But she could endure a little discomfort, she told herself, anticipating the excitement that would soon build inside her.
With the help of María, Aurelia did her hair up in curls, finishing just as Tía Guadalupe peeked in to tell her it was time to leave for the Teatro Juárez.
“My dear, you will turn every head in the house tonight. Why, Doña Masania won’t have a chance. You will receive all her curtain calls.”
Aurelia tugged on the long white gloves and picked up her black velvet pocket, inside of which Mamá had placed a lace handkerchief and a pair of opera glasses.
The latter had belonged to the young Bella Lopez. At last her daughter had arrived in the city and could use them herself.
“Hurry, dear, we must not be more than fashionably late this evening. Since we are sitting in the governor’s box, he and his lady have the honor of arriving last. Once Tío is elected governor, we can make our own grand entrances.”
The Reinaldo house was even more elegant than the Mazón mansion, with uniformed servants scurrying to every beck and call, and liveried doormen and footmen.
City living, Aurelia sighed to herself. Real city living. And here she was, about to be launched into society at long last.
Tío Luís and Santos awaited them in the foyer, and Aurelia fairly beamed at seeing her brother in his evening clothes.
“Santos! How elegant you look in black silk.”
He stared at her as though he were looking at a stranger, his lips pursed, his eyes solemn. He leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Little Relie, I’m afraid Jarrett was right. You are a woman, beautiful and…” The word he refused to say died on his lips.
She smiled, warmed by the mere recollection of Carson’s statement. Deliberately, she straightened her sleeves, drawing attention to the deep décolletage of the gown.
Santos heaved a heavy sigh. “You are sure to win every heart at the theater.”
Tío Luís turned to allow the servant to whisk specks of lint, dust, and other invisible objects from his black silk cape. “Then they will be broken, these hearts she wins, will they not, my dear? Since your heart belongs to Enrique.”
She started to protest, but Tío Luís handed the servant his cigar to extinguish and they got on their way. In the excitement that followed, she forgot her uncle’s assumption.
The Teatro Juárez glittered like a giant jewel in the night sky. Arriving carriages deposited their prestigious occupants in front of what Tío Luís described as a French-Moorish facade. Two tiers of marble stairs led to the entrance, which was guarded by a dozen graceful columns, each with its own ornate lamppost. Overhead, six enormous bronze statues stood atop the building, guardians of the muses, she heard someone explain. By that time, Tío Luís and Tía Guadalupe were well past the stage of playing tour guide.
“Tío certainly acts the part of a politician,” Santos whispered in her ear. Together, brother and sister hung back, watching their aunt and uncle greet every person they passed.
Aurelia studied her aunt, chin aloft, head bobbing in a regal fashion. “What a grand manner Tía Guadalupe has.”
“Looks like she’s trying to keep her tiara from slipping.”
“Santos, for shame!” But Aurelia was hardpressed to keep from giggling.
“Enjoying yourself?” Santos questioned.
“I’m enjoying the show.”
“The spectacle,” he replied. They followed their relatives up a red carpeted staircase to the front of the theater, where a uniformed guard checked the guest list, then admitted them to the governor’s box with a deep bow.
“Carmen cannot possibly be more entertaining than all this,” she told him. Once inside the box, however, the grandeur of the building took away all thoughts of her pretentious relatives.
Five tiers of seats swept around the auditorium, each one fronted by ornate railings and glowing lanterns. Every surface reflected light in burnished shades of gold and red and green. It was a fairy-tale land that came close to blurring the vision with its splendor.
Her perusal was interrupted by a jab in the ribs from Tía Guadalupe. “The governor, my dear. We must rise.”
Governor Benevides and his wife entered to a fanfare of applause from their invited guests.
Aurelia watched the governor and Tío Luís embrace. “What Tía Guadalupe said must be true,” she whispered to Santos. “About the governor choosing Tío Luís to be his successor.”
“Lucky for Tío the governor is so popular,” Santos added. “Although Tío seems more agreeable tonight than I remembered him.”
Studying the gentlemen and ladies who followed the governor and his wife, Aurelia knew they were the elite of Guanajuato society. She had arrived.
Like her mother before her, she was being introduced. The next step would be the City of Mexico. She waited expectantly for the opera to begin and for her excitement to mount.
Several members of the governor’s entourage were single men, who upon discovering Santos to be Aurelia’s brother instead of a suitor, immediately launched suits of their own.
She smiled sweetly, laughed gaily, and compared each and every one of them to Carson Jarrett.
Was José as witty?
Did Juan speak as softly?
Would Jorge be as adept in the wilderness?
None were as handsome.
None had as bright a smile. None of their eyes were as warm. And none of them fired her blood or even came close to it.
So when Tío Luís leaned forward to tell a young swain, “Look but do not fall in love, young man. She is taken by the president of Casa de Moneda Mazón,” Aurelia was able to reply, “Do not worry, Tío, I won’t forget I am spoken for.”
At the first lull, she whispered to Santos. “Do you think he might come tonight?”
“Who?”
