“Well then.” Gloria made up her mind. “If I was determined before, I am implacable now. We will simply make some adjustments to this tiara, and incorporate the roses into it. Let us experiment, shall we? I shall be very interested to see what fashions this will set.”
“You might get more than you have bargained for,” Isabela warned, helping Ella to lift the tiara off without damage to Gloria’s crown of braids.
“If anyone can manage it, it is Gloria,” Ella said loyally.
So it was that when Gloria met Joe at the top of the hacienda’s staircase and they heard the blast of trumpets outside that was to announce them, his eyes widened. “Are you mad?” he whispered as they descended slowly, her right hand lying regally upon his left.
“I am perfectly sane,” she whispered back. “I have never been one to cause a sensation, but then, usually all one wants for that is an opportunity.”
The double doors were flung open and the lights and lanterns, the enormous crowd, the sound of music, all stilled into silence as Ignatio de la Carrera y Borreaga took a deep breath. His voice, as resonant as that of any Shakespearean actor on the London stage, projected all the way into the third balcony—or in this case, the gardens.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Royal Kingdom, gente de razón and loyal subjects all, may I present His Serene Highness Carlos Felipe, Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias, Defender of the Faith, and General of the Armies of Heaven … and his intended bride, Miss Gloria Diana Meriwether-Astor of Philadelphia!”
The orchestra crashed into something joyful and Sousa-like which Gloria deduced must be the national anthem. Under the singing and the cheers, she was deeply aware of the astonishment, the stares, the whispers as one woman turned to another, then another.
For in front of the rows of sapphires and emeralds signifying land and sea were pinned the red roses of love unto death … which could very well be interpreted as a woman’s feelings for her husband-to-be … or as a silent rallying cry for independence, for female power, for a call to sisterhood.
Gloria smiled brilliantly, inclined her glittering head, and floated down the steps on Joe’s arm, nodding to left and right as they proceeded to the receiving line.
She knew, as did every woman who had ever embroidered a flower on her blouse, that she had just thrown down the gauntlet.
Issued a challenge.
Made her position crystal clear.
It was only a matter of time before someone took up the challenge, and as His Excellency Augusto de Aragon y Villarreal, Ambassador to the Fifteen Colonies, bowed low in front of them, she knew exactly who that was going to be.
Chapter 10
“Your Serene Highness,” the Ambassador said, including every last flourish that court etiquette demanded. “My surprise and delight know no bounds.”
Why? Because you expected the Viceroy to be dead? Gloria did her best to keep her thoughts from her face, but she was not sure how well she succeeded.
Joe inclined his head. “I am happy you were able to come, sir, and leave the affairs of state temporarily. You are acquainted, of course, with my fiancée?”
The Ambassador’s dark, liquid eyes with their disarmingly long lashes took in Gloria from her hem to the starry curve of the tiara. “I am,” he said with admirable brevity. “I am very happy to see that rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated, senorita.”
Since you started them after failing to capture and kill me, I am sure you are. “I was fortunate to have been rescued after being swept into the river, sir. I can only attribute my good fortune now to the will of God.”
“Some mighty hand has certainly been at work,” he agreed smoothly. “One marvels at such power. Perhaps, if His Serene Highness will permit, you might favor me with a waltz this evening?”
So you can grill me like a fish? “Certainly, sir, though of course the Viceroy comes first in this as in all things.”
“Of course,” he murmured, and moved along the line to greet the family.
The challenge had been accepted, then. Neither she nor Joe had failed to notice the hitch in his gaze when it had reached her hair—a hitch that would not have been explained by the sight of the tiara. Jewels the man had to be familiar with. Roses he was not—at court, at least.
He was not alone. Gloria made careful note as the members of the Viceroy’s cabinet and council were introduced. The eyes of some were raised to her own. Others raised theirs no higher than her bosom. And a few took in the roses, including the master of Carmel, who was also the Minister of Defense, with a degree of puzzlement and a sudden cooling of the temperature that told her this man at least might be either better informed or more observant than the average landowner.
When at last the reception line dwindled, the orchestra struck up a contradanza, which was similar enough to a reel or the English set dances she had learned at St. Cecelia’s Academy for Young Ladies that Gloria felt quite comfortable at the head of the set. As the caller announced the figures and Joe translated, she whispered back, “I thought you were no dancer?”
“I’m not,” he said. “But these are country dances. Everyone learns them at fiesta—even the Viceroy. I hope they play a very slow waltz, though, or I’ll embarrass both of us.”
Gloria found herself enjoying the dances, though occasionally Joe would turn in the woman’s direction. That was quickly mended, though, for he was both graceful and light on his feet—and any lapse in memory could be attributed to his recent illness.
Joe made sure his endurance appeared to flag, though, after he had satisfied protocol by dancing with his hostess and the wives of at least three of the cabinet ministers. Then he retired to a small room, where both Gloria and Isabela saw to it that refreshments were brought in for him. She would have stayed had not the Ambassador followed her in.
The less time he spent with Joe, the better. “The waltz is next, Your Excellency,” she suggested. “Since His Serene Highness wishes to rest a moment, perhaps we might take this opportunity?”
