El Casamentero de Los Angeles by JuliaBC
Chapter Four
Sergeant Garcia was, for the most part, a happy man. Si, he'd like a bit more gold in his wages. Si, he'd like a wife, and children, and he'd certainly like to catch Zorro.
But he knew that he had an uncommonly good life for a Sergeant in the army, a good post, and very good friends.
Still, he'd like to work on the wife part.
He'd picked some new flowers yesterday, and taken them to the tavern, but Clara had not been there, and, seeing them wilt, he'd given them to Teo.
"I do not take weeds as payment," Teo had snapped.
"It seems I did not do much better the second time," he sighed, sitting at his desk and pretending to write a formal report on Zorro's last appearance.
"He climbed through my window," he scrawled, speaking as he wrote it down, and then dropped the quill again to put his hand on his chin and sigh. "I'm so worried about Clara," he confided to the quill, and picked up a new piece of parchment.
The words came easily, and he was barely even paying attention. His mind and heart went where they did on their own.
Your laugh
Your smile
Your beauty
Your kindness
These are why I love you
He was shocked to realize, at the end of his words, that the name he had written was not Clara's...
"What does this mean?" He cried, crumpled the paper and returned to his report. Zorro could always straighten out the thoughts that muddled his brain.
Diego recognized that Magdalena wasn't satisfied with him, and made sure to go upstairs soon after she did. She was already in bed when he got there, and didn't move when he finally climbed in beside her.
"Magdalena..." he began, shifting so that his hand was on her shoulder. "The Senorita Nina came with a very specific mission to accomplish. As it happened, it clashed with something I am doing as Zorro, and, well, I was feeling a little distracted."
"What are you doing?" Magdalena asked, rolling over to face him and he saw her eyes flash with anger in the darkness.
Diego sighed, and shifted so that he was leaning on his elbow, his face near hers. "I'm helping Sergeant Garcia romance Clara."
Magdalena looked puzzled. "What?"
"Clara, the waitress," Diego explained. "I have reason to think she does have a soft spot for the sergeant, and I decided to help him as Zorro, since he did not welcome help from Diego."
Magdalena sat up, and stared down at him. "Clara has a soft spot for the sergeant?"
"Si," he said. "And one of the first things Nina said to me was that she planned to marry."
"Who?"
"Sergeant Garcia," Diego said, and watched as her eyes widened.
"But, Diego!" She said, horrified. "But what about Inez?"
"What about her?" Diego asked, amusedly pulling her back down to him.
"She's the one who wrote!" Magdalena said, trying to explain.
"Wrote what?" He whispered.
"The letter from Dolores Bastenado!" She wailed, and Diego suddenly straightened.
"Pardon?"
"She forged a letter from her and sent it to Corporal Reyes, and so he went off to visit her, therefore eliminating her as competition for Garcia," Magdalena said.
"But Dolores does not even like the Sergeant!"
"He likes her," Magdalena said.
After a moment, they both started laughing. "What a situation to be in!" Diego exclaimed. "This is why we've been avoiding each other? And this was what your visit to Sergeant Garcia was about!"
Magdalena leaned back onto her pillow, and looked coyly down at her hands. "No."
"No?" Diego asked. "Then what was it?"
"A surprise," she said. "It's still a surprise."
Diego gave up, and flopped back down on his own pillow. "Magdalena?" He asked, and she rolled to face him.
"What?"
"You're going to be the death of me, you know that?" He said, and pulled her close.
"So who do we help?" Magdalena asked, the next morning.
"I have to help Garcia with Clara," Diego said. "But I also need to distract Nina."
"But why?" Magdalena asked. "Are you even sure that Clara does like Garcia?"
"Well, no," Diego said. "I'm guessing."
His hazel eyes shone at her. She shook her head, and climbed from the bed.
"I think I'm helping Inez," she said, starting to brush her hair.
"Think?"
"She did not actually ask me to do anything," Magdalena said. "She just told me her plan."
"And what's that?"
"To rendezvous with him at the masquerade Don Marcos is giving. She said she was sending an invitation today."
"How bold," Diego chuckled. "Your aunt is more like you than I originally thought."
"Or I am more like her," she corrected.
"So it seems we are both not changing courses," Diego said thoughtfully. "I suppose we just have to leave Senorita Nina to her own devices."
"Si," Magdalena said.
Magdalena spent the day arranging for suegro Alejandro's costume to be made. It was simple enough, and she relaxed in her chair as she finished the last of the preparations for it.
Now for her own costume. She'd always wished to go as the Greek goddess Persephone, but had never dared to in Mexico City, a place much too full of wagging tongues and shaking heads. She remembered the pomegranate, that was too obvious, but she couldn't remember the other item used to identify her, and went to the study to find a book that could tell her.
Leaning back in her chair, she flipped through a book on Greek mythology, and noted that grain and a torch would be the items to use. Standing again, she prepared to leave when she realized something, smiled, and hurried to change into riding clothes.
She had business with Inez.
"What do you think of this?" Inez said, bustling into the room.
"What, Inez?" Magdalena asked, leaning over the table where an unframed painting lay.
"No, don't look at that," Inez fretted, hurrying over to flip it over. "This necklace. Will it match my gown that I showed you? I borrowed it from Moneta Esperon, but I think it's too...new for me."
"It won't match the dress, if that's what you are asking," Magdalena told her, and Inez reluctantly unfastened it.
"Would you like to return it to her?" Inez asked. "If I am going to get a new necklace, I should be going straight to the pueblo and not dallying at the Esperon's hacienda."
