Carson sat quietly at the far end of the table, eating, adding to the conversation when Santos asked a direct question, but otherwise ignoring everyone.
Including Aurelia herself. Her ire began to rise. No wonder she hated Catorce. It had the most dreadful effect on everyone.
Then her mother announced siesta.
“I have invited Pia and Zita to stay over for siesta, Relie. I knew the three of you would want to visit while you rest.”
Dutifully, they rose from the table. Santos stopped them.
“Remember,” he cautioned, “no one outside this room is to know about Relie’s return. Papá and I will inform the servants. We want to draw the train robber out of hiding if we can. And we certainly don’t want to set her up as his target.”
Agreements were mumbled.
Aurelia caught Carson’s eye the moment he started to speak. He hesitated, then spoke.
“I hope you told that to the feller she’s engaged to marry.”
Even though his words indicated concern for her welfare, his voice carried an alarming tone of indifference.
“I’m not engaged to marry anyone,” she retorted.
“He means Enrique, dear,” her mother chided.
Carson’s eyes held hers. She glared at him, feeling moisture brim. “I am not engaged to Enrique,” she spat, then turned on her heel and raced from the room.
“You must tell us all about it.”
“You look all right, but are you?”
“How did you get away from that criminal?”
“What was he like?”
Aurelia stood behind the screen in one corner of her bedroom, stripping off her soiled traveling clothes. Her friends’ babble settled over her rattled nerves, soothing her with its familiarity. Finally, submerged in the steaming sitz tub, she called to them, teasing.
“He was wild.”
She heard Pia gasp.
“Wild and wicked.”
“Tell us,” Zita demanded.
“If you want to,” Pia added.
“Tell us,” Zita repeated. “What did he do?”
“How did you get away from him?”
Aurelia laughed. “I figured you would want to talk about other men. Santos, for instance, or that handsome Texas Ranger who will be best man.”
“Best man.” Zita’s voice swooned over the screen. “Carson Jarrett certainly fits that description.”
Not until she had dried and buffed her body, then showered it with rose-scented talc and wrapped herself in a heavy cotton dressing gown did Aurelia consider telling them the truth.
The jesting had come naturally. Yet, once begun, she wasn’t sure she wanted to share her time with Carson with anyone. Not even with her two closest friends.
By the time Aurelia finished her bath, Pia and Zita had removed their day dresses and donned wrappers for siesta. The three girls settled into Aurelia’s soft feather mattress, propping themselves on several pillows each.
Aurelia studied first one, then the other.
“I know that look, Relie,” Zita warned. “You are hatching another scheme.”
“Please don’t—” Pia began.
Aurelia laughed. “What would you give to know a secret?”
The girls’ eyes popped—Zita’s with delight, Pia’s with guarded understanding.
“Since you are both involved, I suppose you are entitled to know the truth. But you can’t tell a soul. Not anyone. Not even Mamá and Papá can know until Santos gives the word.”
Zita nodded eagerly, while Pia continued to smile as if she knew what was going on.
Aurelia glanced from one friend to the other. “Carson Jarrett is the prisoner.”
Chapter Nine
By the time the girls dressed for dinner that evening, Zita was still agog with the notion that the prisoner they had helped escape death by hanging was none other than Santos’s friend, his best man, and a Texas Ranger, at that.
“Santos hoped that’s who he was,” Pia admitted. “Wouldn’t it have been dreadful if we had let them hang him?”
Aurelia blanched.
“Why didn’t he tell the authorities who he was?” Zita questioned.
“I don’t understand all of it,” Aurelia hedged, determined not to reveal that part of her promise which involved the problems at the mine. “It was some silly bet he and Santos concocted while they were herding cattle in Texas.”
She had chosen a pink brocade gown with an off-shoulder treatment of tulle for dinner. Now she worked her hair into a twist, which she secured with golden combs.
