As for the part he himself was playing in the damned mess…
Vicente tried to brush off his growing uneasiness. He’d been a thief all his life. The only difference was that now all he was stealing was her chance at happiness. If it was the price he had to pay for her aunt’s help, then so be it. Miss Rodriguez would be unhappy in her marriage but she would have food and clothes and a roof to sleep under every night. Vicente, with his dwindling stack of pesos, had only a vague plan and Elba Rodriguez’s word standing between himself and the grinding poverty he’d fought so hard to escape.
Escape it he would.
The dinner had gone even better than he’d expected. Ciudad Real society was not an accepting lot when it came to outsiders, but a fancy suit and an introduction by Elba Rodriguez had led them to believe that he was, if not precisely one of them, at least one of their sort, and any irregularities in his behavior could be explained away by the fact that he was from somewhere else. He’d heard more than one overdressed society belle whispering about the dashing foreigner; it amused him as, in his regular clothes, he’d be so unimportant he wouldn’t draw a single glance unless he were on fire… and likely not even then.
More important than that, they had listened to what he had to say and allowed him to take part of the conversation as their equal as they never would have if they’d met him on the loading docks. For the duration of the dinner party, he had felt what it would be like to be a part of it all.
In another lifetime, perhaps—Vicente had no illusions about his place in their world. A job at the Medinas’ factories was all he could hope for and much more than a child thief from the slums of Santiago deserved.
Still, as he laid back on his lumpy cot later that night, the image of Graciela Rodriguez appeared in his mind’s eye and he saw again the way her eyes glimmered in the candlelight, bright as the pearls ringing her long, graceful neck. She hadn’t seen him standing in the shadows when she’d burst into her aunt’s study a few days before, just as she hadn’t seen him shadowing her every step for the past three months. But she’d noticed him tonight. For the first time, he’d been the recipient of her attention and the weight of it had threatened to unspool the tightly coiled desire in his belly.
To think that Alvaro Medina, with his millions and his good looks, couldn’t manage to make her happy. Vicente had no hope of ever attracting the notice of someone like her but if it were to happen, by some freak of fate…
Vicente knew plenty of ways to keep a woman satisfied and only one of them involved grasping her by that stubborn chin and plying her lips with kisses. It was obvious from watching her that she was in serious want of affection, but perhaps part of her unhappiness stemmed from the lack of something to turn that sharp mind to—an occupation of sorts, though he knew it was unseemly for women of her station to work. To feel like her thoughts were being heard, her ideas taken into consideration…the very thing he himself lacked and was trying desperately to get.
Though after seeing how dismissive Medina was with his own fiancee, Vicente hadn’t much hope for his chances to convince the man he was worth listening to.
Turning to his side, Vicente closed his eyes and saw her again. Graciela Rodriguez was a mystery he wouldn’t mind solving and if Medina didn’t feel the same way, then more fool he.
Chapter 4
If she wasn’t certain her aunt would find a way to drag her back, Graciela would have run away. She would buy passage on one of the fashionable steamers that stopped on the northern coast of the island and head for New York, where her dark skin and accented English would make her the darling of the crowds as she sang the songs of her homeland from a darkened stage. Her voice, plaintive and melodious, would curl into the silence and ensnare the hearts and minds of everyone in the audience.
The fantasy lasted only as long as darkness did. Graciela couldn’t sing if her life depended on it and, having no money of her own to speak of as her inheritance could not be claimed until after her marriage, neither could she run away.
The sun was shining through the louvered shutters when she went down to breakfast and saw Alvaro, sitting at Aunt Elba right hand with a cup of coffee and a folded newspaper in front of him, for all as if he already lived there. Something cold slithered over Graciela—dread. She might not have been well versed in the intricacies of romance but surely a girl shouldn’t feel dread when facing her betrothed?
“I’ll look over the papers with my man of business,” he was saying, “but I don’t know if I can do much until after the wedding. Mother’s sparing no expense on the festivities— she’ll drive me to ruin if I’m not careful.”
