“Dare I hope for restraint?”
She frowned. “I’m not secretive by nature.”
“No?” His brows rose, mocking her.
She tossed her lace gloves for want of a better weapon.
He caught the gloves, laughing. “There you go again.”
“And why not, when you provoke me so?”
He folded the gloves together and handed them back.
She snatched them from his hand and turned to the window, sulking. Why did he make such a row about nothing? Nothing? How would she like her misdeeds paraded out for all to read? Oh, Signore, why must you always make me see? She turned back to Quillan and made her face meek. “I was wrong. In my family we talk. We tell stories about each other, even embarrassing stories.”
“You certainly have none of those.”
“Oh, yes. The time I kicked Tony when he beat me in a foot race is a great favorite—Carina’s temper a fine theme.”
“Kicked Tony, eh?”
She rolled her eyes. “I grew out of it.”
“I think I’ll guard my shins, nonetheless.”
She raised her chin. “There have been plenty of times I could have kicked you, wanted badly to. Have I?”
“Not specifically.”
“So there.” She waved a dismissing hand.
“And these stories are told to . . .” He spread his fingers.
“Us. Ourselves. The family.”
“Your parents and brothers and sister.”
She shook her head. “Everyone. Aunts, cousins, godparents. The stories—” she searched for the right description—“they hold us together.”
Quillan seemed to consider that. He grew pensive, and she tried to imagine him with her boisterous brothers telling tales and laughing over misdeeds and mishaps. She felt a deep misgiving. Quillan was not like them. He would be a dove among crows. How strange to think of Quillan as a dove, but the image stuck.
“You’ll see,” she said. But would he? Could he change his very nature? Did she want him to?
FIFTEEN
Why men seek fame I cannot see; ’tis but a call “Come feed on me.”
—Quillan
FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE TRIP, Quillan could not avoid attention. The men wanted to shake his hand. A photographer took his picture. The women found him more fascinating than ever, and he was surprisingly charming. Carina watched with admiration and amusement. Her husband was a hero. And he suffered it well.
Two days later they arrived in San Francisco. Carina’s heart rushed as they detrained near the wharf. The late afternoon was bright and cool with a breeze off the water. But unlike the snow-covered realms of Crystal, the green of spring was starting in the trees. Sonoma would be just awakening. Her heart fluttered.
She stared out past the piers as Quillan oversaw the unloading of his wagon. He tethered the four horses to a rail with the wagon beside them. Joining her, Quillan seemed dazed as he looked out over the water. Hands behind his back, he stared out. “That’s the ocean?”
“The bay.”
“I’ve never seen so much water.” He studied with interest the mighty steam-powered vessels anchored along the piers with some masted ships among them.
Carina half expected his wanderlust to sweep them aboard. And then to Alaska? He hadn’t mentioned it since that once. Maybe he’d teased only. But it wasn’t beyond him.
“Never been on a ship.”
“Well, we’ll be taking a ferry tomorrow. That one there—the James M. Donahue.” She waved a hand. “It has made its final run today, but tomorrow we’ll take it across the bay.”
“How far?”
She shrugged. “Thirty miles, I think.”
“Thirty miles of water.”
“That’s only the bay.” She waved her hand to the west. “Out that way is the Pacific Ocean. It goes forever.” She said it with a jesting smile. “Come on, before the sea lust gets hold of you.”
She led him along the wharf where vendors sold live crabs and lobsters and thick bowls of chowder from stalls steaming with a tangy fish smell. San Francisco wasn’t Sonoma. The briny air clamored with the bustle and purpose of ocean trade. Quillan watched the stevedores along the piers, and she could almost hear him considering the possibilities of such labor. How would he find the rhythmic life of Sonoma, lives so connected to the land the people grew sleepy when the vines were dormant, then came alive with the bloom. Could Quillan ever stay put until harvest?
Not that it meant sitting still. There was much work. Even for Papa, the dottore. Though he tended all who sought him, especially his own people, there were too few in Sonoma to support a surgeon of Papa’s caliber. So he spent hours with a microscope, shipped from New York, studying tissues and creatures too small to see. His studies engrossed him, but he could have done that anywhere.
It was for the land that he’d come to Sonoma. Horticulture became a passion. Of course the grapes, but also herbs and plants for food and medicinal use. Papa loved his land and what it could produce. The climate was perfect. Where else was such a perfect climate, except maybe Sardinia? Papa had known that and chosen his land with care.
“What are you thinking about?”
She startled, glanced up at Quillan with the setting sun sending a glow over his shoulder. “My papa.”
“Care to enlighten me?”
“Oh.” She waved her hand. “You’ll meet him soon enough.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to know a little in advance.” Putting a hand to her elbow, Quillan assisted her up onto the timbered walk.
No, it wouldn’t hurt for him to know something of her papa, but she felt reluctant to elaborate. She stopped before a vendor’s stall. With his pipe between his teeth, the gnarled vendor reminded her of Alan Tavish in a crusty seaman sort of way. Did Quillan see it, too, and was he missing Alan? It freshened her own pang for the friends she had left.
She nodded to the old man. “What do you have fresh?”
“Crabs just boiled, ma’am.”
“We’ll take one. A large one.”
From a pile of red-and white-shelled crustaceans, he pulled one monstrous crab complete with legs and eyes, laid it on a square of paper, and handed it over with a small wooden mallet. “Two bits.”
Quillan paid, eyeing the creature askance. “You don’t really intend to eat that?”
Carina smiled. “Haven’t you had crab from the shell?”
“If I ever had, I’d know.”
She walked to a bench and sat, placing the crab on the paper between them. Holding one pincer, she struck the shell with the mallet, then pulled it apart to reveal the meat. “Try it.”
Quillan pulled the white fleshy fish from the claw, held it up a moment, then put it into his mouth. He ate it, then nodded. “It is good. Though you’d never know to look at it.”
“It’s wonderful. Meraviglioso.”
“Meraviglioso. How do you say crab?”
“Granchio.” She held it up by a claw.
“Meraviglioso granchio.” Quillan hammered the shell and slid a long chunk of crabmeat off the thin, pliant cartilage. “How do you say bay?”
“Baia.”