Coming Home for Christmas Read online

  Laura listened, too, her face as grave as his. He barely noticed when she took his hand and held it. He did notice when she raised his hand and pressed it to her lips.

  “What is that for?” he asked, surprised, and gratified.

  “I wanted to,” she said simply.

  If he hadn’t needed her help so badly, it would have bothered him to take a barely trained woman into such a place of distress as Mission San Juan. Father José Barona and Father Gerónimo Boscana were the walking dead themselves, after toiling for two days and nights among the injured and dying. Without a murmur, they did what they could. Father Barona even smiled faintly and apologized when he sat down. “It’s been hours,” was his only comment.

  Her lips tight together, Laura followed Thomas to the priests’ refectory, which had become the hospital. She assisted as he set bones, amputated and cleaned burns. When he gave her supplies from his dwindling medical bag, she set off on her own with no word of complaint. It tugged at his heart when she walked away from him and stopped to square her slim shoulders on which he had placed such an awful burden.

  It must have been well past midnight when the worst cases were either dead or tended to. His face gray with fatigue, Father Boscana had fallen asleep leaning against a wall. Laura sat beside a small child, crooning to it. Stupefied with weariness, Thomas watched the little one relax and finally sleep. He came closer and rested his hand lightly on his wife’s shoulder.

  She looked around, then gestured to the child’s mother. “I fear she is dead,” Laura whispered.

  She was. Thomas sighed, covered her face and nodded to Father Barona, who knelt and began to pray. When the priest finished, he just sat there, too tired to move.

  “We can take turns sleeping,” Thomas told him. “I will watch first.”

  He thought the Franciscan would argue with him, but Father Barona lay down next to the dead woman and closed his eyes without a word.

  Laura protested as Thomas took her arm and helped her to her feet. “Mind me, Laura,” was all he said and she did, letting him lead her to a pallet that Father Boscana had pointed out earlier, close to the door. She lay down, but patted the grain sack. He lay down beside her. “Just for a moment,” he told her, putting out his arm and pulling her close so her head rested on his chest. She didn’t seem to mind his leather surgeon’s apron, stiff with blood from yesterday in San Diego and now today in San Juan.

  “How do you do this?” she asked. She was shivering. That troubled him, because he wasn’t certain if it was from shock or cold.

  How did he do it? His mind was too tired to form words in Spanish or English, but he thought she deserved an answer. “It is my choice,” he said finally, but she was asleep.

  He walked among the rows of wounded Indians, doing what he could, until Father Boscana woke up from his bench and took over. Thomas returned to Laura’s side. She didn’t wake up, but she must have known he was there, because she moved closer, shivering still.

  They stayed two more days in San Juan Capistrano: ample time for the critically wounded to die and the less injured to begin to heal. The last night, they were both able to sleep together in a small room off the refectory, provided by Father Barona. There was even a pillow this time and a surprisingly soft wool blanket, probably woven by mission Indians. He wondered briefly if the weaver was still alive.

  Laura seemed inclined to talk, as she did back in San Diego, once the lights were off. Her voice low, she told him again about Christmas in San Diego—the parties, the posada, the singing.

  “I played Maria once in Mexico City,” she told him, putting her hand over the one of his that was gently exploring her hair, running his fingers through the strands. He felt her chuckle. “I was young. When the innkeepers told us that we could not stay because there was no room, I cried.”

  He kissed her head. “I think that is a natural reaction. You have a soft heart, wife.”

  She raised up on one elbow to look him in the face. “That was kindly said,” she murmured, then astounded him by kissing his lips. “You are the first man I have ever kissed,” she said when she finished. “I doubt I am very good.”

  “I think that was fine,” he said, pulling her closer and kissing her. “Let’s do that again,” he told her, his hand on her breast now.

  With a sigh of contentment, she moved his hand and began to unbutton her dress. He helped, pulling the blanket higher to shield them from the open doorway. His hand was inside her bodice and caressing her bare skin when he heard footsteps and stopped.

  Father Boscana tapped on the door frame. “I have a duty for you,” he began, sounding apologetic.

  It can’t be better than what I was about to enjoy, Thomas thought, as he withdrew his hand from his wife’s breast. “Certainly, Father. I am coming.”

  “It is a childbirth,” the priest said. “Our midwife is dead and I have no skills along those lines.”

  “We’re good at childbirth,” Thomas said. “Lead on, Father. My wife will follow.” After she buttons her shirt-front again, he thought, amused now, because he had been summoned and had no choice in the matter.

  The birth took them down to San Juan’s dock where a fisherman’s wife was laboring over twins. It was a simple matter of organizing arms and legs, which Laura and her small hand managed with considerable proficiency, once Thomas had told her what to do. The twins came out quickly, crying and protesting such an abrupt disturbance of their crowded universe, which made Laura grin at him.

  Dawn came as they left the fisherman’s hovel, both of them smiling as they heard the babies crying—such a pleasant sound after the terror of the past few days and nights.

  “Life just keeps going on,” he said to his wife. He sat with her on the end of the dock, both of them dangling their legs off the pier. “Maybe she will name them Tomás and Laura.”