There was more to the story than the mine difficulties that she hadn’t told them. They didn’t know, for instance, that Carson was falling in love with her.
And they certainly did not know how she had tricked him into making love to her in the cave.
Nor had she told them the lengths to which Nuncio Quiroz had gone in the tunnel chapel. At dinner, she began to regret leaving out one of those pertinent facts.
Doña Bella had prepared the elegant comedor of the Mazón mansion to reflect the family’s thanksgiving for the safe return of their daughter. The pale pink silk-covered walls glowed from the reflection of new candles in the three brass chandeliers. The black marble mantel was topped by white candles, masses of red roses, and the carved figurines of several of the family’s patron saints: the Virgin of Guadalupe, San Francisco de Asís, Santa Bárbara, and Aurelia’s own saint, Santa Cecilia, on whose day, the twenty-fifth of August, Aurelia Cecilia Mazón had been born.
White candles, red roses, and gleaming brass adorned the length of the linen-covered dining table, which when fully extended could seat twenty-four diners. Tonight a couple of leaves had been removed, allowing ample room for the ten diners but no more.
Those ten diners, however, soon became too many to Aurelia’s mind—a fact that had nothing to do with Santos’s objection that Doña Bella had invited Padre Bucareli and Sister Inéz from the convent school.
“Padre Bucareli spent a fortune on white candles,” Doña Bella told her son. “And Sister Inéz said a novena. They are entitled to know their prayers were answered.”
“If the wrong people discover Relie’s presence in Catorce, we may need more than prayers to keep her alive,” Santos had retorted. But his objections had fallen on deaf ears.
Then there was Enrique, whom Doña Bella seated beside Aurelia. Of course Enrique had been present when they arrived today. And Enrique had been warned to keep his mouth shut. How well Aurelia recalled that. Carson’s accusation that she was betrothed to Enrique still rang in her ears, along with the fact that he did not appear to have believed her denial.
Grimly, she knew her mother’s seating arrangement would only strengthen the notion.
Doña Bella did love a balanced table. And since a private dinner was one of the few times señoritas were allowed to sit beside caballeros, no one usually objected.
That, in itself, was not Aurelia’s objection tonight.
She did, however, object to being seated at one end of the table beside Enrique, who tried his best to monopolize her attention, while Carson was paired with an obviously enthralled Zita at the other end.
Aurelia could deliberately look down the length of the table at Carson—that is, if she wanted to call attention to herself. But since the few times she tried Zita had been falling all over him, Aurelia soon gave up.
Besides, Carson had not looked her way one time that she noticed. If only she had mentioned to Zita that he was falling in love with her, perhaps her friend wouldn’t have made such a fool of herself.
Aurelia regretted her omission.
Zita did look beautiful. In a bronze silk Mousseline de Soie, she appeared much more mature and fashionable than Aurelia had ever seen her. They had all grown up, she thought. All three of them.
Was it Pia’s approaching marriage?
Or the ordeal in the chapel?
She chanced a peek at Carson. How handsome he looked in crisp white shirt and black cropped
jacket. Handsome enough to cause a girl to want to grow up.
Talk centered around the ordeal she had been through, the difficulties they faced in keeping her safe from the escaped prisoner.
“Our local police will want to question you,” her father was saying.
“I will not allow such a thing,” her mother retorted from the far end of the table.
“At best they will insist on coming here to interrogate her. She can help them get a handle on the whereabouts of this fellow.”
“For the time being, Papá,” Santos objected, “we must not let them know Relie is here. No one in Catorce, beyond those of us at this table, must learn of her return.”
Aurelia ate her sopa de pechuga pollo, absently scooping a piece of chicken from the soup while trying to concentrate on her own situation. Being a prisoner in Catorce had been bad enough. Now it seemed she was to be held prisoner in her own home.
Santos, she discovered, had considered her situation. “Since I’m taking bulls to Guanajuato for the feria, why not let Relie come along? She can stay with Tío Luís and Tía Guadalupe.”
