"She's getting married?" The Count asked, dumbfounded, exchanging a quick look with his young servant. "Who's the groom?"

"His name is Juan Ortiz. A naval officer." Don Alejandro answered, his tone of voice lacking all enthusiasm.

"Juan…" the Count repeated.

"They will leave for Monterey after the wedding."

"I'm sorry to hear that…"

"So am I… Don't get me wrong. I've known Juan since he was born. He is a good, honorable man. But… Remember when you told me to keep hoping?" The elderly don answered hesitantly. "What if my son returns one day? What will I tell him then? That I let the woman he loves marry another man?"

"You believe she will go through with the wedding?" The Count answered, almost seeming to try to convince himself that Victoria would never accept another man.

"She does seem determined to…" Don Alejandro pointed out. "You are coming, are you not?"

"Ha? Oh… No… I will be heading for San Pedro in the morning." The young man answered.

"Surely you can postpone it! Or send someone else…"

"I'm afraid not. Please, give my best wishes to Señorita Escalante." Saying that he headed for his quarters, followed by a clearly worried Fariz.

As soon as the door was closed behind them, the Count ripped off his fake beard and wig, then sat down heavily into an armchair. "What did I do?" He asked. "I can't let Victoria marry Juan! But… If I tell her the truth now, not only do I risk compromising everything we've worked for. I risk her wrath. Considering how impulsive she is, she might even decide to marry Juan as revenge for my deceit."

Felipe sat down next to him, considering their conundrum. A couple of minutes later, as an idea occurred to him, he started signing.

"Tell her without telling her?" Diego interpreted. "How?"

Again, Felipe signed.

"Tell her Diego is alive, but not that I am Diego…" the caballero again interpreted, then nodded. "Yes…" he muttered with a smile. "Yes… And I know exactly how to do that… and who could help me… First, however, do you know where Emmanuel is? I shall also need him."

ZZZ

Victoria did not sleep a wink the entire night before her wedding. She wasn't sure how to feel. "Defeated" was the word most often coming to her mind. That was how she felt when she finally said yes to Juan, after having been forced to suffer the unending parade of young and older men Doña Maria had decided to introduce to her. She had never before realized how many unwed or widowed men were in Los Angeles, though, thinking on it, she did realize they were not all from the pueblo, for at least one of them she knew was from Buenaventura.

Juliana and her situation was, however, what pushed her from the edge. She didn't want a similar fate for herself. She wanted a true home.

Thus, when Juan came, once again, to argue his case again, too tired and somewhat relieved it was him not another of Doña Maria's hopefuls, Victoria just gave up.

Juan, at least, she knew, just as she knew he loved her. If she and Diego could never be, the Count was unattainable to her, and Zorro too much of a mystery, perhaps Juan could make her happy, or so she hopped.

ZZZ

Don Alejandro was waiting in the taproom as Victoria walked down the stairs, dressed all in white.

"You look beautiful, my dear!" He said offering her his arm.

"Thank you, Don Alejandro," Victoria uttered, linking her arm to his and allowing herself to be escorted towards the church.

"Are you certain about this, Victoria?" the don asked her as they were crossing the plaza. "I may not have any right to ask you to continue waiting for my son, but…" he didn't finish his thought, for he didn't know how.

She didn't answer, either, and the don didn't say another word.

"Señorita," Mendoza called after her just as she and the elderly don were about to enter the church, "you lost this!" saying that, the man gave her a note he pretended to pick up from the ground, then followed them inside.

Victoria took it curiously and opened it to find a number there. "3182?" Don Alejandro asked glancing at the paper. "What is that?"

"I don't know… It's not in my handwriting…" she said, stashing the note away in her sleeve as she again linked her arm to the caballero's, and they continued on their way.

In front of the altar, it was not their new padre, but the abbot waiting for them, and she found that rather strange.

"I so wish Diego was the one waiting for you at the altar…" Don Alejandro couldn't help himself from uttering as they stepped down the aisle.

Victoria glanced at him, then her mind focused on the old man's son. Was she making a mistake?

Juan smiled joyfully as she came to stand next to him, and the older man took his place right behind her.

When everyone was seated, the abbot started the service.

He was just talking about promises and the life-long vows the two young people were about to make when Victoria's mind focused on the note, and she took it out of her sleeve to glance at it again. "I know this writing…" she muttered to herself, no longer paying any attention to the ceremony as she realized what that note truly meant. "Where did you find this, Sergeant?" She asked, turning desperate eyes towards the lancer sitting in the third row.

"Ah… It was on the ground. Si… I saw it fall from your dress just as you passed, Señorita," he answered.

"Victoria?" Juan said, in a tone that seemed chiding, and she turned to him to realize that he was embarrassed by how rudely she had interrupted the priest.