  Laura giggled and put her arm around him. “You have a high opinion of yourself!” she scolded, but he knew her well enough to know she was teasing.

  “I am also an amazing lover,” he joked back. “Probably the best in the Royal Navy.”

  She swatted his arm. “And how often are you on land?”

  “You have me there,” he said, ruffling her hair.

  Thomas looked at the peaceful water. His back was to the mission, the smoke that still rose from smoldering buildings around the mission, the rubble everywhere and the incessant keening of Indians in despair. He could hardly imagine a more unromantic setting, but there was no overlooking the contentment filling him just sitting beside his bride of a few weeks.

  “We can go back today,” he told her. “And look over there—isn’t that the pinnace we came on?”

  Laura shuddered. “Could we not take horses? We would be two days, three at the most.”

  “The pinnace is faster and I have patients in San Diego, too,” he reminded her. “This is the life of a surgeon, Laura.”

  She snorted, but was otherwise silent as he hailed the pescador, who was folding his nets into the boat, perhaps getting ready for a fishing run now that as much order had been restored to San Juan as anyone would see for a while. Life went on and the fish waited.

  Hand in hand, they walked down to the beach. “Would you take us to San Diego?” Thomas asked.

  The fisherman nodded, his face troubled. “Better south than north,” he said.

  “It’s worse there?” Thomas asked.

  “That man over there told us more than one ship foundered off Mission Santa Barbara.”

  “It’s a tragedy,” Thomas agreed. “We can be ready any—”

  The fisherman wasn’t finished. “One of the vessels was a strange sight. Apparently, members of your navy had jury-rigged a coastal vessel.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Thomas breathed, as the blood drained from his face. “But…Santa Barbara? It can’t be the vessel I know. The Almost Splendid left San Diego weeks ago.”

  The pescador shrugged. “Hard to say. I do know the British men had put into Santa Barbara two weeks
ago, because they were taking on water.” He sighed. “Everyone drowned in a rogue wave. How sad.”

  His legs wouldn’t hold him. Thomas sank to the sand and bowed his head.

  Chapter Eleven

  He stayed that way a long, long while, hearing a great roaring in his ears and feeling an enormous urge to cry his heart out. These were men he had sailed with, cured of ailments, heard their complaints and shared the evils of war. And now they were dead, fish food off the California coast, far from home.

  He couldn’t cry though, not when people depended on him. He tried to rise, but found he could not, until Laura helped him. Unable to speak, he nodded his thanks, then glanced at her.

  What he saw in her eyes took away his breath. He had never seen such devastation on another human’s face. Jolted from his own sorrow, he grabbed her shoulders. “Laura! What is the matter?”

  She sobbed and threw her arms around him, trying to grab him everywhere, as if he were smoke and would disappear if she did not try. She clung to him, her face muffled against the bib of his surgeon’s apron, wailing as though her heart would break. It was foolish to expect her to speak rationally; Scottish women did not behave like this. He held her just as tightly as she held him, knowing by now that her apparently fragile construction was an illusion. She was as strong as steel, every bit his equal.

  He had no idea how long they clung together. When he opened his eyes, the fisherman was back coiling his nets, ignoring them as would any man who was “born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” So it was with Job; so it was with these citizens living in paradise on the Alta California coast, where the earth moved without warning.

  His wife’s wails ceased finally. She sagged against him and Thomas realized they were holding each other up.

  “Dear heart, what is it? You didn’t even know those men.”

  She raised her tearstained face to his, cupping it with her shaking hands. “Tomás, you could have been on that ship!”

  Dumbfounded, he stared at her. She was right; he hadn’t even thought of that, so horrified was he by the death of friends and the agony that the Americans at Fort Astoria would never even know how badly their assistance was needed by the Royal Navy, farther down the coast. He was stranded in California for the foreseeable future.

  Selfish man. He had only thought of himself and not of his lovely, sudden wife. His father would have been ashamed.

  Laura sat down in the sand then, and he slumped beside her. He put his arm around her, swarmed by more emotions at once than he was capable of processing through his tired brain. Death on land and sea surrounded them both and here was this precious gift: Laura Ortiz, descendant of grandees and Spanish nobility, who loved him. She loved him so much that even the mere thought of his death rendered her inconsolable. He didn’t deserve such devotion.

  She was saying something else, but there was that roaring in his ears. He breathed deeply and slowly until the noise went away. The sound of water lapping against the fishing boats, a sound he was familiar with, restored his equanimity. He was able to listen to what his wife was saying.

  “I don’t know when it happened,” she was saying, her voice soft. She rubbed his chest. Her voice changed, and he could hear the shyness now. “Maybe it was even when you…when you did not take me at once, as was your right, once I was your wife.”

  “I would never have done that, Laura,” he said.

  She nodded. “I know. You were kind and you never had to be.”

  He pulled her on to his lap because beside him wasn’t close enough. “Probably the populations of large countries would not say I have been kind to drag you into…into this hell that is San Juan Capistrano.”

  “Probably not,” she agreed and her Spanish practicality made him smile. “If you will recall, señor, I did not ask. I told you I was coming.”