Aurelia caught herself in time to stem an overwhelming urge to resort to childish begging. In spite of her determination not to do so, she glanced down the table. Carson looked up at the same time and held her gaze. But where they had once warmed her with their softness, his eyes were now as cold as silver ore.
“Fine idea,” her father responded to Santos’s suggestion. “If Relie agrees. Before her ordeal with that criminal, she had decided against the trip.”
“Por favor, Papá,” she pleaded. Was she to be her own undoing? she wondered. Must she continually get herself out of messes of her own making? “I want very much to go to Guanajuato.”
Her eyes held Carson’s as she spoke. She felt her breath catch at the need welling inside her. What was he thinking? Why did he not smile? Abruptly, his attention returned to his plate.
When would she find a chance to talk to him? And how, in this household that suddenly seemed bent on keeping them apart?
“You would have to return in time to have your final fitting for the wedding,” Doña Bella objected.
“Can’t I do that before we leave?” She watched her mother consider the idea.
“I suppose we could arrange for Señora Velez to stop by again tomorrow,” Doña Bella replied at length.
“Again?” Aurelia questioned.
“She dropped the gown off yesterday. Said it might lift our spirits to see it, help us hold onto the hope you would return safely in time for Santos’s wedding.” Her mother’s hand pressed against her heart. “Praise Saint Cecilia, you did.”
Aurelia smiled weakly, picking at her meal, waiting for her mother to work her way through the situation.
No one else spoke, and finally Doña Bella changed the subject, a tactic Aurelia knew meant she had agreed, reluctantly, and did not wish to discuss it further. “The color of Relie’s gown is divine, Pia. You chose well. That shade of yellow will be glorious in the cathedral.”
“I’m sure the color will be lovely on Relie, too,” Enrique offered quite unexpectedly.
She turned startled eyes to him.
“Yellow should become you,” he added, as though once spoken, the observation needed amplifying.
Suddenly, she recalled those same words.
Spoken not three days ago.
By Carson.
She looked up.
He was staring at her. His eyes were soft again. Warm again. They fired her spirit.
“I guarantee it, señor.” He spoke softly, this time holding her attention with his wry grin, his dancing eyes. “Yellow definitely becomes Aurelia.”
The next thing she heard was Santos clearing his throat.
But before Santos could speak, Carson added, “Although I must say, pink adds a touch of much needed color to her cheeks, since her ordeal with the train robber.”
“Much needed color?” she retorted, but her mouth was dry, and her words sounded hoarse. From the corner of her eye, she saw Zita clap a napkin to her mouth.
Enrique’s voice babbled from near her right shoulder. “Why, Relie, you’re blushing. I mean…ah…pink does add color to your cheeks.”
Santos’s voice boomed from the other end of the table, and for once she welcomed his interference.
“You say Quiroz has not missed a day at the mine since the prisoner escaped?”
“Not a lick,” Don Domingo replied.
“Well, what did he say for himself? How did he explain letting such a thing happen?”
“Enrique here talked to him,” Don Domingo answered. “Tell him, hijo.”
While Aurelia grimaced at her father addressing Enrique as son, Enrique launched a lengthy explanation of how he had interrogated Nuncio Quiroz.
She picked at her food, knowing she shouldn’t worry but tense nonetheless, lest her charade be discovered. She certainly had not expected Nuncio Quiroz to admit his attempt to rape her. But if he implicated her at all, surely such a sordid fact would emerge. Fortunately, it seemed his job as mine superintendent was important to him, important enough that he had returned to work for her own father directly after that dastardly assault.
Listening to Enrique’s voice drone on beside her, she began to wonder how he would react were she to suddenly blurt out the truth. What would he say if he heard how Nuncio Quiroz had attacked her in the darkened chapel?
Her fantasies came to an abrupt halt at the reverse of such a tale—the story of how Carson Jarrett had come into her life.
