanish lace?”
“Spanish lace?” Brit snatched the garment back and held it close. “That’s it. Carlos, this lace is identical to what bordered the handkerchief Dolores carried at
dinner on the night I came to your hacienda.”
twelve
Carlos stared at Brit as if he had gone mad. His eyes resembled pieces of obsidian resting on a white shore. He tore his gaze free and examined the lace again. “It is impossible,” he burst out. “Do you not remember? Papa told you how Mama and Dolores have continued the art of lacemaking. Never do they sell or give it away except to members of the Montoya family—” He broke off. Color drained from his face, leaving it shocked and disbelieving.
“What is it?” Sadie cried. She tightened her grip on his trembling arm, eyes wide with alarm.
“Dios!” A prayer, not a curse. “Can it be?”
Brit wanted to shake him until he rattled. “What is it?” he hoarsely demanded and clutched the time-yellowed child’s dress.
Carlos took a deep, quivering breath. His aristocratic nostrils dilated. “Uncle Ramon and Señora Mary, the tragedy,” he incoherently tried to explain.
“Carlos, get hold of yourself and tell us,” Brit commanded. He vaguely remembered Carlos starting to tell him something about a tragedy long before that nearly drove Don Carlos’s brother and his wife crazy with grief. What had it to do with Joyous?
With a mighty effort, Carlos controlled himself. “They had but one child. One night she disappeared, stolen from her bed.” He paused, licked dry lips, and went on. “From that night until this moment no one ever found trace of the child, although my uncle spent hundreds of pesos.” He stopped for breath.
“You mean Joyous is that child?” Brit’s head reeled. “Your cousin. . .and Dolores’s?”
“Who knows?” A little color came back to Carlos’s face. “We must go to the hacienda immediately.”
“Wait, Carlos.” Brit restrained his eager friend. “Before we do such a thing we must plan. What if it isn’t true? We would be getting your aunt and uncle’s hope up for nothing.”
“Si, and perhaps they could not stand it.” Carlos halted in his impetuous rush toward the door.
“Tell us more about the child,” Sadie begged. Her eyes looked like wide blue lakes in her sweet face. “Why would anyone steal a child?”
“Everyone always thought it was a peon that Ramon had beaten for being lazy,” Carlos slowly said. “He disappeared the same night as the little one.”
“What was her name? How old was she?”
Carlos vainly sought to remember but shook his head. “The story is old and talked of only by servants. It happened before I was born. I don’t know anything more, but Papa and Mama will.”
All rancor over their heated argument the night before vanished before the monumental happening that lay ahead. Brit laid aside his personal feelings and agreed that all three would go to the Montoya hacienda. Don Carlos and Inez could tell them what they wished to know. If nothing came of it, Ramon and Mary need never know.
“Papa will never forgive himself if he has refused welcome to his own blood,” Carlos said sadly. Compassion shone in his eyes. “Oh, if we had already known.”
“Hold on. We still aren’t for being sure,” Brit reminded as they waited in the hall for Sadie to wash her face and tidy her hair. No bridal white with which to impress the Montoyas. Just a simple gray gown that enhanced rather than detracted from her lovely face now alight with hope for her friend.
❧
Except for the change in clothing from evening dress to morning clothes, the large dining room at the hacienda matched the scene from the night before. Now the addition of Sadie bolstered Carlos. Again he made a dramatic entrance and announced, “We are here. I, Carlos Montoya, my Señora Sadie, and my friend, Señor Brit.”
Dolores flung at him, “I thought you vowed not to return until we welcomed Señorita McFarlane.”
Had she always worn that unpleasant twist to her carved lips, that cruel look in her eyes, Brit had time to wonder before Carlos retorted, “Before many minutes pass you will regret your words and that you did not open your heart to her.”
Dolores raised her chin an inch higher but subsided.
“Papa, Mama,” Carlos turned to them. “What was the name of the child stolen from Uncle Ramon and Señora Mary? How old was she?”
They looked dumbfounded, but Inez said haughtily, “It is long ago and not to be discussed.”
“Pardon me, Mama, but it must.” Carlos’s face whitened. “It is possible we have news of the child.”
“After all these years?” Dolores’s peal of scornful laughter added nothing to her charms, at least in Brit’s slowly opening eyes.
“Be still, Dolores,” Carlos thundered. “Tell me, Papa. What was the child’s name?”
Don Carlos sat even straighter and more rigid at the urgency in his son’s voice. “Jessica. A most unsuitable name for a Castilian, but Mary insisted on it. It means wealthy.”
