Angel in My Arms (43 page)

Napa Valley California Eight years later

"Maria, could you please ring the dinner bell again?" Celeste asked
in exasperation. "I know they hear me; they just won't come. Your
enchiladas and my corn bread will be ruined."

"
Si, señora."

Celeste stood in the open-air archway of the kitchen and watched the
servant walk to the black wrought-iron dinner bell and ring it
enthusiastically. "Dinner,
mi hijos, señor!"
She rang the bell again, and Celeste smiled. Maria loved the power of the dinner bell.

Celeste walked out onto the Spanish-style courtyard on the stones
that had lovingly been laid by Fox, Adam, and Maria's husband, Joaquin.
The sun was just beginning to set over the hills, and it cast a red
gold light over the rows of grapevines that fanned out from the home
she and Fox had built.

This was Celeste's favorite time of day here in California, when the
sun was just setting and the wind held the scent of the grapevines.
Here in the young vineyard, Colorado seemed a world away… a lifetime.
Sometimes, Celeste even wondered if all that had happened there had
been a dream.

She spotted Fox coming up the hill and laughed aloud. On each
shoulder he balanced one of their twin daughters. Sally and Meg giggled
uproariously at some nonsense their father had no doubt fed them.

Behind Fox walked Adam, no longer a boy, nearly a man. He was
trailed by old Silver, whose gait was a little slow, but who could
still keep up. Across Adam's strong shoulders, he bore a pole with a
bucket on each end. Her men, inseparable, were dressed in grape-stained
cotton workpants and shirts open at the chest. They wore identical
beaten straw hats woven by Maria's capable hands.

Celeste lowered her hands to her hips, trying to look stern as they
crested the hill and walked into the grass that led to the courtyard.
"Maria's been ringing for you for ten minutes."

"Look what we've got, Mama!"

Fox lowered first the red-pigtailed Meg to the grass, and then her identical sister Sally.

"Grapes, Mama," five-year-old Sally piped in. "Peanut…
Pinot Noirs!"

"Wait until you see them, Mother," Adam said, lowering the buckets
to the ground. It had been two years and one young lady since Adam had
called her Mama. He was growing up so fast. "I know the plants are
young and the grapes will only get better as the vines mature, but
Joaquin says the texture is nearly perfect."

As her family drew closer, Celeste realized that the girls were
covered in splatters of dark purple… again. "Sally! Meg!" she
admonished, but not too harshly. "You just dressed for supper! I told
you to stay off the ground when you went with your father to check the
vines."

The girls burst into laughter. "We stayed off the ground. Mama. It was Papa's fault!" Meg said.

"He threw the grapes at us, didn't you, Papa?" Sally added.

Celeste eyed Fox.

He tugged off his hat and whistled, glancing away to the amusement of his daughters and son.

"Told you," Meg laughed.

"Guilty," Sally accused.

"Fox MacPhearson!" Celeste lit into the expected litany. "How am I
ever going to teach these girls to be young ladies if you're going to
get into grape fights with them?"

The girls giggled behind their fingers, their cheeks rosy.

Adam laughed. "Come on, girls. Let's find Maria and get you cleaned up."

Celeste left her hands balanced on her hips. The children passed her
and then she settled her attention on her dear husband, who looked like
one of the workers they'd recently hired. Fox's skin was tanned a dark
brown, and he'd probably not shaved in two days. His hair was too long
and fell over his eyes when he pulled off his straw hat. He was as
handsome, no,
more
handsome than the first day he'd walked into Carrington and her life.

"Suppose I need to change for supper, too?" he said sheepishly as he caught her around the waist with one arm.

She dropped her hands to his shoulders and let him twirl her around.
She tipped back her head and the vineyard and the house whirled by. The
air smelled of rain, of fresh grapes, and of her husband.

"I suppose you should."

Their gazes met.

"The harvest going to be as good as Adam says?"

"Better." Fox grinned. "Better than we imagined, Celeste, better than we dreamed."

She held his gaze with hers. "Nothing can be better than this."

"What, this?" He ran one hand over his dirty, purple-stained shirt.

"Yes, this." She tapped his chest. "And this." She gestured to the vineyard. "And this." She kissed his mouth.

"Told you we could do it, Celeste." He danced her in a circle, caught her hand, and let her twirl away from him.

Celeste released his hand and scooped some grapes out of the split oak basket. She rolled a black
Pinot Noir
grape between her fingers, and then crushed it to study the pulp.

They had come to this land knowing nothing of viticulture. She and
Fox still had a great deal to learn, but with Joaquin and Maria's help,
their vineyard was going to be successfully productive.

"Excellent color." She glanced up at Fox, who stood three feet away. On impulse, she tossed the squashed grape at him.

"Hey!" He threw up his hand, but it was too late. She struck him in the chest, making a dark purple splotch.

Fox dove for the basket. Celeste squealed, throwing grapes over her shoulder at him as she ran.

She felt the thump of grapes hitting her back, and laughed harder, running into the grass.

Fox pelted her with grapes and they split as they hit her, staining her sunshine yellow gown. "Fox!"

"You started it." He chased her.

She ran, but he caught up to her and wrestled her to the ground. Their laughter mingled as he lowered his mouth to hers.

He tasted of grapes.

"The children, Fox. Dinner."

"Yeah, yeah." He kissed her again and then lowered his head to her slightly rounded belly. "Hello in there? Can you hear me?"

She rolled her head in laughter, and threaded her fingers through his clean, silky black hair. "Fox!"

"Attention. Attention, this is your father. I just want you to know that your mother started that grape fight. Not me."

Still laughing, she gave him a push and he rolled over and pulled her on top of him.

Celeste's hair fell loose in a curtain of red-gold around their
faces, and she stared into Fox's black eyes. "Thank you," she whispered.

"For what?"

"For saving me."

He stroked her forehead with his grape-stained hand. "Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"For saving me.'"

Celeste closed her eyes and lowered her mouth to his. The sunshine
was still warm on her back, and warm in her heart where she knew it
always would be.

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The Cliffs of Dover, England September, 1660

Julia closed her eyes and felt the bitter wind against her face. It
tore at her unbound hair and whipped at her new wool and ermine cloak,
a costly gift from her betrothed.

She felt numb. Was it because of the teeth-chattering cold, or
because, as she stood here on the precipice, she felt her hopes, her
dreams, dying? All these years, through the wars, she had imagined that
one day she would be rescued from her father's decaying house by a
handsome lord. His lordship would marry her, take her away to a foreign
land, and love her more than life. She knew it was just a dream, a
girlhood fancy, but it was difficult to let go of that dream just the
same.

Steadying herself with one hand on the crumbling wall, she
hesitantly slid one foot, and then the other, forward, until the toes
of her kidskin slippers hung off the edge of the tower floor. Chunks of
deteriorated mortar fell and hit the rocks below. She did not hear them
splash as they made their final descent into the ocean far below.

Julia held her breath and imagined that she was one of those
ill-fated bits of mortar. She wondered how easy it would be to let go
of the disintegrating wall and drop into the cold depths of the waves.
Did the mortar feel terror—or dull acceptance? Was there, at the last
moment, a certain sense of relief before death?