“Jarrett and I have laid our plans for tomorrow,” Santos was telling their father. “First thing in the morning, we are going to the mine and have a talk with—”
“Con permiso,” Carson interrupted. “With your permission, Santos, considering what we have heard tonight, maybe we should rethink our approach.”
With the discussion turned to more normal things like train robberies and lost shipments of silver, Aurelia began to relax. She ate the main course, chicken in mole sauce, drank the deep red wine, and was grateful that Carson kept his attention on mining and off her.
As long as he kept it off Zita as well. With dessert, a rich almond and rice pudding, she began to reproach herself for such a disloyal thought. Surely this meal would end soon.
But if she had expected tensions to decrease with the end of dinner, she would have been disappointed. At her mother’s signal the party adjourned to the drawing room, where Enrique stood possessively beside her chair. Directly in front of her, standing to one side of the black marble fireplace, Carson swirled a brandy, his long bronze fingers curled seductively around the voluptuous glass. Zita twittered at his side.
Zita, who had never shown the slightest interest in boys. She skipped directly to men, Aurelia thought.
Would this evening never end? In a far corner of the room Santos and Pia engaged in quiet conversation, and with Zita monopolizing Carson, the family was left to quiz Aurelia at length about her ordeal.
She was sorry, dreadfully sorry, to have worried them, but their questions were tiresome, especially since they bore no relation to the truth, but rather to a fantasy hatched in the immature brains of her two friends, the sort of fantasy she had trained them to concoct.
In all, the entire evening had been tiresome—Enrique babbling in one ear, Zita twittering to Carson in the other. And her mother—if Aurelia heard her mother praise Saint Cecilia one more time, she vowed she would scream.
Immediately, she repented. Remorse returned. She was the one to blame for worrying her family by such irresponsible acts as robbing a train and releasing a prisoner. Surely there had to have been another way. She recalled expressing the same sentiment before they left the ranch.
Her eyes shot to Carson. No. There had been no other way. The idea he had insinuated at the ranch came to mind, the idea he had stopped short of expressing in front of Santos. At the time she had not understood the way he shook his head, the look in his eyes, when she stated that sur
ely there had been another way to save him from hanging for her crime.
Now she understood.
Seeing him now, handsome and courting Zita, she understood exactly what had been in his mind. As in a puzzle, the pieces fit neatly together. If every little piece had not fallen exactly as it had, everything would have been different. Nothing would have been the same.
If she hadn’t robbed those trains, the Federales would not have been looking for a train robber. And if Santos hadn’t asked Carson to come early, he wouldn’t have been in the vicinity to have been captured.
Which, in turn, led to her meeting him, which led to her helping him escape.
Even Nuncio Quiroz played a vital role in this drama. If she had not believed Nuncio Quiroz had raped her, she would never have tricked Carson into making love to her. And if he hadn’t made love to her…
He wouldn’t have fallen in love with her.
Without those four days alone in the wilderness, he would never have known her.
Suddenly, Santos’s teasing about her taking to trail life popped into her mind. She smiled. She had handled herself admirably out there, and Carson had been along to see it. Otherwise, he would have known her only as she would be at the wedding—a maid of honor in a yellow dress who lived in a mansion in an opulent city from which she was desperate to escape.
Enrique’s words filtered through her overworked brain. “Relie, I was asking whether you might like to come to the Casa de Moneda tomorrow.”
She frowned up at him. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, I can’t very well be seen at the mint, since no one is supposed to know I am in town.”
“They say you are good at disguises.”
“They?”
“Sister Inéz and the other nuns from the convent school.” He laughed. “They have been talking of nothing else since the…ah…the abduction. You know how it is. When you think you have lost someone, you remember all their…ah…their…”
She tilted her chin, defiant. “Outrageous schemes? Is that what the town has been talking about, Enrique, while I was off fighting for my life? My outrageous schemes?”
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 14