The Infamous Miss Rodriguez: A Ciudad Real Novella

by Lydia San Andres

  Laughter came from everyone but Alvaro, who was looking more thunderous by the moment. “This is no place for a woman. Frias!”

  Alvaro’s chauffeur appeared by his elbow. “Take Miss Rodriguez home,” Alvaro told him.

  “Oh, but I did have my heart set on doing a little gambling tonight. I even brought all my allowance. What do you say, Mr. Ortiz? Would you dare take me on?”

  “That’s enough, Graciela. You’re embarrassing yourself, and you’re embarrassing me.” Alvaro took hold of Graciela’s arm, just above the elbow, and lowered his voice. “I brought the Germans here for a bit of fun and I will not have this getting back to the Board. Is this display of grievous judgement a way of punishing me for not letting you go to the grocer’s by yourself?”

  “It was the shoemaker’s. And it isn’t, not a bit,” Graciela said, lifting her chin even though her arm was beginning to hurt. “It’s about my wanting to be free of you.”

  Alvaro gave a dismissive wave with his free hand. “I only mean to protect you from vulgar gossip. You’ll be a Medina soon, and I won’t have you talked about. You are not the sort of person who cultivates scandal and it does not suit you to act like one.”

  Graciela had done nothing but cultivate scandal for months. She opened her mouth to say so, but Alvaro spoke first. “It’s my own fault, I’ll admit it. I have been far too indulgent with you, and so has Elba. But that will end soon enough.”

  Graciela tried to wrench her arm out of his grasp. “I won’t marry you, Alvaro. You may have bought Aunt Elba but you haven’t bought me.”

  “Really, Graciela, of all the ridiculous things to say. I haven’t bought anyone and I would appreciate it if you’d stop making a fool of yourself. Everyone’s looking.”

  “Let them look.” His fingers were digging into her skin and even though she knew he didn’t mean to cause her any harm, her arm was beginning to hurt. “Maybe they’ll be so kind as to make sketches or even take a photograph and pass it around.”

  Sadly, no one obliged, not even Ortiz. Instead of rushing off to spread what was probably the best scandal of the year, the men and women in the crowd remained clustered around them, gawking. All save for one. He’d pushed his way to the front of the crowd and was now stepping forward, saying, in a voice loud enough to be heard over the whispers, “Let go of the lady.”

  Graciela had often been accused of being contrary but Alvaro tightened his grip on her arm at the command.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked, and Graciela wondered the same thing before she realized she’d seen the man before.

  It was Mr. Aguirre, the man she’d met at Mrs. Gonzalez’s dinner. “Let go of the lady,” he said again, not bothering to introduce himself. He wasn’t in evening dress and in his rough work clothes and cloth cap, he could have been any one of the men clustered around them, obviously eager to see a fight.

  But no blows landed between the two men. Alvaro, having looked over Mr. Aguirre and realized he’d be at a disadvantage, raised an eyebrow instead of a fist. “The lady,” he said, his tone faintly mocking, “is free to do whatever she wishes. Including getting the hell out of here,” he added, looking down at her.

  “I’m to take her home,” Aguirre said. “Her aunt sent me.”

  “Then take her, by all means. And tell her aunt to make sure she doesn’t go wandering again. Gambling halls aren’t suitable places for gently-bred ladies.” His voice caressed that last word again, making sure it sounded as though he believed Graciela was anything but.

  Transferred from the grip of one man to another’s as easily as if she were a sack of sugar, her arm and dignity bruised, Graciela didn’t feel particularly ladylike. She shook off Mr. Aguirre and flew at Alvaro.

  She would have landed a nice blow, but Alvaro easily pushed her away, with a little more force, perhaps, than he meant to use. Graciela’s bottom struck the filthy floor with a muffled thump and the sound of rending cloth and she had a moment to see the surprise in Alvaro’s face before Mr. Aguirre stepped into her line of sight and smashed Alvaro in the face with a powerful fist.

