Chapter Ten - Happy Ending
When the wedding party finally ended with the departure of the beaming new bride and her eager groom, the occupants of Rancho Verbena retired to their rooms at last. All of the excitement had worn out everyone quite thoroughly. The young de la Vegas climbed the stairs to their wing with the brother of the bride.
“Goodnight, Benicio,” Elizabeth smiled at Clementia’s brother as he opened his door. “Thank you for the dance. And I hope your arm is all right, after the twisting it got.”
“Goodnight, Señora,” he said softly, smiling back. “My arm,” he felt it, “has survived worse than a twist from El Zorro. I suppose my sister’s wedding will give the pueblo of Los Angeles much to talk about for many years to come.”
“Si,” Elizabeth agreed.
Diego cleared his throat. “Goodnight, Benicio,” he said, nodding. He nudged Elizabeth through their own doorway. Than he pulled the door behind him, and locked it. He grabbed her hand and waltzed her once around the room, his eyes never leaving hers. Finally he stopped, though he kept her in his arms, swaying gently. “I know it is quite rude of me not to save all the compliments for the bride, but as far as I am concerned you, señora, were the enchanting one this evening.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “What a lucky man I am, to have you in my arms at this late hour.”
“I always choose the best dancer.”
“Ah!” he said, waltzing her around one more time. He glanced at the bed as they passed it.
“No baby?” he asked, stopping, but keeping her held against him.
“She is with Conchita,” Elizabeth said, “who has refused to oversee the clean-up in the kitchen.”
“Ah, so we have given our good cook an excuse to leave the cleaning to others?”
Elizabeth grinned up at him. “Si. Serving her own patron comes first.”
“That is how it should be....” he gazed down at her. In the darkness and candlelight, her eyes were sparkling deep blue, almost matching her shimmering blue dress. He reached his hand back and unpinned her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders. He continued to sway for a moment, causing her to put her head on his shoulder. Then, in a swift move, he lifted her off her feet and into his arms, and scooped her knees into the crook of his bent elbow. “No baby!” he muttered again with wonder as he carried her to the bed.
“Why, señor!” she laughed. “You are so forward!” He put her down, sitting her on the edge of the bed.
He reached down and carefully removed her shoes, one foot at a time. He slowly and carefully lowered her stockings and slipped them off her feet. Then he took her right foot in his hand and began to massage it gently. “I cannot imagine, given the dancing you did tonight, that your feet are not a little sore,” he said.
“I was on my feet a great deal,” she admitted, enjoying his strong hands on her aching feet.
“A soak might be in order,” he said, changing to her left foot.
“Oh, my,” she sighed. “That would feel good.”
He finished her foot and then stepped away. Taking a large white porcelain pitcher from the top of the dresser by the bed, he left the room. Elizabeth laid back on the bed, letting the events of the day wash over her. She sat up long enough to pull her dress off and set it at the foot of the bed, then she laid back again in her slip. She giggled to herself, staring at the ceiling. When Diego returned, the pitcher in his hands was full. He took a heavy white basin from the shelf, put it on the floor before the chair by the fireplace, and poured some of the water from the pitcher into it. Then he went back to the bed, picked her up and carried her to the chair.
“I can walk!” she protested as he put her down.
“You have beautiful feet, señora. I do not want them damaged by overuse.” He lifted up the skirts of her dress and her slip, to guide her feet one by one into the water.
“Ohhhhh,” she sighed. “It is warm!”
“I stole it from a kettle in the kitchen that they were using to heat water for dishwashing,” he said. “They were a little surprised to see me, but they did not argue.”
Elizabeth laid her head back on the chair, shutting her eyes, and relaxing. “What the servants must say about us!” she said. She opened her eyes again to see him standing there, still surveying her, his arms folded on his chest. “What?” she asked, amused.
He tilted his head slightly, his lips rising into a half-smile. “Why, señora, I was thinking with longing of you.” He glanced around again. “For once we are alone in a bedroom.”
“I believe you have me captive, senor!” she laughed flirtatiously.
“Si, with your feet in a basin of water and your slip up around your knees.”
She inched the slip slightly higher, revealing more leg. Then she glanced up at him sideways. His eyebrow raised.