Alvaro and Aunt Elba chuckled. As far as Graciela knew, Alvaro’s family’s fortune was so large that the thought of a single person driving him to ruin was as ridiculous as it was impossible.
Otherwise, she might have tried her hand at it.
“I’m grateful to your mother for taking on the responsibility,” Aunt Elba said. “Putting together a wedding in three weeks is certainly beyond my capabilities.”
Graciela hated the obsequious tone in Aunt Elba’s voice. She had been running Graciela’s grandfather’s factory for almost eight years—that took more capabilities than arranging for flowers and musicians. She knew it, and Aunt Elba knew it, but Alvaro nodded along as if agreeing. “She’s happy to, but I shouldn’t like her to overextend herself. I was hoping to persuade you to host the dinner party for the Board.”
“I’d be happy to, Alvaro. It’s the least I could do after all the trouble your mother’s going to. I’m sure Graciela would enjoy helping me with the details. That would allow me to carve out some time to take a meeting with your man and clarify some of the points of my proposal—”
“Next month, perhaps,” Alvaro said, and the casual dismissal made Graciela’s hand curl into a first. She glanced at Aunt Elba, but if she shared Graciela’s anger, she did not show it as she sipped her cafe con leche.
Graciela felt a grim sort of satisfaction to see her aunt’s efforts thwarted, even though it only meant that she would be even more insistent that Graciela go through with the wedding. Graciela was planning to thwart that effort as well.
Silently, Graciela slid into her seat at the table. Alvaro turned to her, apparently finished with the conversation.
“Have you many things to do today, darling?” Alvaro said, with an indulgent smile that made Graciela’s fingers tighten around her porcelain cup.
“To the shoemaker’s, to have him change the strap on my new shoes. I sent my maid last week but she got it all wrong and now it’ll have to be redone.”
Alvaro frowned and looked at Aunt Elba. “Don’t let her go until I’ve a moment to accompany her.”
“That really isn’t necessary,” Graciela began to protest, but Alvaro interrupted her.
“I’d rather you don’t call on tradespeople on your own.”
Graciela felt her face growing hotter and her breath coming faster, as it tended to when in her betrothed’s company. In a minute, she’d be panting like a charging bull. “If this is about what happened last month at the butcher’s, I can assure you—”
“Not at all,” Alvaro said, exchanging another glance with Aunt Elba. It was the same look that had gone between them when they’d heard that Graciela had threatened the butcher’s brother with dismemberment because he’d shortchanged her on pork chops.
She hadn’t, actually, but she had been sharp with the man. He’d been filling in for his brother, who’d gone out of town to his wife’s mother’s funeral, and though he may have been a perfectly competent temporary butcher, he was not a nice man. First he’d overcharged her, then he’d implied she could pay for the order with something other than money. In his defense, he’d been quite drunk, and in Graciela’s defense, she hadn’t struck him upside the head with her parasol like she’d wanted to.
A friend of Alvaro’s mother had come inside just as Graciela was telling the butcher’s brother to stuff his pork chops someplace no por
k chops should ever be stuffed and in recounting what had happened, had embroidered the story somewhat until it seemed like Graciela might as well have dragged the man into an alley and chopped bits off him to put into the stew.
The story hadn’t reached Mrs. Ferrer or the other members of the Board, more was the pity, and what was worse, ever since then, Alvaro and Aunt Elba had treated Graciela like a teakettle that might explode any moment. Thought they hadn’t said anything outright, Graciela could tell they didn’t trust her to do anything as simple as run an errand without proper supervision.
“I don’t need to be escorted to the shoemaker’s. By you, or anyone else,” she added, glaring at Aunt Elba, who matched her look with one of her own.
“Don’t sulk,” Alvaro said, reaching over to chuck her under the chin. “You’ll have your shoes soon enough. As a matter of fact, you may go to the department store and charge a new pair to my account. Charge half a dozen of them if you like.”
