"You should come with us," Diego told Señora Nuria the afternoon before they were due to leave. "You will be safer at the hacienda than you are here. And, if you still desire to leave California, I will buy your passages myself. You can keep the money I gave you and use them to start a new life in Spain. "
"You would do that for us?" Señora Nuria inquired in disbelief.
"Were it not for you and your daughter, my brother might not have made it." The young man explained as they watched Milagros help Dario, whose arm was still in a sling, tend to Diego's horse.
The woman glanced at him. "And the wolves?" She asked. "My daughter is very attached to them…"
Diego doubted for a moment, as he looked at the animals. By whistling the same way he had heard Milagros use many times to call them, he not only got their attention, but caused them to stand up and come to him. They allowed him to pet them, seeming to enjoy the attention.
"Milagros and I found them about a month after my husband died. They were but pups at the time. We raised them and, in exchange, they kept us safe. Three unwanted visitors they had chased away before you arrived… I know they are wild beasts; that they could probably survive were we to leave them… but I would rather they had a home…"
"You won't be able to take them on a ship… But I have two sons," Diego said. "They might make them good companions… Keep them out of trouble… And, in case they don't get used to living on a farm, I will do my best to find them a good home… or, at least, a bountiful forest."
The woman offered him a slight smile, then glanced at her daughter. "Does Milagros truly look so much like your brother's wife?
"The resemblance is quite remarkable." He replied.
"And she was lost at sea…"
"Yes. A little over two years ago. She was returning from Monterey by ship, and never made it home. As per the little information we've been able to gather, the ship went down in a storm. All we know is that they must have sunk south of San Luis Obispo, yet north of Santa Barbara."
"A storm?"
"A bad one. It destroyed many of the fishermen's boats, and even some houses out on the coast."
The older woman nodded pensively.
"Your brother… Did he love his wife?"
"I believe he did. They did not have enough time together to know each other well enough, however. It was a difficult time in both their lives…" He replied. "It's quite incredible how much your daughter looks like her, though she is nothing like her in any other way." He added.
"That's because she's not her." The woman replied, returning to the house. "We'll come with you," she said from the doorway, "but only to Santa Barbara. We'll find a ship there to get us to Spain."
Diego agreed with a nod, as his attention was again drawn by the couple who, having finished feeding and petting the horse, were now standing outside the fence, talking. Neither one of them seemed to even notice he was there, lost as they were in conversation. She smiled often and laughed a lot, and Dario seemed captivated by her joyfulness. He, himself seemed different when he was with Milagros. He seemed, for lack of a better wod, happy.
ZZZ
"What was she like, your wife?" Señora Nuria asked Dario a while later.
"My wife?" He wondered. "She was beautiful, shy… and rather sad most of the time. She had grown up an orphan, and, for some reason, she seemed unable to accept that she deserved a family of her own. But she loved our daughter above everything, and was a very good mother."
"You have a daughter?"
"Yes. She's five. In her mind, my brother's wife, Victoria, is her mother now, though she still very much misses Juliana. She also believes she has two fathers." He answered with a smile at thinking of Elena.
"Did your wife have any birthmarks… or scars?"
"No… Well, I don't really remember, actually."
"How can you not? Wasn't she your wife?"
"Yes, but… Truth is, our relationship was a little estranged. We only spent a night together, when our daughter was conceived, and that was before we married." He confessed.
"That was why you married, you mean."
"That, too."
Señora Nuria nodded with displeasure. "Perhaps it's better she died. You can find yourself a new wife to warm your bed." She uttered as she headed for the kitchen where she and her daughter had taken their remaining cot since ceding one to Dario.
ZZZ
Gathering all they had of any value, the two women prepared to leave the following morning.
"I will miss our home," Milagros said as they were about to leave, looking at the house one last time.
"I won't. I still can't understand what possessed my husband to bring us here. Our life was far better in Spain." Señora Nuria uttered.
The young woman nodded but didn't say a thing.
As Diego had suggested, they would walk the entire way to the nearest Mission, from where they could send word home of their whereabouts, and to ask Emmanuel to have Captain Clisson send a ship for them. Travelling by sea would not only be faster, but safer and less strenuous on Dario than making the journey south by land.
Those days, the former French contrabandists, still officially working for the Count of Dragonera, were operating three merchant vessels, trading goods between the westernmost American colonies and the Philippines. Diego was certain that, at least one of the vessels was bound to be close to California or in one of the ports there.
With the wolves in the lead, the two women following them, and the De la Vegas leading the horse, they started their long journey toward San Luis Obispo.