  *

  As his fist connected with Alvaro Medina’s nose, Vicente saw his plans crumble before his very eyes. He’d known it would happen from the moment he’d gone inside the gambling hall but what else could he have done?

  Grimly, he led Miss Rodriguez out of the hall. She was shaken, and would have followed him without a word, but Vicente wasn’t taking any chances. He took her—gently— by the elbow, the satiny fabric of her glove slippery against his palm.

  The stench of brine and rotting fish of the docks was as familiar to him as the alleys winding from the waterfront. Revolting as it was, it was a marked improvement from the overpowering smell of drink and cheap perfume that had filled the gambling hall. A handful of whores stood among the barrels and crates, gazing at him and Miss Rodriguez with unveiled curiosity. Miss Rodriguez gazed back and Vicente prayed silently she wasn’t getting any new ideas.

  He released her the moment they arrived at the Rodriguez’s motorcar.

  “That’s my aunt’s Packard,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Did she really send you?”

  “Yes,” he replied curtly, waiting for her to arrange her skirts before slamming the door and going around to the other side. Though he ought to have sat in front beside the driver, visions of her popping open the door and disappearing into the night made him slide into the rear-facing seat.

  Miss Rodriguez sat across from him, her dress torn, her white gloves smudged, and her hair falling out of its pins, frowning as she examined a stain on the palm of her glove. After attempting to remove the skin-tight garment herself, she stretched a hand toward him. “Would you help me? They’re devilishly tight and sticky with—I’d rather not contemplate with what, exactly. Tell me, Mr. Aguirre, do you think they’ll be talking of this tomorrow? Daniel Ortiz saw everything and he’s such a gossip—he and all four of his sisters.”

  He ignored the fingers that were waving in front of his face. “Have you no idea of the kind of trouble you could get into in places like that?” he said furiously. “The kind of men who visit gambling halls—your betrothed and his fine rich friends included—would think nothing of engaging an innocent girl like you in a game of cards and cheat just in order to put you more and more in their debt. And then,’ he said, leaning forward so as to give his words a maximum impact, “they would claim it.”

  Though he’d hoped that his words would make her quail in her little heeled slippers, Miss Rodriguez looked unconcerned at the thought of having her virtue gambled away. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Here,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “Just give it a good tug and it’ll come right off.”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying? Coming to these sort of places would put your virtue—your life, even—at risk.”

  “I’m not innocent,” she replied. “And I didn’t need to be rescued. I had a plan, which you ruined, so you might as well be helpful now and help me with my gloves.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Miss Rodriguez. You might not care if half the world sees you dancing in your drawers but at least have a care for your safety.”

  He was so angry that at first he didn’t notice the way she stiffened. She’d drawn her hand back into her lap and her gloved fingers were clenched tightly. After the way she’d flown at Medina, Vicente might have found it prudent to put some kind of shield between himself and that small hand, but she didn’t close the distance between them.

  “How do you know about that?” she asked sharply. “Have you been following me? Did my aunt hire you to follow me?”

  “Your aunt,” he said, “asked me to make sure that you—and your reputation—came to no harm. And you are not making it easy.”

  “I know,” she said, and tossed her head. “And I don’t plan to stop. What arrangement has she made with you? Am I to be followed everywhere, as if I were a common criminal?”

  “Until you stop behaving like one, yes.”

>   “I haven’t done anything illegal.”

  “You stole a shawl from the department store last month. That was not legal.”

  That made her pause. “I returned it when they didn’t notice I’d taken it—a pity, really. Having the papers run stories on the Thieving Heiress would have been very helpful. For how long have you been following me around, without my having noticed?”

  “Three months, more or less,” Vicente said.

  “Then you know about—”

  “Everything.” He leaned back and watched her. Light and dark fell over her face as the motorcar rolled through the narrow streets, letting him see that far from looking embarrassed, Miss Rodriguez looked intrigued. A part of him—a large and growing-more-prominent part of him—wanted to pull her onto his lap so he could examine her expression more closely. Well. That, and other things. He had counted himself among the rogues who’d like nothing better than to have his way with her, if it wouldn’t have resulted in the loss of everything he’d worked for.