Before she could respond, she saw the answer dawn in his eyes. He studied her with a wistfulness she did not understand. “When Jarrett says something, Relie, you can bank on it. He told you he would be here in time for the charriada, and he will be.”
The orchestra began the overture. Patrons scurried to take their seats. A bright face appeared over her right shoulder.
“Allow me to introduce myself, Señorita Mazón. I am Antonio Suarez. Tomorrow I will fight one of your family’s famous bulls at the Fiesta Brava. I will dedicate him to you.”
She felt herself smile. She heard her voice thank him. The curtain rose; the crowd applauded.
And all the while Santos’s words etched themselves deeper and deeper into her heart. When Jarrett says something you can bank on it. But the only words she could recall him speaking were the ones he had spoken in the patio the night before she left Catorce, when he told her brother it wasn’t likely he would marry her. And that was one thing she did not want to bank on.
After four days of crawling through tunnels and poring over records, Carson was sure of only one thing: He would never be able to spend his life below ground. A man had to be plumb feebleminded—or crazed by gold fever—to work below ground day in and day out. Arising before sunrise and not crawling back out of the bowels of the earth until dark, he never felt sunshine or smelled flowers, never saw the morning dew with the sun glinting off the grass, never heard birds sing.
And these men did not work for riches, but merely because they knew no other way to make a living.
Some living, he was reminded day after day. By the time they arrived home at night, they were too tired to make love and too aware of the dangers facing them the next day to get drunk. Some life. A wonder there were so many children running around the miners’ village.
The sight of these children had instilled a new fear inside Carson. Every time he saw a child run through the streets, he thought of Aurelia and wondered what kind of fools they had been, taking such a chance with her future. What if she had conceived his child? The idea needled him continually, sometimes with a depressing sense of guilt, other times with a swelling of pleasure.
&n
bsp; The latter was always tempered by what a child would mean to Aurelia. She wasn’t ready to become a wife, much less a mother. But the more he thought about it, the more certain he became that the fact was all too possible.
Aurelia a mother? The mother of his child? He thought of her every waking hour and dreamed about her at night. Aurelia, his guardian angel. Once again, he had failed to take care of her.
He didn’t speak her name. He was afraid to, afraid of what he might say, how his voice might sound. He recalled teasing friends about being lovesick. Well, now he knew what that term meant.
And it was no joking matter.
The more he considered it, the more he was sure some of their outlandish teasing had shown itself for what it was. Was that why Don Domingo seemed determined to prove to him that his daughter was unavailable?
As if he had not emphasized the point enough before she left, after Aurelia and Santos departed for Guanajuato, Don Domingo pursued Enrique Villasur’s case at every opportunity. He began the first morning after their departure, when he insisted on personally escorting Carson to the mine.
“In case that son of mine didn’t make clear that you are to be shown around. Wouldn’t want the guard refusing you access, would we? You coming all this way to learn the mining business.”
Carson had not questioned Santos’s reasons for wanting to keep his mission secret from everyone except themselves and Aurelia, including his own father. He had supposed the man might be given to verbosity.
And indeed the elder Mazón was a talker. But he stuck mainly to one topic: the virtues of Enrique Villasur. Don Domingo had nothing else on his mind, causing Carson to decide that it might not be himself who was jealous of Enrique so much as Santos.
Don Domingo went further than merely referring to Enrique as hijo; he treated the man like a son. To all appearances, Santos had been banished to the ranch, while Enrique was being groomed to take his place, not only in Catorce but in his father’s favor.
“The Villasurs are old friends of the family?” Carson slipped the question into one of Don Domingo’s discourses on his mint president.
Don Domingo laughed broadly. “No, no. We have never met the folks. Their blood is too rich for us.” Then as if reconsidering, he grasped his lapels with two pudgy fists and puffed up his chest. “Or it was.”
“You mean before the…ah…the betrothal?” Carson asked, wondering how anyone’s blood could be richer than Don Domingo’s. It must be royal purple.
“After Relie marries their son, they cannot very well look down their noses at the Mazóns, can they, boy? We will be family then. And I might add, they will be the poor relations.”
“You mean the Villasurs are on hard times?”
“No, no. Not hard times. They are Castilian. Old Spanish. Never did have much in the way of money. Name and prestige, that’s what they are worth. They are the ones who spoke up for me, convinced President Díaz to give me the mint.”
“In exchange for the presidency for their son?” Carson ventured, trying to keep any trace of disapproval from his voice.
“More or less. Of course, I was free to choose.”
“Of course,” Carson replied. Like Aurelia was free to choose where she lived, whom she married.
After that, Carson considered he had learned two valuable lessons since Aurelia left: He could never live or work beneath the ground; and in Catorce he would not be allowed to live or work above ground, either. Certainly not as Aurelia’s husband.
Coming on the heels of that revelation, Carson’s first meeting with Nuncio Quiroz since Santos’s introduction came off better than he had expected. The man virtually ignored him the first few days, having immediately turned his care over to a man they called Beto, his second in command, an infinitely more congenial man.