She now outranked him, and so he could not refuse her. With a graceful bow, he led her out on the floor, and inside of eight bars of music, he commenced to exact his revenge.
“May I say once again how delighted I am that you have not only survived, but … how shall I put it … come out on top as no woman in this country could have,” he said pleasantly, holding her with utmost respect and guiding her expertly about the floor. They were attracting admiration already, and she must spar and riposte as best she might in full view of hundreds of people.
“However crudely put, I appreciate the sentiment,” she said.
“How did you do it?”
“How does anyone fall in love?” she said with a smile. “One meets, one speaks, one cannot be parted. Is it not so?”
“One works very quickly when up until recently, one was married to another man.”
So you know about that. What an excellent spy network you must have! “That, I must confess, is all His Serene Highness’s work. He has quite swept me away.”
“There are many grandees here who have all they can do to bow to one who has aspired to what rightly might be the honor of one of their daughters.”
She allowed him to twirl her about and catch her again. “They may take it up with the Viceroy if they dare. But to no avail, I am afraid. He is quite fixed in his purpose.”
“And what is that, pray? For I find it difficult to believe that a young man so recently ill and on the point of utter consumption by visions from God can now be thinking of marriage and children. Especially with a—forgive me, senorita—a foreigner.”
“Perhaps the same God he worships has blessed him with a return to health. And I believe it is quite natural for a young man to think of marriage.”
“Natural,” the Ambassador repeated. “His recovery is quite astounding—perhaps not natural, but a miracle of San Luis, who was so poor yet so holy.”
Does he suspect that it is Joe and not Felipe? No,
surely not. “I quite agree,” she said, devoutly hoping that her high color would be interpreted as the result of exertion and not alarm. “We must be sure to make a gift of gratitude to the saint.”
“Perhaps you will do it when you leave and proceed north to San Francisco de Asis. For of course you must. It is the seat of his government, and he has been away too long.”
“Of course.” It is the center of your power, you mean, where you have many allies and we have none. And you sent him away so that you could poison him without guilt. “But His Serene Highness must be fully recovered before he travels, as I am sure you understand. That does not mean he cannot govern, of course. Why, with his ministers here for the celebration, he might accomplish much of what must be waiting in San Francisco de Asis for his return. For of course there are matters that require his approval, not that of—” Lesser men. “—mere landowners, be they ever so noble.”
“You have a quick apprehension of the responsibilities of princes, senorita.”
“I have been well trained by my father.”
“Ah yes. With this news of your engagement, I suppose the matter of the missing arms and mechanicals is now moot, is it?”
She barely resisted batting her lashes at him. “Why, I do not know that they are missing. I imagine they are still where you left them at Resolution. Goodness knows they are too heavy to be moved without the right equipment. Do you have plans to return on Silver Wind to collect the remainder?”
Any satisfaction she might have felt at batting the ball into his court was dashed a moment later as he said, “I have already dispatched troops. It is a small matter, and I am needed here.”
“Oh? Not for much longer, surely, since the Viceroy is recovering more and more each day. I am sure he would have wished you to attend to the matter personally, as it was your commission from the beginning.”
His eyes narrowed and he would have replied, but the music came to an end and he was forced to bow gallantly instead. “Perhaps you might honor me with another, senorita? I am anxious to continue our conversation.”
Her smile held more relief at the conclusion of this round than politeness. “Perhaps later in the evening, sir. I must return to His Serene Highness in case I may perform some small service for him.”
To that there was nothing he could say, and she sailed away, acutely conscious that to right and left, people were bowing and curtseying as she passed, as though her tiara were already a crown.
Let that stick in his craw and choke him.
“You must retire soon, before the Ambassador backs you into a corner,” Gloria told Joe a few minutes later, in the quiet safety of the Viceroy’s private parlor. “He smells a rat, though he cannot see one, and we would be foolish to oblige him.”
“I agree.” Joe ate a handful of dates with evident enjoyment. “I’ve missed these. Mama used to dry them for us.”
Gloria did not think her tight stomach could manage even one. “He wants you back in San Francisco de Asis, so we must stall as long as possible.”
Joe’s intelligent gaze met hers. “I agree, it would be fatal to go. While I spent the first few years of my life in the palace, I do not remember much. At least here we have an ally, and some familiarity with the country.”
Isabela dimpled at him. “I would suggest a relapse, but your recovery has been visible. And I am sure playing the invalid is irksome.”
“It is. I am trapped in rooms when all I want to do is leap on a horse and ride as far away as I can.” Joe’s gaze turned to the window, but with the darkness outside and the lamplight within, all he could see was his own reflection.
“I have a suggestion,” Gloria said. “The whole cabinet is here with their wives and families. What is to stop you from taking up the reins of government right here? We must be about the business of stopping the war.”
Joe considered this for a moment. “You’re right. It’s going to be an uphill battle, but better here than there. The farther I must go from the river and home, the more danger we will both be in.”
“And if we spend many days in building alliances and coercing people and arguing over dinner, it is the business of government and no one may question it without seeming negligent themselves.”