Quiet Sadie would contain herself no longer. “It is she,” she squealed. “Jessica. Joyous. Don’t you see?”
“What is this nonsense?” Don Carlos rose from the table, a forbidding look in his eyes.
Brit stepped forward until he faced the frowning man. He held out the little dress. “I saw lace like this on Dolores’s handkerchief. Carlos says it is only made by her and her mother.”
The elder Montoya’s face turned the color of dirty wax, but Inez stunned them all by
rising to race around the table and grab the dress, so unlike her ladylike self that the others gasped.
“Where did you get this? I, myself, made this dress for Jessica. She wore it first on the day she was five. When I bid her good night she smiled and said, ‘My gown is beautiful. See, Mama hung it on my bedpost so I could see it when I wake.’ ” Tears steamed and her haughty expression crumbled. “That night she vanished.”
“The date,” Brit asked. “What was the date?”
“The fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord 1848.”
Cautious hope flared in Brit’s heart. “It fits. Angus McFarlane said he got word of the strike at Sutter’s Mill several months after it happened on January twenty-fourth. He hadn’t been near a village in a long time. He headed north and west.”
“But how could the child be so far from home?” Carlos burst out.
“I don’t know. Neither did Angus. Wait!” His fingers crept to his breast pocket where he always carried the small packet Angus had given him along with the letter to Joyous. Brit hadn’t felt the time to be right for him to pass it on. Now he brought it out and looked at it with troubled eyes. “I hope it is all right to open this.” He scanned the circle of eager faces. Even Dolores had dropped her animosity.
“She would want you to open it,” Sadie said, with a woman’s insight.
Brit slipped his hand into the waterproofed covering, left the letter inside, and took out a single page. It contained a faithful retelling of the prospector’s most precious desert find. Brit read it aloud. When he finished, silence fell.
“It would do no good to go to the place of burial,” Don Carlos said. “Not after these many years.”
“Then how will we ever know for sure?”
One by one they discussed their bits of evidence: Joyous McFarlane had been the right age at the time Angus discovered her. The dress, unless it had been stolen, offered the strongest clue to the mystery. A child who referred to herself as J-yes might be shortening Jessica to Jess, as her mother sometimes called her.
“Also, she has blue, blue eyes and Señora Mary’s eyes are blue,” Carlos put in. “Although faded from sadness.”
Brit spoke directly to Señora Inez. “What color is your sister-in-law’s hair?” His fingers tightened into fists.
“Snow white, these many years. Once it was gold. When the sun shone, it made it glow like fire.”
“Joyous has what Carlos calls sunset hair,” Brit told them.
“Then we must hasten and tell my brother,” Don Carlos shouted. His fact twisted horribly. “To think that I turned her from my door, the daughter of my own brother!” His pride lay in ruins. “Bring her here this instant,
the lost Jessica, that I might kneel and kiss the hem of her gown and plead for pardon!”
The light that had grown in Brit’s heart at his friend’s good fortune and the joy she would know from being restored to her real parents flickered out. “We do not know where she is,” he confessed.
“What?” For a moment it appeared that Don Carlos would strike him.
“Papa, she went away. That is why we opened her trunk and found the little gown,” Carlos explained.
His father sank heavily into his chair. His fingers twitched. “What can I tell my poor Ramon?”
“Say nothing until we find Joyous,” Brit advised. “It would be cruel for them to know their daughter is found but lost again. We will do everything possible to track her down.” Don Carlos staggered up, leaned heavily on his wife’s shoulder, and said to Sadie, “Little one, you are welcome here. Forgive our poor greetings. I. . .I must go to the chapel and pray that my sins be taken away.” Then slowly he went out.
Carlos shrugged. “Almost, I feel sorry for him. But come, my Sadie. I must show you the hacienda.” He sauntered off with a smile for Brit.
The large room felt too spacious for only two persons. Dolores suggested, “Señor Brit, would you wish to walk with me in the courtyard?” Her dimples showed in a daring smile. “We will be without a chaperone.”
Brit nodded, thoughts still on the runaway. He absently noted the heavy perfume of late blooming flowers yet it brought no heady feeling the way it had done two years before. Dolores led him to the same sheltered spot where he had kissed her and declared his love. How long age it seemed! Then, her little pout had charmed him. Now, he found himself annoyed at her coquetting in the midst of the earth-shaking events that had occurred.
Veiled Joy Page 12
