Shadow of the Fox Page 2

  Sorina knew why and to their horror, told them. It was a way for him to legally acquire land and there was much to give away. To acquire land a foreigner must become a Catholic and change his citizenship. But the easiest way was to marry the daughter of a wealthy Californio.

  Arranged marriages were commonplace, but Mama had been fortunate. For her it had been a love match, a rarity in Mexican society.

  Which is why I shall never marry.

  Sorina rose from her bench and strolled into the house. Great-Aunt Consuelo waited at the door, her shawl wrapped around her shoulders, ready for departure.

  “It was kind of you to invite us to your tea.” Sorina smiled and made her curtsy to the toad’s mother. “Your home is lovely and your garden is quite spectacular this time of year.”

  “I’m glad you approve. Perhaps this will be your home someday, my dear.” Her hostess glanced at her son who was expounding on some political subject amid a circle of admirers—something about disorganized soldiers and the coming war with the United States.

  “Perhaps,” Sorina murmured politely.

  Not if a swift horse is available.

  She joined her duenna at the door and they exited together. Holding her great-aunt’s arm, she helped her over the cobblestoned walk to the circular driveway where they waited for their carriage. Grandfather still preferred to drive his own conveyance, although he accepted the company of an outrider. Bandits roamed the area and one could not be too safe, especially on the journey through the steep canyons to their ranch near the sea.

  Taking the outstretched hand of the escort, she gathered her petticoat-laden skirts around her legs and carefully stepped up into the coach, seating herself opposite her great-aunt. The outrider looked up, but quickly turned away as he closed the door.

  Sorina frowned and stared at the door. An odd awareness had drifted over her at his touch. It triggered an elusive fragment of memory.

  I’ve met him, but where?

  Grandfather had a vast ranch with many vaqueros and household servants, but no one familiar to her bore the feature she had momentarily glimpsed.

  Eyes the color of violets.

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a spirito.” Her great-aunt leaned forward, peering into her face as if trying to read her thoughts.

  “Do you know the name of Grandfather’s outrider?”

  “I do not make it my business to learn the names of the peóns on the ranch,” she said, her lips pursing. “And neither should you. It is unseemly.”

  “He’s new, though. Isn’t he? I haven’t seen him before today.”

  “And why should you take notice? You should be looking at eligible young men like Antoine Santoro who would make you a fine husband. Not outriders or vaqueros or house servants.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “Tía Consuelo, I truly appreciate your concern. But I am nearing one and twenty. I am not looking for a husband and no one is looking for me. Most of my friends were married at sixteen. You may as well put away my mother’s wedding dress. I know you keep it clean and folded in your armoire. I shall not need it.”

  Consuelo shook her head and narrowed her eyes. “You think you know everything, just because you can read and write and cipher. But what has education done for you? Nothing. You should have babies and a grand home, like your friend Arcadia Bandini de Stearns.”

  “Arcadia does not have babies. She was married to a rich, horse-faced American who is forty years her senior at the age of fourteen. You wish that on me?”

  “She is your age now and is very rich.”

  “But is she happy?”

  “How can she not be happy with the number of fine dresses and jewels she has?”

  Sorina smiled and patted her great-aunt’s hand. Tía Consuelo wanted her to be married, but it was too late. When she returned home from England, all the eligible young men in her circle were taken, except for Santoro, and she would never marry him. She’d known him for years and had found him lacking.

  And if rumors about him were true, he was much worse than everyone thought.

  She took a thin volume out of her reticule. It was a novel about a mad monk she’d purchased from an English seaman. Reading nonsense was better than arguing with her great-aunt whom she loved dearly, but was set in her ways.

  She would not marry Antoine Santoro. She would not marry a rich American old enough to be her grandfather. She would rather die a spinster than marry without love. And soon she would be one and twenty, old enough to inherit her father’s property. She had important plans for the ranch, plans she hadn’t shared with anyone in her family.

  “How can you read in this swaying carriage?” Her great-aunt pressed a handkerchief to her lips.

  “It is probably some law of nature. I did not get sick during any of my sea voyages, and there were people cradling chamber pots all around me.”

  Tía Consuelo paled. “Ladies do not use such language. In my day . . .” A lurch interrupted the scolding as the coach gathered speed.

  Shouts and the rumble of horse’s hooves assailed Sorina’s ears. Her great-aunt screamed.

  Bracing herself, Sorina parted the leather hangings that served as draperies. Shots rang out as the landscape raced by. Reaching across the seat, Sorina helped her companion down to the floor.

  “Cover your head with your arms and stay low,” she shouted. She wedged her body into the far corner of the swaying coach and dared a peek though the edge of the window. Two men on horseback raced alongside the carriage, pistols drawn. Indios. Some had turned to a life of crime when the Spanish missions were dissolved and sold off by the Mexican government, leaving them without resources.

  I should have brought my uncle’s gun.

  A rider, coming up fast from behind, fired once and the men alongside the coach turned away and raced toward the nearby hills. One man clutched his arm.

  The coach slowed until it came to a halt.