  Trying not to think of the fact that he had probably just lost everything he’d worked for, Vicente said, “I know about everything you’ve done.”

  “Are you an investigator? You said you were an industrial engineer,” she said accusingly.

  He shrugged. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you worked for my aunt?” she asked.

  “Because I don’t.” Not anymore, not since he’d walked off the loading docks at the factory and told her what her he’d be willing to look after her niece—for a price. “I’m lending her my services in a temporary capacity.”

  “Lending her your services? You can’t expect me to believe you’re doing this,” she said, waving a hand, encompassing the motorcar, her torn dress and his bruised knuckles in a single gesture, “out of the kindness of your heart.”

  “I didn’t say that, now did I?”

  A horrified expression dawned on her face. “You’re not her lover, are you?”

  He let out a surprised laugh, to which she responded with a glare. “You needn’t be so amused. It was an honest question.”

  Vicente swallowed back his laughter. “Your aunt and me? I’d be terrified.”

  “Why are you helping her, then?”

  “That’s for me to know,” he said.

  She would have likely continued to question him but they had already crossed the bridge and were speeding along Paseo de los Flamboyanes, which was only a couple of streets away from her aunt’s townhouse. She sat back against the leather upholstery, eyeing him thoughtfully, no doubt wishing her reputation could be compromised by being seen riding alone with a man, like in the olden days.

  But at that hour of night there were precious few people to see her as she alighted from the motorcar the moment it came to a stop in front of her aunt’s house, without waiting for Vicente or the driver to let her out. She paused at the front door and raised an eyebrow at Vicente as he followed her into the street. Under the light of the street lamp, the beads in her dress glimmered like sunlight on water.

  “Well?” she asked impatiently.

  “Well what?”

  “Don’t you want to escort me upstairs and bind me to my bed to make sure I won’t get out of it again? Otherwise, my aunt might not be inclined to honor your agreement, whatever it is.”

  The image came to him of her bound to the bedposts by the wrists, her hair loose around her bare shoulders and her luminous dress in a puddle at her feet. With a great deal of effort, he banished it from his mind.

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” he told her, mindful of the driver’s presence just behind him. “But I would be obliged if you would carry out your schemes at a decent hour so I might be able to get a good night’s sleep. We might meet during the week to work out a schedule convenient to us both.”

  It was too dark to tell for certain, but Vicente was sure the corner of her mouth was twitching with suppressed laughter. “Good night, Mr. Aguirre,” she said. “If that’s really your name.”

  Someone—probably her maid—must have been standing right inside the door because it opened at that moment, and Miss Rodriguez vanished inside.

  Vicente was still staring at the door when a voice come from behind him. “She’s trouble, that one.”

  Vicente looked inside the shiny blue Packard. The driver was leaning back in his unenclosed seat and nodding towards the front door, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the darkness.

  Picturing her inside the gambling hall, unfazed by the whores and the men in various states of undress and intoxication, Vicente couldn’t help but nod in agreement. “Don’t I know it.”

  Chapter 6

  Graciela’s attempt to become a degenerate gambler had crashed and burned and once again, she was out of ideas and well on her way to running out of time.

  There wouldn’t even be gossip as the only ones who’d seen her at the gambling hall were Alvaro’s friends and they would stay silent out of loyalty for him. She’d tried to work it into a conversation herself, during a garden party hosted by Mrs. Santiago, but Teresa Santiago had chosen that moment to fall into a dead faint, stealing all the attention for herself.

  The only other person who knew was Mr. Aguirre and he was clearly not going to say a word.

  The matter seemed like it had been put to rest but on the day of the garden party, Alvaro, whose nose was still swollen and blooming with bruises, had approached Graciela as the other guests clustered around the fallen Teresa. “You’ve had your little rebellion. I expect you to behave now. You know what I’m trying to accomplish and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you undermine my efforts.” He leaned closer, but refrained from touching her. “And I won’t have anyone saying I don’t know how to keep my women in hand.”

