Coming Home for Christmas Read Free

doomed to stay in San Diego, when the crewsails. My lieutenant promised me to your fort’s captain and here I remain.”
    â€œMay I sit with your patients again tonight?” Father Hilario asked.
    â€œYou know you may.” Thomas shrugged. “I doubt the foretopman will know you are there, but Ralph Gooding will probably challenge you to chess.”
    â€œPerhaps I will defeat him this time,” Father Hilario said with a chuckle.
    â€œUnlikely. Consumption may be rotting his lungs, but his brain is nimble.”
    They sat in companionable silence. With a frown on her face, and her lips pursed in a way that Thomas had to admit could be distracting to a weak-minded man, Laura left the shack, nodding to the two men as they sat together. Idly, Thomas noticed she had an attractive way of walking that set her skirts swinging.
    Thomas, you’re a dolt, he thought. “Something is distracting her,” he murmured, enjoying the view. Me, too.
    â€œIt’s a touchy thing,” the priest said.
    Thomas waited for the man to continue. He seemed to be weighing a matter of delicacy. “If it’s of the confessional,” Thomas began, “I would never presume…”
    â€œNo, no, that is not it.” The Franciscan sighed. “It will be out soon enough, I fear.”
    Thomas felt an icy hand clutch his heart, which startled him, considering that Laura had never given him any reason to think of her in too friendly a manner. “She is in trouble?”
    Father Hilario shook his head. “It is her father, the accountant.” He shrugged. “Which, I suppose, puts herin trouble.” He turned to look at Thomas and lowered his voice, even though the market square was bustling and noisy. “He has been caught, so to speak, with his hand in the till.” He peered closer. “Do you understand that idiom?”
    Thomas nodded. “It translates well into English, Father.” There are scoundrels everywhere, he thought, feeling suddenly sorry for Laura. “What happened?”
    The priest shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it takes a man of strong character to resist greed.” He gave Thomas a knowing look. “Those of us with no fortune and few prospects are never tempted, are we?” He looked around and leaned closer. “Some say he is a gambler.”
    â€œOuch,” Thomas said. “What will happen?”
    â€œIf this is true, Señor Ortiz will be trundled off to Mexico City for trial.”
    â€œLaura?”
    The priest shrugged again. “She has no family here. I suppose his fate will be hers, as well.”
    Thomas thought about the misfortunes of others as he returned to the garrison. Even though it had been a long time since the crew of the Splendid had been liberated from the fort’s noisome cellar, he had seldom walked past the presidio ’s open gate without a feeling of relief. And now the royal accountant was cooling his heels in that miserable hole. Too bad for him.
    He decided not to worry overmuch about Laura; she must have friends in San Diego to look out for her. At least she wasn’t thousands of miles away from people who spoke her language or practiced her religion. As his own father had told him on occasion, a little humility never did a body any harm.
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    He mentioned the matter to Ralph Gooding, the carpenter who lay in bed with fever-bright red spots in his cheeks, as classic a presentation of consumption as Thomas had ever seen. Poor man. Gooding had come to Thomas’s attention several years ago when the Splendid had rounded Cape Horn in a monstrous storm and entered the Pacific.
    Thomas had finessed Gooding through good moments and bad, but the disease was finally taking its inevitable course, no matter how balmy the air in San Diego, or how plentiful the seafood and other choice victuals, now that they were no longer imprisoned.
    Ralph had been cajoling Thomas to take ship with the coastal lug