“‘But I am so tiiirrrrrred tonight,’” she sighed, imitating Marta’s exit line at the end of the long post-wedding dinner.
He squinted at her.
“And I cannot believe you chose Lupe!” she added. “Everyone expected you to chose me!”
“That is why I choose Lupe,” he said. “And señora,” he added, starting to take his jacket off slowly, “I am choosing you now.”
“Don’t do that,” she told him.
He frowned, looking at her. “Don’t...?”
She stared at him for a long moment. “I want to do that.”
He frowned, puzzled.
“Take your jacket off of you.”
“Oh!” he said, putting the jacket back on. “May I at least untie this tie?”
She squinted. “Si,” she said. They kept looking into one another’s eyes. Elizabeth giggled again. “I have to assume that Zorro’s clothing and sword did not return to Los Angeles after all,” she said. “Thank heaven for Bernardo,” she said.
He chuckled in response. “I have said that many times,” he replied. He quickly loosened the tie around his neck, pulling it off and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt. He sat down in the chair opposite her, waiting.
Elizabeth said, “This story will become a legend along with the tales of Monastario and the fox, and the fate of the golden pesos, and....”
“I nearly fell off of that horse as I was leaving!” Diego interrupted. “He did not take to my jumping on his back from behind the way Tornado does. That would have been a happy ending, El Zorro on the ground with no getaway! I would have had to walk!”
“It was a dazzling getaway, darling,” Elizabeth continued to laugh softly. “And you have certainly given Lupe Cahuenga a memory to last her a lifetime.”
“She actually danced quite well,” he said.
“Si,” Elizabeth agreed, “we could all see that she was a good partner for you.” She sighed. “Diego.”
“What?” he asked, also still laughing.
“Find me a towel.....”
He got up and retrieved a towel, then got on his knees at her feet. He lifted one foot out and gently rubbed it dry, then he did the same with the other. He looked up at her, resting his bare hand on her bare knee. “Better?” he asked.
“Si, much better,” she answered. She touched his face.
Later that night, Diego carried his beloved to bed and said, “Let’s get under these covers, and say a prayer for our Sergeant and his bride, and go to sleep.” He grinned. “There will be no courting Aunt Hortensia tonight.” He pulled the covers back and they crawled in together. “I hope Aunt Hortensia is resting peacefully in her grave,” Elizabeth said. “I think perhaps her mission is finally accomplished. The groom showed up. And stayed. And made a hero of himself!”
“Si,” Diego chuckled, stretching out and relaxing. “I’m sure it is because our Sergeant walked around the hacienda three times before dawn!”
“I think it is because he had a best man who would not let him down!”
“I think it was because, like his best man, he found a woman he knew he would love for the rest of his life,” Diego said.
“Oh, Diego, that is so sweet,” Elizabeth said.
His chuckle turned into a laugh.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking about the look on his face today, when he saw Clementia at the end of the aisle. I truly believe he levitated.”
“Let us hope he is feeling the same way tonight in the privacy of his wedding chamber!” Elizabeth giggled.
“This story has a happy ending. For all of us,” he said. “We all ended up where we belong.” He grabbed her and started tickling her. She giggled as he tickled and cuddled her and kissed her gently. Finally they were quiet as Elizabeth pulled his head to her chest and held him, stroking his hair.
“I love you, Diego,” she whispered to him softly.
He sighed. “I love you, sweetheart,” he answered, kissing the center of her chest. In the stillness, his head resting on her breast, they fell into their slumber.
The next morning, Elizabeth was awakened by a light knock on the door. This time Diego slept through it. She got up and looked around in the pale light, to see clothing strewn all over the floor. She went to the door, pulling on her robe, and opened it. Conchita stood before her, Esperanza in her arms. The baby burst into a smile and reached for her mother. Elizabeth took her, looking into her face. “Are you hungry, sweetheart?” she asked. “Did you miss being with Mommie and Daddy last....” she stopped, arrested by the amazed look on Conchita’s face. The cook was staring beyond Elizabeth and the baby. Elizabeth frowned and turned around, to see that the curtains beside the window were askew and half falling off the wall. Conchita’s eyes travelled from the curtains to the floor, where she saw the clothing everywhere.
“I thought I had seen everything at Rancho de la Vega,” Conchita muttered. She eyed Elizabeth.
