The Infamous Miss Rodriguez: A Ciudad Real Novella by Lydia San Andres

sounded refreshing, at least, in this scorching heat. But Beatriz’s house was just up ahead and she’d be waiting for Graciela to fill her in on the results of her latest scheme. “I’ll take them under advisement. But for the moment, I have a very important appointment I mustn’t be late to.”
    “I’ll be waiting,” Mr. Aguirre said, and Graciela had no doubt that he would.

    * * *
    “ I ’m beginning to think that there’s nothing I can do to ruin myself.”
    Graciela dropped the curtain she’d twitched aside. Aguirre was leaning against the lamppost down the street, cleaning under his fingernails with a pocketknife, his face shaded by a ratty Panama hat.
    “Surely a sign of these dissolute modern times,” Beatriz said from her chair.
    Striding from one side of the room to the other in front of the large bank of windows, for all the world, as Beatriz put it, like a prowling tiger, Graciela fought an increasing sense of desperation.
    There were only five days left until the wedding. Her fitting at the modiste was in less than an hour—no doubt Aguirre had been charged with making Graciela arrive in time. To hear Alvaro tell it, most of the preparations for the ceremony and the party were in order. Everything was marching along according to his and Aunt Elba’s plan and Graciela could just scream with the frustration of it.
    “I know why my aunt is so keen on the match,” she said as she paced. “But what about him? Why does he want me so badly? He doesn’t love me, and there are a dozen girls far prettier and more accomplished than me who would give anything to be the future Mrs. Medina. It’s not a question of position or social standing, not when his family is just as well-connected as mine and much wealthier.”
    Beatriz threaded a needle with blue. She’d moved on to another scene, this one a rocky landscape filled with blue and green devils who, if Graciela understood the markings correctly, would wield tridents to torment a twisted knot of nude figures on the center of the composition. Graciela studied the embroidery for a second, wondering if she could pass it on as her own and present it to Mrs. Ferrer as a gift.
    “He wants you ,” Beatriz said, adding, with a censorious look as she saw Graciela begin to paw through her sewing basket, “for some unfathomable reason. I don’t think he’d be satisfied with someone else, no matter how pretty or accomplished they were.”
    “Well, he can’t have me,” Graciela said, lifting a pricked finger to her lips. “He won’t. Not if I have any say in the matter.”
    “You’ve another plot beneath your sleeve, don’t you?”
    Graciela nodded. “Tomorrow, Aunt Elba is hosting a dinner for the board of Medina Enterprises. All the members will be in attendance and it’ll be my last chance to make an impression on them.”
    “Not a very favorable one, I imagine.”
    “Not a particle,” Graciela assured Beatriz. “I’ll be rude and crass and vulgar and by the end of the evening, they will all be begging Alvaro to let me go.”

Chapter 7
    T hough the flurry of activity just outside her bedroom door should have awoken her the next morning, it was the heavy dread that had settled inside her stomach that dragged Graciela from her fitful sleep. She dressed with her maid’s help and went down to breakfast, so busy planning her next move she hardly noticed the commotion that had overtaken the entire house.
    Aunt Elba had hired half a dozen manservants to help the maids ready the house for that evening’s affair. Drapes were being sponged, carpets beaten, furniture polished, and every speck of dust efficiently wiped off every surface. Try as she might, Graciela could not keep out of the way. She was chased from the dining room after breakfast by a contingent of maids armed with rags and dusters. She was evicted from the parlor by two of the hired men as they lifted the sofas in order for the maids to sweep underneath them. And, most vexing of all,