"How are you holding on?" The tall caballero asked his brother about three miles after their departure.
"I have been better…" He replied. "But I am well enough."
"Let me know if your ribs start causing you any distress. Or if you get dizzy… We will take a break."
"I will let you know," Dario said, his eyes resting on Milagros' shape. "Quite a coincidence, isn't it? How much she looks like the one we have been searching for."
"Indeed…" His brother answered.
"You know, there's something bothering me about her."
"What do you mean?"
"She told me, just this morning, as I was helping her pack, that the house and the forest were all she's ever known. Yet her mother mentioned a few days ago having left Spain after Waterloo…"
"Strange. But that hardly means much. Perhaps you misunderstood her." Dario uttered.
"Yes. Maybe…" His brother said.
The night they spent out in the open, glad that the dark clouds that had gathered above during the afternoon had moved away.
"May I ask you something?" Dario inquired as Milagros poured some water for the stallion in one of the buckets they had taken with them.
She nodded with a smile.
"I was wondering… How come you look nothing like your mother?"
"I guess I take after my father… or a grandparent… Who knows?"
"Oh? What was he like? Your father…"
"Ah… He was shorter than my mother. Had a scar under his left eye. And, he was balding… But he must have been quite good-looking when he was young…"
"You don't remember?"
"Not really. He was in his forties when I was born."
"Really?"
"Yes. He and Mother had all but given up on having children when she finally got pregnant with me. It's why they called me Milagros. But, in truth, even if I had known him as a young man, I could hardly remember him. My memory is not very good these days.
"But my mother can certainly tell you all you want to know. She has a perfect memory. She can still remember all the mischief I used to do when I was a child… Though she always ends up crying when telling the stories… I think she'd rather I had never grown up." Saying that, she headed for the wolves and, after offering them some water and part of their provisions of dry meat, she spent about ten minutes petting and playing with them.
Dario couldn't help but admire her laughter, wishing she would have heard Juliana chuckle like that at least once.
The day passed slowly, with little conversation, and the following night was windy, so they had to seek shelter in a small canyon.
"How long till the Mission?" Milagros asked that evening, as they were preparing to go to sleep.
"About seven more miles or so," Diego said. "If we leave early, we should be there by mid-morning."
ZZZ
Their third day on the road started with a beautiful sunrise, and all three young people rose to admire it, not uttering a word as the sky turned from dark blue, into an intense pink painted with yellow and purple, then became light blue as the sun rose above the horizon.
"With some luck, tonight we sleep in real beds," Diego uttered, a smile on his face as he gathered the blanket he had used to protect himself from the cold ground.
The young woman smiled, yet her mother didn't seem to share her enthusiasm at the news. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave this land." She said.
They arrived at the Mission, just as the young man had predicted, before ten in the morning. And, to the De la Vegas' surprise, the first person they met there was Emmanuel Dos Santos himself.
"Diego? Is that you?" He asked as he spotted the young man coming out of the road winding through the nearby forest, and went to give him a hug.
"What on Earth are you doing here?" His friend asked in surprise as he returned the embrace.
"I just arrived last evening." Dos Santos answered. "We had no news of you for over three weeks now and we all feared something might have gone wrong. Victoria demanded I get you back to her, and I had no choice but to comply."
"Something did go wrong, indeed," Diego answered. "But I will tell you all about it after I'll have had some time to make myself presentable."
"Right…" His friend said, studying him. "And shave that beard! You're beginning to look a lot like a certain count we know."
"I told him the same a few days back." Dario neared them to say at overhearing Dos Santos.
Emmanuel looked inquisitively at Diego, who shrugged his shoulders and slightly nodded, indicating he had shared with his brother certain things he had been keeping a secret for quite a while. Emmanuel then glanced at Dario, who offered his hand, and he shook it. "Good God!" He uttered next, upon noticing Milagros. "You actually found her! I can't believe it."
"No," Diego corrected, "I know she looks like Juliana, but this young lady is, in fact, called Milagros. Milagros Aurelia Pepita Carpena."
Emmanuel seemed baffled. "That can't be…" He said, glancing towards Dario.
"As he said, Señor," Nuria replied, "this is Milagros. She's my daughter." Glancing towards the young woman, she signed for her to follow her towards the living quarters, where a neophyte guided them to a room. The two wolves followed them inside to the bafflement of the monks there.
Diego, however, wondered if all the monks were staring because of the domesticated wild beasts for, at least one of them looked like he recognized Señora Nuria.