  “So you did, my love.”

  He kissed her then, mindful of nothing except her. There was nothing tentative in his urge and nothing shy in her response. He kissed her lips, her neck and the warm space between her breasts, where her heart pounded. By God, he would have taken her right there on the beach, if it hadn’t been broad daylight. The fisherman was ignoring them—wise man—and Laura was breathing as heavily as he was. He owed what little restraint remained to him to his Presbyterian upbringing.

  He held himself off from her. “I don’t even pretend to understand any of this,” he told Laura, when he could sling foreign words together.

  Was she always going to be better than he, in fraught situations? “Let us get on the boat and go back to your bed in San Diego,” she whispered in his ear. “Earthquakes can wait.”

  So they could. While she waited on the fishing vessel, Thomas gathered together what remained of their medical stores, leaving most of them with the two Franciscans along with more instructions. He took one last ward walk through the refectory, assessing his Indians. Two were still no-hopers, but he felt sanguine about the rest.

  Touched to his very soul, Thomas knelt, as Father Boscana directed, and let the priest pray his thanks to God and make the sign of the cross on his forehead with his thumb.

  “I’ll return in a few weeks,” he said, when he was on his feet again, blessed for his work and amply paid.

  “Bring your wife, too,” the priest said.

  As if he would ever travel anywhere without her again. Laura kissed him when he was seated beside her in the vessel’s gunwales and whispered in his ear. “I love you. You know I am going to be seasick soon.”

  He smiled and nodded. She was.

  The fishing vessel only took them halfway down the coast to Mission San Luis Rey, a mission Thomas was familiar with from a measles epidemic last year. “The fish are running and I cannot waste my time with you,” the pescador said. He was apologetic, but he was adamant.

  He was even thoughtful. As he helped Thomas over the rail and handed him his medical bag, he gestured him closer, his eyes lively with good humor.

  “Señor, this mission appears to be standing. The fathers at the mission will provide you and your wife with a fine room for the night. The walls are quite thick.”

  Thomas blushed and looked away, then shook the fisherman’s hand. “Gracias,” he said simply.

  It was a fine little room with thick walls. The bed was narrow, and Father Peyri apologized to them both. “If you wish, your wife can sleep in an adjoining cell,” he said. He patted Thomas’s arm. “And we will be honored to furnish you with horses for your return to San Diego tomorrow.” The priest looked at Laura. “We can do no less. Your husband aided us monumentally last year, when so many suffered from measles.”

  “He is good that way,” she replied. “And, no, we do not need an extra room. Is there a bath? We worked so hard at San Juan Capistrano.”

  There was a bath house and Laura used it first, coming back to their room with her hair damp, but in its usual braid, her shawl over her nightgown, her feet bare. By the time he had finished, she was already in bed, the nightgown spread across the foot of it. He hadn’t been aware that she had freckles on her breasts.

  Neither of them wasted a moment worrying about the narrowness of the bed, probably intended for priestly travelers from one mission to another. She had a few practical questions, which he answered while he was caressing her breasts and then her trim waist, then lower. He had made a clinical observation a few years ago that Spanish women were nicely rounded—far more so than Scottish women. Laura was no exception, despite that air of fragility she had discarded forever the night that neither of them had slept.

  He was gentle, but he knew she was ready. And practical, anchoring her legs around him so he couldn’t fall off the narrow bed, no matter how strenuous their exertions, once she got into the rhythm and hang of lovemaking. Her breath was rapid and tender in his ear as she told him of her love again and showed him, with no qualms, no restraint, no fears about the future.

  She protested when he left her body, tucking herself close out of more than necessity. Fat
her Peyri had kindly left them a pile of blankets. When reason triumphed again, Thomas spread out those blankets and she unmade the little bed and added them to create a larger bed on the floor.

  “Much, much better,” she said, when they were still tight together, but without the fear of falling.

  The room was dark and he was post-coitally drowsy, but he enjoyed her usual conversation in the dark, particularly as it was punctuated this time with a low moan when he decided to familiarize himself with her soft mechanism that hardened and made her shift about restlessly, until she sighed and put her hand on him in turn.

  Toward morning, he woke to her tentative exploration, which turned into a symphony that left them both sated and exhausted.

  “Maybe you are the best lover in the Royal Navy,” she told him, her voice drowsy this time.

  “Told you.”

  She punched his arm at that, but she followed her brutality with a thorough massage of his body that ended only when Father Peyri tapped on the door and invited them to Mass and then breakfast.

  In his four years in San Diego, he had been to many a Mass, but never one when he was so alive to the serenity around him, which seemed to begin and end in his beloved wife. When her expressive face grew solemn and sober, and she glanced at him and slid closer, he knew without words that she was thinking of his now-dead comrades, and what would have been his fate, had he left his two dying patients and sailed with the Almost Splendid.

  Ralph Gooding was on his mind in the late afternoon as they rode into the presidio. Laura was the far better rider, leading his horse for the last few miles as he abandoned all pretence of dignity and clung to the tall pommel and suffered. She helped him dismount and took his arm as they entered the presidio’s small hospital.