Coming Home for Christmas by Carla Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

stretching. Laura must have extinguished the bedside lantern, too, which made him smile and think of his own frugal Scots mother.
    Walking to the door that opened onto the courtyard,he stood a long moment in thought, watching the soldiers assemble—most of them lived with their women in the nearby pueblo. In the past year he had doctored many of their families. They generally paid him in tortillas and tamales, and the occasional hen past her laying prime. The families of the officials were more generous because they had more, which meant the occasional blanket—or even a pearl from Panama, paid after he had successfully bored into the skull of a small boy with swelling on the brain after a fall from his father’s horse.
    He looked at the door to his own quarters, still shut, wondering if Laura would have the courage to face her own kind again, since they had turned so relentlessly against her father and her. He knew there was a way to make it happen, but it would certainly test her mettle.
    The first test was coming; he could see it walking across the courtyard right now, heavily laden with breakfast. He stepped aside, nodding his usual greeting to the kitchen hand who brought his morning meal of tortillas and mush.
    â€œ Hola, Pablo,” he said, raising his hand in a friendly greeting. “Como estás?”
    The man smiled his own greeting. Thomas gestured to the table beside the closed door and he set down the tray of food, hot and fragrant from the presidio ’s mess hall. He gestured again to the stool and the kitchen hand sat.
    â€œPablo, I have a problem that only you can help me with,” the surgeon said, after the pleasantries that his Scottish upbringing had learned to offer to these people who seemed to naturally have more free time than his own kind.
    â€œAnything for you, señor, ” Pablo replied. He touched his own arm. “After all, think of what you did when I burned my arm.”
    â€œAh, yes, I did help you, didn’t I?” Thomas smiled. “That is what I am trained to do.”
    â€œOf course, señor, but not even our own garrison doctor—” he crossed himself “—rest his memory, could be bothered with kitchen workers.”
    â€œPerhaps he was too busy,” Thomas replied diplomatically. “I know how that can happen.”
    â€œPerhaps,” the man agreed, but he sounded doubtful. “ Señor, your food will get cold.”
    Thomas nodded. He leaned forward, so Pablo leaned forward, too. “Pablo, yesterday morning I married Doña Laura Ortiz de la Garza.”
    Pablo nodded, his eyes troubled. “She is the daughter of a very bad man. Begging your pardon, but you should not have done that.”
    â€œ She is not a bad person, Pablo. Far from it. I find her most pleasing and charming.” Well, I do, he thought to himself, even if she thinks I am a low-class barbarian. “She feels sad because no one will speak to her now.”
    â€œWhy should we?” Pablo said with a shrug.
    â€œBecause she is my wife, Pablo,” Thomas said gently, feeling a pang in his heart for the woman he had so precipitately married. “I have been a friend to you and many others in this garrison. It would pain me to see her treated unkindly. Especially after I have been so kind to you,” he added, with a sorrowful shake of his head. “It’s just a thought, Pablo. Here, let me open the door for you.”
    Thomas swung the door wide. Laura stood there, her hands tight together. He didn’t think she had heardany of their conversation through the heavy door, but there was no overlooking the dread in her eyes when she came face-to-face with a member—albeit a lowly one—of the garrison her father had cheated.
    There they stood. Thomas gestured to the table. “Thank you, Pablo, for the breakfast. And this is Señora Wilkie.”
    It could have gone either way; Thomas knew that. All Pablo had