She’d charge every single pair in La Parisienne if she thought it would make him reconsider his engagement. But as she’d thought before—it would be devilishly hard to for a single person to make any sort of dent in his family’s fortune. That was the main reason Aunt Elba had championed the engagement.
Graciela put down her cup, misery threatening to engulf her.
She banished it instantly. There was a way to get out of the engagement, and she was going to find it. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.
Smoothing the linen napkin she had crumpled into a tight ball on her lap, Graciela raised it to her lips and laid it beside her plate as she forced herself to smile. “That’s all right. I might call on Beatriz instead. She has a new hat she wants me to see.”
Satisfied with this apparent show of docility, Alvaro rose from his seat. “I’ll see if I can make some time to take you to the shoemaker’s later this week.” He paused at the doorway. “Walk me to the door, my dear.”
Graciela followed Alvaro into the foyer, where one of the housemaids was waiting with his hat and silver-topped walking stick.
“I’ll take you dancing next week,” he said, ignoring the maid and grasping Graciela by the elbows. “So get yourself the prettiest pair of dancing slippers you can find.”
“I don’t want slippers.” Graciela looked into Alvaro’s dark, gleaming eyes and said, “I don’t want anything except my freedom from you.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Alvaro said, laughing as he dropped a kiss onto her lips. “I promise I’ll make the time to take you to the shoemaker’s sometime this week.”
He left, and Graciela didn’t bother returning to the dining room. Telling the maid to call for the motorcar, she took her parasol from the stand in the corner and slammed out of the house.
The ride to Beatriz’s house did nothing to quell her anger. She was almost fuming when she entered the drawing room in which Beatriz was embroidering. From the great quantities of red thread that had been used on it, Graciela guessed her friend was working on another gory battle scene.
“I hate him,” Graciela said as she flung herself into a chair. “I hate them. They treat me like a child—they won’t even let me go to the shoemaker’s on my own.”
She’d tried to, but either Alvaro or her aunt had given the chauffeur strict instructions to take her only to Beatriz’s house. She would have jumped out of the motorcar and gone on foot, just to prove she could, but it had rained the night before and she was wearing her new shoes with the little cuban heel and the suede would spoil if it got wet.
She could see her future stretching out in this manner: Alvaro instructing the cook to make only the food he thought she ought to eat, the modiste to make only the gowns he approved of…
It was enough to make Graciela want to scream but Beatriz was looking more amused than anything. “I heard Mrs. Imbert tell Alberto Moya that you attacked the butcher with a smoked ham.”
“The reports of the incident were greatly exaggerated,” Graciela said with what dignity she could muster. “Not that it’s done me any good. Not a single member of the Board has heard a word of it, not even Mrs. Ferrer—she must have taken up residence under a rock. I might have to make an appointment to see her and tell her of it myself.”
“I doubt she’d care,” Beatriz said, reaching for the pincushion on the small round table beside her. She snipped off the thread that connected the needle to a depiction of a dismembered body and stabbed the needle into the cheerful felt tomato. “Mama says she makes sport of haranguing the help in every store she goes to.”
“How very aristocratic,” Graciela said, and even she could hear the bleakness in her voice.
The amusement in Beatriz’s face softened into sympathy. “Surely there’s no need to go to such lengths just to break an engagement. Have you tried talking to Alvaro?”
“It’s no use,” Graciela said. “He doesn’t take me seriously. I doubt he ever will.”
“If you do marry him, it would mean freedom from your aunt. Just think of all the things you can do as a married woman that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.”
Graciela shook her head. “It would mean exchanging one kind of captivity for another.”
Beatriz leaned forward as far as her corset allowed her. “Graciela…I don’t mean to sound harsh but I have to know if you’ve thought about the consequences of what you’re doing. If you’re successful—if you manage to do something so scandalous that Alvaro’s forced to cancel your engagement—it won’t only be his family who will snub you. Your name would be on everyone’s lips and if I know Montsant society, not a kind word will be spoken on your behalf. There’ll be no invitations to dances or garden parties. You’ll be alone. Forever.”