  The door jerked open and Grandfather stood outside. He’d lost his hat and sweat beaded his brow.

  “Are you all right?” The anxiety in his voice was palpable, and she nodded, helping her great-aunt up into the seat. A moaning Tía Consuelo took out her rosary from her reticule and clutched it in her hands.

  “What happened?” Sorina asked.

  “A robbery, I think.” The man who answered stood quietly behind her grandfather. “I’d fallen back. The thieves thought the coach unguarded.”

  The man spoke Spanish with an accent she couldn’t place. And he was taller than most of the men on the ranch. He wore the wide-brimmed hat, loose shirt and leather vest of the cowhands, but the garb didn’t seem to suit him.

  How do I know him?

  “Thank you, señor. You saved the day.” She peered directly into his face, hoping to see his eyes again. His hat was pulled too low.

  “Yes, he did.” Grandfather clapped the stranger on the shoulder and addressed him. “It’s safe. Let us be off.” He closed the door and snippets of conversation drifted back as they walked away.

  In a matter of seconds, the carriage was moving again. Tía Consuelo mumbled the words of the rosary while Sorina sat quietly, taxing her brain.

  The stranger had a straight nose, full lips and high cheekbones. A short black beard and mustache concealed other facial features. His straight back, relaxed shoulders and alert manner indicated a man comfortable in his role of protector. But the way he stood made her think of men who spent their days on the rolling deck of a ship, not a horse.

  Madre de Dios, could it be?

  She had known only one man with the same machismo, a man whose power and appeal had reached out and drawn her like a sailor to a siren.

  She lay back in the seat, pretending to sleep, thinking back to her last ball at her aunt’s house in England.
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br />   The night was burned into her memory. It was the night she’d fled to the dark recesses of the garden after hearing her aunt maliciously listing her faults to her circle of friends.

  Angry and miserable, she’d indiscreetly poured out her heart to a stranger and when the sounds of the orchestra reached them, he’d danced with her and at the end, pressed his lips to hers. It was her first kiss.

  And the last.

  The next afternoon, she’d been thoroughly scolded for her impropriety and confined to her room. Within the week, she’d been packed off to Liverpool to be put on the next steamship to New York with fare for a sailing ship to Panama and home. Her too perfect cousin, Sofia, had witnessed the embrace and tattled.

  Sorina smiled. She’d wanted to go home more than anything in the world and would be forever grateful to the girl.

  But what was the American doing here disguised as one of the ranch hands?

  She should inform Grandfather right away.

  Or not.

  Sorina loved a good mystery. This one promised to be worth her silence.

  Chapter 2

  Later that night

  Eerie silence swirled through the ruins of the old Spanish mission that stood at the north end of the village of San Juan Capistrano. Leaving his horse tied to a fence post, Lance Grainger threaded his way through the shadows cast by a waxing moon.

  Built around a central quadrangle, the low mud-brick buildings with red tile roofs once housed a garrison of Mexican soldiers, two Franciscan priests and a host of converted natives. But time and neglect had done its damage, most likely after Mexico gained independence from Spain. Sheep and an occasional cow now made their home in the roofless rooms, feeding on grasses that sprouted from dirt floors and untended gardens. None were visible tonight.

  Quiet and deserted. A perfect place for his meetings with Mitchell.

  Stepping over loose bricks and roof tiles that had fallen into the courtyard as adobe walls melted away, Grainger found what he was searching for . . . an open doorway with a cross over the lintel.

  Pausing at the entrance, he scanned the courtyard behind him, looking for movement. An owl hooted as it flew overhead. Nothing else stirred.

  The building might not survive a war between the United States and Mexico. It was already in bad shape. But he couldn’t worry about that now. Thomas Larkin, the American Consul in Monterey, had once told him to get his head out of the past and focus on the future.

  Larkin was right.

  Hard to do when you’ve been branded for life as the son of a coward.

  Negative memories tightened his chest, but he shrugged them off and peered into the doorway. The interior of the room was as black as tar and smelled like horse dung. He whistled softly, making the sound of a nighthawk in search of prey. The whistle was answered. A match flared, the flame put to a candle in a wooden holder.

  “It’s about time you got here, Grainger.” The words, barely above a whisper, were clear in the stillness of the night.

  “I had a little trouble this afternoon with a couple of bandits looking for an unprotected coach. They ran off when they saw me. My grateful employer made me wait in the bunkhouse for my reward. It was a damn fine cigar and a bottle of wine. I had to sample both before he would leave.”

  Grainger ambled closer and leaned against a wall. He’d been to the mission many times, but he and his contact soon would have to find a new meeting place. The buildings had been sold at public auction to John Forster, a former English sea captain turned ranchero. Grainger couldn’t imagine why he and his family wanted to live here. The place wasn’t fit for habitation. Not a single building except for the chapel was intact.

  “A ship will anchor tomorrow night off the coast near Vega’s ranch,” Mitchell said. “A longboat will row near the shore, but will remain outside the breakers to avoid the rocks. You will swim out and pick up the packet from the Second Mate. It has dispatches from Monterey.”