  “I’m not yours, Alvaro,” she’d told him.

  “Not yet. But you will be, soon. And when you are, I will not allow childish fits of temper.”

  His words were still echoing inside Graciela’s head when she went down to breakfast on the following Wednesday morning.

  Her aunt had scheduled a fitting with one of the more fashionable modistes in the city later that day. Under different circumstances, Graciela’s dress and trousseau would have been purchased abroad. Now, she would have to make do with Miss Polanco.

  Having informed Graciela of the appointment, Aunt Elba retreated behind El Diario Nuevo, leaving Graciela to sulk in silence.

  So busy was she glaring at the newspaper that covered her aunt’s face that she almost missed the headline that sprawled across half the page—twenty-eight suffragettes had been arrested after attempting to chain themselves to the President’s front gate in order to protest his refusal to acknowledge the question of female suffrage. At dinner the previous week, Mrs. Medina had remarked that it was a pity how these days not even the best families were spared from having suffragettes pop up among them. The Board would hate it if Graciela were to become one of them.

  A smile spread over Graciela’s lips. She set her cup of coffee down on its saucer and, ignoring her aunt’s inquiries as to her plans for the day, marched resolutely out of the house.

  The headquarters Ciudad Real’s chapter of the Woman’s Suffrage Alliance was bustling with harried-looking women.

  For a long moment, no one paid any attention to Graciela as she stood just inside the door, then one of the women detached herself from the throng and came to Graciela, cradling a sheaf of paper in one arm. In the other she held a pair of spectacles, which she slid onto her nose in order to glare at Graciela over their rim. “If you’ve come to get your picture in the papers, you might as well turn right around. We’re a serious organization and we’ve no time to waste on fame hounds.”

  “I’m here because I want to help,” Graciela said, raising her eyebrow as if indignant at the woman’s assumption.

  A second woman, in an unbecoming shirtwaist and dowdy skirt, carrying a load of what looked to Graciela like laundry, joined the first one. “She say
s she wants to help, so let her help. Heaven knows we could use more hands around here.”

  A heap of white cloth was deposited into Graciela’s arms and the woman groaned slightly as she massaged her arms. “Those are banners. Here is a list of slogans—” A sheet of paper was added to the top of the pile and Graciela was forced to pin it with her chin before it fluttered away. “—and over in the corner is a basket with the letters already cut out. Mind you sew them on tight so that the wind doesn’t tug them off. That happened during our last march—half the letters were gone by the time we got to the President’s gate and no one knew what we were protesting.”

  She directed Graciela to an empty desk at the back, where a pincushion full of threaded needles had been placed beside the basket with cloth letters. A telephone rang and, at a shout from someone else, she vanished into the crowd.

  Needlework. Graciela dropped her heavy load on the table and glared at it. Stitching wasn’t going to make her infamous. She would have made her escape, but the suffragette in the wire-rim spectacles was blocking the door as she argued with a deliveryman.

  So she sat. And she sewed. For hours and hours until one of the women took pity on her and began to help.

  Bleary-eyed and covered in bits of thread, Graciela stumbled away from the WSA headquarters late that afternoon, having extracted a promise from the suffragettes that they would alert her of their next protest. She’d sooner marry Alvaro than sew banners again, and that was saying something.

  She scanned the street and found Mr. Aguirre almost immediately, leaning against the lamp post in the corner. He was easy to pick out from the crowd, and not only because of the skin and hair that were paler than those around him. There was a coiled tension in his muscular body, a sense that he could spring into action at the slightest provocation. It set him apart from the other people trudging up and down street, visibly wilted by the afternoon heat.

  “Don’t laugh,” she told him when he approached.

  “I wouldn’t dare,” he answered gravely, falling into step beside her. “Was your, ah, mission not altogether successful?”