"I can return it on the way back," Magdalena agreed, and pocketed the necklace.
"Now, why did you come to see me?" Inez questioned, already poised to leave.
Magdalena refrained from the urge to laugh straight out at her aunt's dithering.
"I don't think you need to worry about it so," Magdalena said. "If it were me, I'd just wear a plain gold necklace, and you surely have one of those."
Inez came back. "Plain gold?"
"Well, a wide one," Magdalena explained. "By no means a choker. Something that dips almost as low as the dress so as to raise the neckline."
"Why should I wish to do that?" Inez asked, hands flying to her hips. "Are you sure you are trying to aid me, and not hinder me?"
"I need to ask you something," Magdalena said, ignoring her aunt's infuriated question. "It's about Diego. I'm planning a surprise for him..."
That night, Zorro rode again. When he reached through the window to the little room Clara had next to the tavern, he saw a small bunch of wildflowers and a note. He replaced the wildflowers with roses, but left the note.
The next morning, Clara woke to find the most gorgeous bouquet of flowers she'd ever seen next to her bed. The note was from Sergeant Garcia.
"To Clara, one whose nectar is sweeter than the blossoms I offer."
Clara's eyes widened, and she got out of a bed in a daze, and for the rest of the morning, Teo surveyed her as she poured wine on a customer's lap, tripped over her own feet, and sang a song about roses and love.
He had never seen his niece like that in his whole life.
When Sergeant Garcia came in, Clara profusely thanked him for the flowers and offered the tavern's best lunch.
"I cannot afford it," Garcia apologized.
"Who said anything about you paying for it?" Clara said, and danced off to the kitchen.
In moments, she returned bearing a guitar. "Sergeant, sing me a song!" She exclaimed, and Garcia began to strum a slow serenade.
Senorita Nina came down as the song started, and upon inquiring, learned that the man singing was Sergeant Garcia.
"Demetrio Lopez Garcia, acting commandante of the pueblo de Los Angeles?" She hissed to Teo, staring in disbelief as he serenaded another woman.
"Si, who else?" Teo shrugged, tired of women asking about him.
"Well, I never!" Nina snapped. "One minute he's asking me, and the next..."
She marched up to him, and tapped him on the shoulder. "Sergeant Garcia?"
"Si?" He said, and dropped the guitar. "Oh, buenos dias. You arrived on the coach, si?"
"Si," she said, and he jumped to his feet.
"I am Demetrio Lopez Garcia, Sergeant in the King's army, and acting Commandante of this pueblo. May I ask you your name and business in Los Angeles? You see, I must."
"Of course," Nina said. "I am Senorita Nina Amantero. I came to Los Angeles to marry you."
The first sound in the tavern after Nina's unexpected announcement was the shatter of dishware breaking. Teo had dropped a cup he'd been drying.
Clara was staring at Nina with abject horror, and Nina seemed discomfited by the way Garcia was staring at her.
"You mean, you, and her?" Garcia pointed his finger at each, as he spoke. "Oh, this doesn't make any sense." He said, swayed on his feet, and dropped to the floor.
The floor shook. Teo winced as Clara shrieked. "Mi sargento!" She cried, dropping to her knees beside him.
"He actually fainted?" Nina asked.
"Si," Clara said, and got to her feet, her eyes flashing with anger and her hands firmly on her hips. "I would not be surprised if you had planned this as a—a—an assassination attempt!"
Agonized, she turned to Teo. "Water, por favor," she asked, while Nina huffed.
"Assassination! He is my intended, of course I do not wish to kill him!" Nina exclaimed, as Teo hurried around the counter and unceremoniously dumped a bowl of water on Garcia's head.
Clara shrieked, agian. "Ay yi yi! You clumsy man! Why did you not let me do it gently!"
Teo raised his eyebrows at her. "Watch who you are speaking with, Clara Maria Rosa Gonzales!"
Clara was about to reply, in just as biting a tone, when Garcia stirred on the floor and she instead collapsed on her knees beside him again.
"Mi sargento, are you all right?" She cried, and Garcia was about to reply to Clara when Nina knocked the other woman out of the way.
"I don't think so!" She exclaimed. "He is my betrothed!"
"Senorita, I don't think I am," Garcia said weakly, but as the two women started fighting, he just sighed and helped himself up with many a grunts.
Neither woman noticed his struggle, absorbed as they were in a vicious fight.
Garcia plunked a peso down next to Teo's hand. "I will come back later, perhaps," he said.
Teo nodded.
Once back in the commandante's office, Garcia discovered that his shirt was wet and hurried into his bedroom. "I shall have to change it," he murmured, as a knock sounded on the outside door.
"Come in," he shouted, unbuttoning the jacket. "I will be out in just a moment!"
Now there was a knock on the bedroom door, and Garcia opened it reluctantly. "Si, Private, what do you want?"
"There's a lady here to see you," he replied.
Garcia panicked so violently, his hand shot out and knocked a vase off his bureau. Even that, he did not register.
"Tell her I am sick!" He said. "No, violently ill! I wish to see no one!"
Maria, who used to work in the tavern, walked quickly home that night. Her basket was full of good things to eat; things she'd been able to get at a marvelous price in the stalls today.
She was excited to show them to her suegro, Salvio, since she knew Eugenio was working late at the forge. An order had come in, a big one that he would have to stay overnight to finish.
She planned to visit him later, when the meal she was going to prepare would be ready.
Right now, she opened the door to the little house, and sang out a greeting. "Papa Salvio!"
"No," a voice said, and she froze.
Suddenly, she had a feeling that her querido Eugenio would be getting cold beans again.