  “Swim? It’s damn cold in the sea.” It wouldn’t be too bad. Not like January.

  “No problem for Lieutenant Lance Grainger, United States Navy, is it now?”

  “Fuck you, Mitchell.”

  A low chuckle, almost a growl, emanated from his companion. A skilled horse trainer, Sean Mitchell made a very good spy in a Mexican culture obsessed by horse racing. An Army officer posing as an Irishman, he’d attached himself a year ago to the stables of Juan Avila at Rancho Niguel. He was training Avila’s famous racehorse, Bolero, who had won a number of fat purses for his owner.

  “Now don’t you be usin’ bad words, laddie,” he said, reverting to his Irish brogue. “Think of yer country.”

  “I’d prefer to serve my country dry and fully clothed from the deck of a frigate.”

  “Then why the hell did you tell them you could speak Spanish?”

  “I didn’t tell them, they knew. Besides, lying doesn’t get you promotions.”

  “No, but sometimes it keeps you alive.”

  Mitchell spoke the truth.

  He shifted his body to better scratch an itch in the vicinity of his ankle, hoping vermin had not found a path into his boots. Straightening, he leaned back against the wall, wondering for the tenth time how he’d wound up in this godforsaken place.

  After distinguishing himself during his naval training and rising to the rank of Lieutenant, he thought he’d be spending his career on a ship. Instead he’d been sent on diplomatic missions to France, England, and Spain. It was his flair for languages. Now, on the brink of war with Mexico, he’d become a spy, sent personally by Secretary of State James Buchanan to California to discover who might be allies among disgruntled factions in the ruling hidalgo class. He’d accompanied Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie who carried secret dispatches to Larkin . . . from President Polk, himself.

  “Blend in and learn what you can,” he’d been told. “We have to know where loyalties lie. Some of these rancheros are none too happy with the corrupt governors that Mexico City has anointed and will embrace us benevolent Americans when we take over California.”

  Hat in hand, he’d respectfully answered, “Aye, aye, sir,” and found himself on a ship bound for the Isthmus of Panama.

  “Will Forster support us?” he asked Mitchell.

  “He will be with us if he can protect the assets of his Mexican in-laws, the Picos. We’ll have good luck with most of the hidalgos, as long as they are treated fairly. What about Vega?”

  “His daughter and English son-in-law are dead, and it is rumored that his son had a run in with Mexican authorities and has disappeared. He can’t be happy about that. He’s a proud man with thousands of acres under his control, and has much to lose. But I think he’ll come around to our side.”

  “Good. The declaration of war is close. Hell, it might already have been made. It takes so long to get news. Bring the dispatches as soon as you can. I have a rider ready to take them to our contact in San Diego.”

  Grainger nodded and glanced around the dark room, noting spots of moonlight coming in from missing roof tiles.

  “Is it safe to keep meeting here? When does Forster arrive?”

  “Not too soon. He has to pay up first in gold and hides. We can use this place for another month, maybe longer. The only habitable rooms are near the front of the mission. He’ll have to send workmen to clear rubble and get the roof repaired. They’ll work in daylight.”

  “Very well. Then I’ll see you in a day or two.”

  “That you will, laddie. Watch your tongue, now. Vega may be brought around, but the snake slidin’ through the rocks east of his spread is real trouble. Found out any more about his activities?”

  “Antoine Santoro owes money all over California. Word’s out that he’s looking for a dowered wife to help pay his gambling debts and to pay for arms for his little nest
of vipers in the hills.”

  “Men who are owned by other men are dangerous. He’s your main interest now. Watch him closely.”

  “Like an owl on a mouse.”

  The candle sputtered out and a swish of cloth moved the air in the room, but no footfalls could be heard. A large man who had problems with his eyesight, Mitchell had learned to stay alive by using stealth, wits, and a magic touch with horseflesh.

  And a shitload of courage.

  He left the room the same way he’d entered. The wind had shifted and was now out of the south. It brought sounds of laughter and music from one of the saloons in the village. At last count, there were half a dozen ringing the corrals that served as the town plaza. He’d made it a habit to learn the layout of them all.

  While the mission had been abandoned, the town still thrived. It was the only pueblo between the settlements of San Diego and Los Angeles. A few rancheros had town homes here. He guessed that’s what prompted Forster to buy the old mission—social life for his family.

  Picking his way back to his horse, he untied it and walked a half-mile down a dirt track heading north along Trabuco Creek. Well away from the town, he lifted himself into the saddle and turned toward Vega’s Rancho de Los Lagos. It was a long ride. He’d get little sleep tonight and was expected to head out early tomorrow with the survey party Vega was leading to reaffirm the boundaries of his land grant. It had been going on for days. Today was the only respite.

  The news Mitchell brought meant he wouldn’t sleep much tomorrow night, either. And there was that little problem he had not chosen to discuss with his contact, the delectable Señorita Sorina Braithwaite.

  She had stared at him with narrowed eyes and pursed lips after that incident with the half-breeds. For a month, he’d been able to stay out of her line of sight, assuming the little vixen would probably remember him if she could get a good look at his face.