But Beto had not assaulted Aurelia, a fact that Carson admitted made a big difference in the way he felt about the man. The uneasy feeling of being recognized by Quiroz the day Santos introduced the two of them lingered and grew as time went on. Sooner or later, Quiroz was bound to put things together.
An enthusiastic miner, Beto readily showed Carson every aspect of the mining business, even though he spoke so rapidly that Jarrett had to occasionally ask him to repeat himself.
“Despacio, por favor,” Carson would say. After which the man would obligingly slow down his rapid-fire speech.
Although it had nothing to do with Beto’s detailed instructions, a couple of days after Aurelia and Santos’s departure, Carson began spending more time in the mine office. He even started taking lunch there. Not that he found inaccuracies in the records. He didn’t know enough about mining to be sure, but the records looked in order, professional.
What kept him at the mine was one of the same things that would keep him from marrying Aurelia: Enrique Villasur. The man had become so constant a guest at the Mazón mansion that Carson would not have been surprised any day to return and find Enrique settled in permanently.
It was easier, he told himself, to fix a lunch in the kitchen and spend the time in the office. That was the only time of the day he could be sure of not being bothered, anyway, the only time he had to peruse the books without anyone around. Siesta was observed with a devoutness that bordered on holiness. And it was so for him, for siesta always reminded him of Aurelia and the last time they made love.
He wondered what she was doing. Wondered whom she was meeting, with whom she was dancing, whether the charros were handsome and dashing. He knew they would set their sombreros for Aurelia.
She was beautiful and exciting and as unpredictable as a blue norther. And yes, as he had told Santos, she was strong and passionate.
And that’s what might have gotten her in trouble. Both of them. If she carried his child…
What if she carried his child? She hadn’t even thought of such a thing, he knew. Neither had he. They had been careless and irresponsible.
He had exercised no control. He wasn’t sure he was capable of such a thing where Aurelia was concerned. And if she carried his child, he would be hardpressed to be sorry, except for the misery and heartbreak it would cause her.
What would he find in Guanajuato? Was he to be a father? If not, he vowed to exercise control for both of them. In a city full of people, he knew there would be little time for privacy, and with Santos around to bird-dog them, they wouldn’t be able to find privacy if they looked.
The day before he was to leave for Guanajuato, Carson was so consumed by thoughts of Aurelia when he entered the mine office that he acknowledged the presence of Enrique with a simple “Buenas días,” before he stopped to consider why the man was seated at the desk entering data in a ledger book.
“I keep these records, Jarrett. Did no one bother to tell you?”
Carson shook his head, while his mind raced to put facts together. “Fair enough,” he responded. “Perhaps you can explain the process to me.”
“Nothing to it,” Enrique replied, somewhat more cordial than usual. After thirty minutes, Carson had to agree.
“Nothing to it, long as you know what you are doing. Where did you learn all this stuff?”
Enrique rocked back in the barrel-shaped office chair and twined his fingers behind his head. “Here and there. A couple of years at university, most of it by hard work in Mina Pizarro up in the Andes.”
Carson raised his eyebrows, recognizing the field by name. “Don Domingo failed to mention that you come with prestige of your own. No need to rest on your family’s laurels.”
“My family’s laurels?”
Carson grinned. “No need for modesty, Villasur. Any family with connections to the country’s president shouldn’t neglect to use them.”
For a moment Enrique appeared not to comprehend, then he had the decency to blush, raising him a notch in Carson’s estimation. If the man’s family had bought him a position at the mint and marriage to the owner’s daughter, he did not readily acknowledge the fact.
Especially not to a man he considere
d a rival, Carson discovered when Enrique spoke again.
“What exactly is between you and Relie?”
Now it was Carson’s turn to color. Try as he might to stem it, he felt heat rush up his neck. “Santos calls it a thing.”
“I am not familiar with such a term.”
“No need to be alarmed,” Carson assured him. “Not much chance it will interfere with your plans.”
Enrique eyed him with growing hostility, even though the physical difference between the two men would suggest to any able-minded soul that a fight would be considerably one-sided, against the mint president.
“She is to be betrothed to me.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“We are to be married soon after Santos and Pia.”
“Does the lady know?”
“She did,” Enrique challenged, “before you came to town calling her pet names.”
Carson’s eyes flashed. One more day and he would be out of this place. No sense rising to the fight now. Especially not a fight that was as unmatched and as unnecessary as this one. His fight with Enrique Villasur would be won or lost between himself and Aurelia.
Enrique did not appear to understand that fact. “In our country, familiarity with a woman who is not your wife is forbidden.”
What about with a woman who will be the mother of your child? Carson immediately rebuked himself for not putting that notion behind him. But the fact that he was unable to stop thinking about it gave him further cause for concern. The image of Aurelia carrying his child had become so vividly etched in his brain that he knew it must be true.
And if it was?
“I wouldn’t worry too much, Villasur. A man faces a lot of problems in life, and you would be surprised how unimportant some of them can make a little thing like a pet name.”
But it wasn’t unimportant. His name for Aurelia held a great deal of importance—for both of them. She was his guardian angel.
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 20
