Chapter 6
She was a bold one. He had to give her that. Damn girl. He cut himself shaving, thinking of her, his fingers clumsy as he dreaded heading down for supper. All morning he’d hidden away in his room, alleging he had a headache when the maid brought him the tray with his breakfast.
How could he have been so careless, so stupid?
He should have burned the damn letters, but he’d saved them in case things didn’t work out and he needed to keep running the postal scams. His father would never have committed such a gaffe.
His father had been clever. Ulises was an inept shadow of his old man.
As the hours passed, he calmed down. If the girl had spoken to her aunt, he would already have been shoved out the door. Perhaps she was afraid.
There was no sense in hiding from the firing squad, so he went downstairs at the appointed time and sat down at the table with the Zorrilla sisters and Nepomuceno. Perla and Inés arrived shortly after, and the maid began serving everyone.
The conversation was ordinary. Talk of the weather, the food they were eating. The sisters fondly discussed their childhood while Nepomuceno tried to convince everyone that they might want to have a brandy, but no liquor was served.
After supper, Inés offered to help take away the dishes and bent down next to him.
“I told you to give it a try,” she whispered.
He stared at the girl as she straightened up and walked around the table, taking the other plates to the kitchen. Bold indeed! She was challenging him, practically waving a red flag before a bull. Her smile, as she walked out of the dining room, was dazzling.
If she thought she was going to intimidate him or force him to accept her as a partner in this scheme, she was wrong.
He’d show her. One date with Perla and she’d be head over heels, and then no amount of poison this girl might try to pour into her ear would have an effect.
Besides, she was probably one of those people who pretend to have guts rather than someone with true audacity.
If he dragged her in front of Perla, the girl would crumble.
Anyway, he might as well give it a try, as she said. Put his plans in motion.
“Miss Inclán, I’m wondering if we might go for a ride?” he asked. “We could look at the mountainside. Nepomuceno was talking about a waterfall nearby that I have a thought to photograph.”
He hadn’t had a chance to be alone with her. They’d walked around the town square the day before, and they’d had meals together, but except for that one brief conversation when she’d welcomed him to the house, there had always been others around them.
“I suppose we could, although it will probably rain later,” Perla said, as she reached for a cigarette. “It would be best if we stayed home.”
He quickly lit it for her, fingers nimble upon his lighter. “But the sky looks lovely outside.”
“The rains shall come.”
“Nevertheless, I’d love to drive up to the mountains. I promise I’ll be careful with your car.”
Perla seemed to consider his proposition as she gazed at him and blew a plume of smoke. “Fito will take us there. You don’t know the area, Mr. Linares. The mountains can be treacherous.”
“Are you going to the Devil?” the girl asked loudly. Like a treacherous imp, she seemed to emerge from the blackest of shadows and smiled as she snatched his dirty glass.
“What?” he replied.
“The Devil’s Chair. You get a view of the trees and the mountains from there. Although if you want to photograph the waterfall, you must go higher.”
“Interjecting yourself into conversations when you haven’t been invited to contribute is impolite,” Perla chided her.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Perla. Will you be having coffee?” the girl asked, lowering her eyes with a demureness that was patently false.
She brought his coffee and it was so hot it scalded Ulises’s tongue, and he fumed in mute fury.
Shortly after that, Perla and Ulises were in the car, with Fito serving as their chauffeur, which meant they were not alone, which further irritated him.
The driver whistled a tune as he turned the wheel.
Ulises found the noise annoying, but Perla did not seem bothered by it and he clapped his mouth shut, not wanting to be rude.
As the car moved toward the outskirts of town, he began to see orange trees, then banana trees and coffee trees, which thrived on the rugged mountain range. Mandarin and lime trees were also sprinkled here and there.
Then the surroundings changed, and they abandoned the farmable lands, heading into the humid pin oak and hickory forests.
The trunks of trees were encrusted with orchids and bromeliads, and the soil was blanketed with ferns.
The lower slopes had long been turned into farmland, the old-growth forests chopped down, but in the highlands the ancient trees enshrouded the mountains.
He quickly realized why Perla had asked Fito to drive them. The road that led up the mountain was a collection of sinuous turns and potholes.
“This is Paso de Valientes,” Perla said.