Isabela cocked an eye at her. “You sound as though you have experience in such matters.”
“Only in sitting on my father’s right while he harangued the captains of industry at our dinner table. I watched him play one man’s ambition and greed against another, never dreaming I might have to employ such tactics myself one day.”
“I am glad one of us can—I am handier in a bar brawl than arguing at a table.” Joe looked glum. “So of the cabinet members, which do you think might be most sympathetic to our cause?”
“I do not know, never having laid eyes on them before tonight,” Gloria admitted, “but I will say that the Minister of Culture seemed to be honestly pleased that you were recovering and had found a woman to stand beside you.”
Joe nodded. “Isabela, what do you know of these men?”
“I know that Papa and the Minister of Culture—Senor Peralta—correspond regularly, and he and his family visit more often than the usual once a year. He plays the cello while my father and mother sing.”
“Are there others on equally good terms here?”
She named three more—the ministers of Education, Roads, and Cattle.
“The Minister of Cattle?” Gloria repeated. “That does not seem to be a title to carry much distinction.”
“Oh, but it does,” Isabela assured her. “Cattle—beef—is our principal export, and what sustains our lifestyle on the rancho. Without cattle, what would we grow?”
“Oranges? Wheat? Something of that nature?”
“There are not enough people in the Fifteen Colonies and abroad who enjoy oranges to make it profitable,” Isabela said. “But imagine a table without beef. Unthinkable.”
Gloria had never given it a thought. In Philadelphia, Paris, or London, one’s cook went to the market and came back with a roast, and that was the extent of her experience with beef.
Ella, who had come in with the food as though to serve it, said, “We manage quite well without beef on the river. There is not much grazing land on the mesas, and chickens and pigs are better at surviving.”
But Joe was not thinking of cattle, pigs, or chickens, it was clear. “So we may possibly count on four out of twelve. I believe we had best get to work as soon as may be. Isabela, would you ask your father to bring Senor Peralta here? We shall begin with him.”
She slipped out, and in less time than it took for Joe to peel a prawn and eat it, Ignatio de la Carrera was bowing himself into the room, Senor Peralta on his heels.
“Your Serene Highness, it gives me great pleasure to see you so well,” the minister said, taking in the napkin with which Joe wiped his fingers, and Gloria sitting beside him as though supervising the consumption of each morsel.
Which she was. They had fed a bit of everything to the cat in the garden, so far without ill effects. And Gloria had seen the sealed bottle of wine opened in front of her.
“Thank you, Minister,” Joe said. “I think it must be the sea air and the beneficence of San Luis himself. Please, both of you, be seated.”
The men settled on the sofa opposite, so comfortable in one another’s company that Gloria could almost relax.
“I understand that members of my cabinet wish me to return to San Francisco de Asis, where there are weighty matters of government to attend to.”
“True, Your Serene Highness, but no one wishes to interrupt your recovery with a journey, now that it has begun,” the man assured him.
“Just so. I wonder if you would approach each of your number quietly, Senor Peralta, and advise them not to partake too heavily of their wine this evening. I wish the cabinet to be convened in the morning in order to receive the news you have for me, and to make you all cognizant of my own plans.”
Peralta’s eyebrows rose. “Of all thing
s—save the news of your wedding, sir—that would please me most.” He glanced at Gloria with a smile.
She returned it—a real smile, not the Vicereine’s smile she had been practicing all evening.
“But surely you do not mean to interrupt the celebrations of your engagement, sir?” de la Carrera protested. “The singers have arrived, and tomorrow night will perform the cuento of your romance with the lovely Senorita Gloria. And then there is the rodeo, and at least three more balls—”
“My dear friend,” Joe said, looking alarmed, “I may be recovered enough to sit in a chair and speak to my cabinet, but as for sitting in the sun to watch a rodeo—or listening to all seventy verses of the cuento—my heart fails me at the thought.”
“We have many weeks in which to celebrate,” Gloria put in with a combination of deference and reason that seemed to allay the initial shock at her speaking at all. “The reins of government have been slack for too long as it is. I have encouraged His Serene Highness to put the Royal Kingdom first before his own natural inclination to celebrate our joy with his people.”
“Of—of course,” Peralta said, blinking rapidly. “Admirable. Wonderful. Si, I will see that it is done. We will convene here, then, at ten o’clock?”
“Perhaps your lady might arrange breakfast?” Joe suggested to their host.
“Of course.”
They bowed themselves out and Joe took a deep breath of both relief and determination. Had she not been corseted so tightly, Gloria might have done the same.
“That’s one hurdle over,” he said. “Now all we have to do is tell them how their lives are going to change. Do you suppose they’ll throw rotten fruit at us, as though we were in the stocks?”
“Mama does not serve rotten fruit,” Isabela said crisply, rising to her feet. “If you do not mind, I want to go and dance, though the partner I most wish for is not here.”
“The partner I most wish for isn’t here, either,” Gloria told her, taking her arm and walking out with her. “Let’s see how long I can avoid the Ambassador. Do you think that if I dance with every grandee in the country, I can pull it off?”
Fields of Gold: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 12) Page 10