“We....” Elizabeth started. “It was a wedding night, Conchita!” she decided to scold. “Surely you will not judge us harshly for such inspiration!”
“You and Don Diego rarely seem to lack inspiration!” Conchita said. She glanced at the curtains again. “You will want to find Bernardo to fix that, I do not like ladders!” With that she turned and walked away.
Elizabeth sighed, shutting the door. She looked again at the curtains, and then at her husband, still sound asleep under the covers. “Daddy and I had a big celebration last night,” she told the baby. She kissed her daughter and carried her to the bed. She sat down carefully beside Diego and got herself arranged in a sitting position. Esperanza’s hands grabbed beyond Elizabeth’s robe to her breast. “Here, sweetheart,” Elizabeth said, sitting back and relaxing as the nursing began. She felt Diego’s big, warm hand slide up onto her thigh and rest there.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, not moving.
“Si...your daughter needed her breakfast. And we will have a project for Bernardo after she is finished.”
Diego raised his head off the pillow. “A project for Bernardo?” He smiled, seeing Esperanza in her mother’s arms.
“Si,” Elizabeth said, nodding at the curtains.
Diego turned over and looked at them. “Did we do that?” he asked.
Elizabeth looked down at him.
“I guess we did,” he said, his head falling back on the pillow.
“I think Rancho Verbena has barely survived us,” Elizabeth said. “You cracked a candlestick knocking out the Capitan, we nearly broke the bed, you put a hole in the hacienda wall, and now we have destroyed a good set of curtains.”
“They aren’t destroyed, they just need to be re-hung!” he replied, somewhat indignant. He sat up and looked at her. “Are you complaining about how they got that way?”
Elizabeth smiled at him. “Hardly,” she said.
He stole a kiss. “I am glad to hear that,” he said. He looked down at the baby. “Esperanza, I think it is time to take you home to Rancho de la Vega, Mommie and I have done enough damage here in San Juan Capistrano. I think we are taking our revenge for how unkind this place was to us in the week after our own wedding.”
“We have had quite an adventure, haven’t we?” Elizabeth asked the baby. “Oh, Diego, she does not pay attention to us when she is nursing.”
“I think she can only do one thing at a time,” Diego laughed, lying back on the bed and stretching. “It is time to go home, darling. I feel as if I have not been home for months.”
“That is because you have been in the mountains or in Monterey or here!”
“Si. So we shall go home and stay there.” He glanced up at her. “But Liz. When we get home, we are going to embark on projects that have been delayed too long.”
“What is that?”
“Fencing. Shooting. Breaking Blanca.”
Elizabeth sighed. “But señor, I am only a young mother trying to care for her little baby,” she said, trying to sound a little pathetic.
Diego pinched her thigh, making her laugh and causing Esperanza to separate from her source, which in turn made the baby snort and start crying.
“Oh, Ranzita,” Elizabeth laughed, trying to get the baby calm and re-attached. “It’s all right, sweetheart...there....that’s my girl....” she looked again at Diego. “Perhaps I will be able to ride Blanca to my father’s in time for Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving?”
“Si, it is the American custom of gathering family and friends, and eating turkey on a Thursday in November. We did not do it last year because we were in Monterey and we were very distracted!”
Diego shrugged. “I do not think I like bringing these American customs into my household but I suppose I shall have to live with it!”
“Si, and you will have to find me a wild turkey, too.”
“A wild turkey,” he sighed.
“Si, a wild turkey! They are huge and delicious!”
“Darling I do not think we have turkeys in California.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Then I suppose a big chicken will have to do. But some day Diego I will bring turkeys here to California, I will order them and we will raise them so we can have our turkey at Thanksgiving.”
“Si, darling.” He stretched again and sat up. “I shall find Bernardo and see if he will fix that curtain.”
“What will you tell him caused it?” she asked, watching him as he got up and pulled on his clothes.
Diego grinned at her. “The beauty of being the patron, señora, is that no explanations are required.”
With that he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, gave his daughter a peck on the forehead, and headed out the door. Elizabeth sighed, watching him go. As if Bernardo will not know, she chuckled to herself. She looked down at the baby. “Ranza,” she said, “I have already warned you about the family you landed in. I can promise you this, my sweet. With El Zorro as your Daddy, the adventures have only just begun.”
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