“I know,” Graciela said in a low voice.
“And you don’t care?”
The touch of incredulity in Beatriz’s voice made Graciela look up and say, almost grimly, “I do care. You’ve no idea how much I care. It’s not only my place in society I’ll lose. I won’t have a hope of making any sort of match—not even with the butcher’s brother,” she added, hoping to tease a smile out of Beatriz.
It didn’t work. Her friend was fixing her with a gaze so piercing, it almost seemed as if her brown eyes could see right into Graciela. “And you’re willing to lose it all just to rid yourself of Alvaro.”
“That and much else besides.”
She might come to regret it, but Graciela knew she would regret marrying Alvaro even more.
Graciela felt a soft touch on her arm and looked down to see Beatriz’s small hand curling around her own.
She would lose plenty, it was true—but maybe not all.
“Then I’ll help you,” Beatriz said, giving Graciela’s hand a squeeze. She sat back in her chair, asking briskly as she began to thread a fresh needle with a deep violet, presumably to fill in the penciled-in viscera scattered among the human remains, “Well, let’s have it—what will you do next?”
Some of the men in Alvaro’s set were planning a high-stakes game of cards for the end of the week— Graciela had overheard them making plans at Mrs. Gonzalez’s supper. No women had been invited—no respectable woman would want to be—but Graciela planned on attending anyway. It would be the perfect opportunity to embarrass Alvaro, and to lose some of Aunt Elba’s money besides.
The Board would certainly frown on their Chairman marrying a gambling woman, especially one who lost vast amounts of money in a single night. All Graciela had to do was make sure they heard about it.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Graciela gave her friend a smile. It was not altogether steady, but something in it eased some of the worry in Beatriz’s expression. “But I’m sure I’ll manage to work something out. I don’t know if you heard, but I’ve quite a knack for getting into trouble.”
Chapter 5
Save for her stint at the bawdy theater, Graciela had never spent any amount of time in a place as deliciously dissolute as the gambling hall where Alvaro and his friends were holding the card game. She�
��d had to hire a taxi, as she’d never be able to persuade either her aunt’s driver or even Beatriz’s to take her to such a place, and, though she would confess it to no one, she had quailed a little when the motorcar had rattled away and she’d found herself alone on the waterfront.
In addition to the pungent aroma wafting from the docks through the high, barred windows, the room—or, rather, its ratty rugs and luridly-patterned curtains— was impregnated with scent of rum and cigar smoke and a cheap, pervasive scent that made Graciela wonder who made it and if they dared call it perfume.
Though Graciela had dressed in one of her most daringly cut dresses, it possessed more than a quarter yard of fabric and was thus positively frumpy beside those of the scantily clad girls that were scampering around the room, jumping from lap to lap and generally making sport of the men sitting at the tables.
Graciela was looking interestedly at one woman’s ensemble, which seemed to consist of nothing more than a scrap of lace and a handful of beads, when the crowd parted and Alvaro emerged, looking so worried that Graciela felt a pang of guilt.
“Graciela, is it really you?” he asked. “Is something the matter? Has your aunt taken ill? You should have sent someone for me, not come yourself.”
“Why, nothing’s wrong,” she said, tossing her head to make her earrings sparkle festively. “Except that you forgot to invite me to your game.”
Daniel Ortiz, one of Alvaro’s friends, elbowed his way to where they stood in time to hear her.
“Do you play cards, Miss Rodriguez?” he asked, looking amused.
“I’ve never had a chance to learn but perhaps you’d like to teach me. It can’t be all that difficult if you can do it,” she added with a flirtatious smile. More and more curious glances were coming her way and now that she had an audience, Graciela made ready to play the part of coquette for all she was worth.
The Infamous Miss Rodriguez: A Ciudad Real Novella Page 3