The ravine below gave him vertigo. “It’s a wonder people use this road with any regularity.”
“During the Revolution soldiers used this path. And before that, Santa Anna’s forces marched through here,” Perla explained. “Perhaps one day someone might come to grow coffee, perhaps not.”
At last, Fito stopped the car and pointed at a waterfall that thundered down a rocky cliff.
Ulises stepped out of the car, pulled out his camera—he hadn’t had the heart to sell this one, and anyway, it wasn’t expensive—and took a few pictures.
Perla and Ulises looked at the waterfall with its perpetual veil of mist while Fito stayed in the car.
Against this backdrop of natural beauty, he planned to make his advance. It was a pity that Fito was close by, but Ulises was ready to recite a few lines of poetry for the sake of Perla, with or without the driver in earshot. Yet before he could utter a single word, the rain began to fall.
“We must go,” Perla said.
“It’s a drizzle,” he protested.
Perla rushed back to the car. He followed her.
The rain fell lightly over their heads until they reached the area with the fruit trees.
At that point, it poured down from the sky with abandon.
Water sluiced down the mountain. Cactus fields were turned into mud pits.
Fito whistled more songs as he drove. When Ulises looked at the driver in the rearview mirror, he thought there was a mocking tinge to his face.
Perla seemed remote, looking at the droplets that slid down the car’s windows.
At last, they were back in the town and the guesthouse came into view. The distance from the vehicle to the front of the house was but a few paces, and yet by the time he opened the car door for Perla, offered her his arm, crossed the patio, and walked inside, his clothes were drenched.
“You should change,” Perla said. “You’ll catch a chill.”
She was right. Despite the temperate climate, the rain felt like ice on his back. He hurried up the stairs and peeled off his clothes, changing into a dry shirt and trousers. Then he combed his hair and went downstairs again. He heard music coming from the sitting room and headed there.
Perla had also changed and was at the piano. He stood next to her, and she continued her playing. Chopin. At last, her hands stilled, and she looked at him.
“Brava,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said primly.
“You must have had a good music teacher.”
“I did. My father thought it was important that we learn music, he said ladies of quality played the piano. Not that it matters nowadays. People are more likely to want to listen to the radio.”
“Yet you remain a lady of quality.”
She didn’t smile with her mouth, but he could tell she was pleased by his words. “Of course.”
“Although, to be perfectly frank, I’m not certain I know how to behave myself around a lady of quality,” he said, with an open and friendly look that edged on the guileless. “They’re difficult to find these days.”
“This is true. But then, young women are not properly educated. When we were growing up, we had a governess who spoke perfect French. Our mother inculcated in us correct manners. The Manual de Carreno was second only to the Bible. We were taught respect for our elders, love for our country, and the decorum necessary to inhabit polite society.”
“You were taught well, I’m sure.”
“Absolutely.”
“I had the impression, from the moment I arrived, that you belonged to one of the best families in town.”
“There was hardly a better one, when I was a girl. My sister and I, we were treated like princesses, and my brother was a prince.”
I’m sure you were a spoiled, stuck-up brat, he thought, but he spoke softly. “They died, you said. Long ago?”
“Yes. Inés has been my charge for many years now. I do what I can for her, but she’s not as rigorously educated as we were.
The war did much damage, not only to the finances of the best families of Puerco Ahogado, but to the moral fiber of this nation.
Inés thinks more about sewing pretty dresses than her prayers. And yet she is my niece and my ward.”
“My father told me the same thing—may he rest in peace.” Ulises made the sign of the cross. “He said that the Revolution coarsened the nation.”
“It’s true, sadly. When I was young the world was made of a different kind of material.”
“You’re still young.”
“No. Not for ages now.”
She sounded as serious as a Mother Superior and twice as dull as she spoke with her thin, bloodless lips, her fine hair pulled back from her face. Nevertheless, he smiled and caught her hand, pressing a kiss against the back of it as gently as Romeo with his Juliet.
“Dear lady, you must forgive me for my impertinence and permit me this caress,” he said, and he looked into her eyes.
He thought she’d melt at that. Instead, her face seemed to harden. No maidenly blush colored her cheeks. She stood up, looking aggrieved, and withdrew from the room. He was left in utter shock.