"How can this be possible?" Emmanuel asked, following Milagros with his sight. "What are the chances of you stumbling on a woman that looks exactly like Juliana?"
Dario just shrugged his shoulders.
"Could they have been twin sisters?" Dos Santos again asked.
The two De la Vegas glanced at each other. The idea had never crossed their minds for some reason.
"Juliana was an orphan… I suppose it's not completely impossible that the two of them might have been related." Diego said. "Whatever the case, we are running out of time to find out. Her mother wants them both on the first ship back to Spain."
Saying that he signed for one of the men who had accompanied Emmanuel, asking him to take care of the horse and his burden, then returned to his friend. "We have much to tell you," Diego said as they slowly made their way toward the living quarters. "But first, please tell me you brought some fresh clothes."
"You are both in luck," Emmanuel said signing for another servant. "Freshen up, get some rest, then come meet me on the terrace, and tell me everything. I will meanwhile write home to inform everyone that you are both alive and well. Victoria must be worried sick about you."
ZZZ
"I don't want you anywhere near those men, mi hija." Señora Nuria told her daughter as soon as they entered their room.
"The de la Vegas were kind to us, Mother," Milagros replied. "I can't understand what you have against them."
"I don't have anything against them. But I fear they might try to take you away from me, and you are all I have left in this world."
"They wouldn't do that. They are good men, Mother."
"Don Diego, perhaps. Don Dario, I am not so sure."
"Why would you say that? He's done nothing wrong!"
"Perhaps… I don't know… There's something about him. The way he behaves towards his brother… The man has a huge debt to pay him, and it's not for having just saved his life. Trust me! . Besides…. He seems confused by you… By how much you look like his dead wife."
Milagros nodded. Leaving her mother to get some proper rest, after washing herself with cold water from a bowl, she headed outside with the wolves. All she wanted, after several hard days of walking from dawn till evening, was to lay on the grass, feel the sun on her face, and do nothing else. And that's exactly what she did.
ZZZ
"What are you doing?" Diego asked a while later, at finding his brother on the terrace, drawing something.
He showed him the portrait he was working on.
"Elena?"
"I've been thinking about her a lot lately. But I can't figure out her eyes…" Dario said.
"May I?" Taking the portrait from his brother, Diego erased part of the corners of the girl's eyes and redrew them. "There is a new invention I read about… It uses light to somehow impress a person's image on a plaque treated with certain chemicals." He said as he also corrected the shape of the girl's face and nose to make the portrait an almost perfect picture of her.
Emmanuel neared them and sat down just as Diego handed his brother back the paper.
"It looks just like her," Dario exclaimed admiringly. "You did inherit all our parents' qualities!"
"Hardly. It took me a long time to become any good at drawing. But practice makes perfect."
A breeze of wind took hold of the portrait right at that moment, and it carried it towards the field, where one of the wolves hurried to catch it.
"What have you got there?" Milagros asked as he brought it to her. "Who's this?" She asked as she turned the paper around, and stared at the face of the little girl.
"My niece," Diego said as he went to claim it back. "The wind took it."
She smiled as she glanced at it again. "Elena?" She asked.
"Yes. Did Dario tell you her name?"
"He must have. Or you did," She said, handing him the paper. "She's pretty."
"Takes after her mother." He uttered, as he took back the portrait, and, excusing himself for having disturbed the young woman's rest, he returned to Dario, who had already started recounting for Emmanuel all that had happened since last they had seen each other.
"How in the world did you do that?" Emmanuel asked at one point.
Diego only then realized he had not heard a word that had been said at the table since he returned to it. "Did what?" He asked.
"How did you manage to get him off that mountain and to safety?"
"It was not an easy task, I assure you. It took a lot of time, energy, help from my horse, and some really long, sturdy branches." Diego explained. "But, I must admit, I was quite worried for a while…"
"Whatever he did, I'd be dead were it not for him," Dario said. "I'm just sorry about the horse. Father will surely regret losing him."
"Not as much as he would have regretted losing his son."
"Señores," Milagros saluted at passing by them, the wolves following her.
"I think I see it…" Emmanuel said. "There's something about her… She looks like Juliana, but she acts nothing like her. Even the way she walks is different… More confident."
"Yes…" Diego uttered. "By the way," he addressed his brother, "did you tell Milagros about Elena?"
"Ah… I believe so. I think I told her and her mother about having a daughter."
"Yes… But did you mention her name?" Diego insisted.
"I… I'm not sure. Why do you ask?"
"It's probably nothing…" He said as he stood up. "But… I'd better find out for sure."