"I can't marry you!" She told him, no doubt in her voice. "I'm sorry Juan, but I can't! I can't!" Saying that she ran out of the church and toward the tavern.

Don Alejandro followed her. As for the attendees, when it became clear she was not coming back, they all headed their own ways, discussing the ceremony that never took place, and the strange reaction of the innkeeper, leaving Juan with the padre.

"I don't understand," the young man said as he found himself alone with the abbot. "Why am I not good enough for her?"

"That's not it, Juan," the abbot said, sitting down next to him. "She's just meant for another. Some people are like that. I'm sure the woman for you will come, as well. All you have to do is keep an open heart. God knows what He's doing. One day, you'll see that it was all for the best."

"For the best, Padre? I have loved Victoria my entire life!"

"You are still very young. And, perhaps, this was what you needed to finally give up on pining for her. I know it hurts, now, my son; but your heart will mend, and the right woman will know just how to mend it."

Juan nodded, then stood up, took his goodbyes from the priest, and left the church.

"You took pity on him, didn't you?" Zorro asked as he came to stand by the abbot.

"He seems like a good man," the fake priest answered. "Reminds me of my uncle..."

ZZZ

Victoria had meanwhile locked herself in her room. Heading for her closet, she took out a small, wooden box, guarding her memories of Diego. Dried flowers and letters were all she had left of him. That and the memories of their time together. A solitary tear ran down her cheek as she took out the letters he had sent him from Madrid and started studying them, comparing the way the dates were written on them to the numbers on the note. Moments later, she started crying in earnest. Not of sorrow, for once, but of joy. "He's alive!" She muttered, like a mantra, over and over again. "Diego is alive!"

"Victoria?" Don Alejandro knocked on the young woman's door at some point, interrupting her musings. "Victoria, are you alright?" He asked, concern clear in his voice.

He was just about to give up and go look for her in the stables when she opened the door.

"What's wrong, my dear?" The don inquired at seeing her cry.

"Your son is alive!" She said after letting him in and closing the door behind him. "Diego lives! And he is here! He must be!"

"What? Diego? Why would you think that?"

She gave him the note Mendoza had handed her earlier. Then, from the papers on the floor, she chose one and showed it to him. "The handwriting is the same," she said. "It's Diego's handwriting." Don Alejandro looked at her even more concerned, fearing she might be losing her mind, then glanced at the papers.

"These are just numbers," he said. "Surely there are other people who write numbers the same way… Besides, even if they had been written by Diego, this note doesn't prove anything. This might have been written long before he left for Spain…" the don tried to reason with her.

"That can't be, Don Alejandro!" She contradicted him, shaking her head. "Not considering what this number means!"

The elderly man shook his head, wondering why he could not make sense of what Victoria was trying to tell him, then again stared at the paper. "I don't understand, my dear…" he, eventually, told her.

"It's the number of days." She replied. "The number of days he's been away from me. Only he and I know that number, Don Alejandro, because only the two of us promised each other that we'd be counting…"

ZZZ

It was past siesta when Don Alejandro finally headed home, his mind doing its best to prevent him from getting his hopes up, while his heart was starting to believe that his son might truly still be alive. That idea, however, came with all sorts of questions. For, if Diego was alive and he had, indeed, written that note for Victoria, that meant he was in Los Angeles. Yet he had not been seen in Los Angeles, nor had he come to the hacienda. That could only mean that he was hiding, but from who or from what, the elderly man could not fandom.

"I hear she didn't go through with the wedding," the Count said as the don entered the house.

There was something about the way he said it, an inferred satisfaction in the nobleman's tone, that baffled the older man, who glanced at his host with a strange look in his eyes. "No. She decided to keep waiting for my son," he uttered.

The Count nodded his approval and offered him a glass of wine. "I just received it from Italy," he said, "together with a shipment of vines I plan on using to replace the ones that were burned."

"Delicious," Don Alejandro said as he tasted the wine.

"I take it you approve, then?"

"I do, Don Sebastian," he uttered. "How… How was the trip to San Pedro?"

"Exhausting. But Rafael made sure to prepare a bath for me as soon as I returned. It was quite refreshing." The nobleman answered.

"And… Was it fruitful? The trip, I mean…" Don Alejandro inquired next.

"Quite. As you can well see!" The nobleman answered. "Flowers!" He suddenly said next. "I shall send Victoria some flowers. They will cheer her up!"

The elderly caballero didn't say anything, just nodded hesitantly, wondering whether his host was just trying to change the subject. He was too well-educated to insist on his topic of conversation, though.

"Maybe I shall take them to her myself." The young man stated, then headed for the gardens, where he proceeded to pick up a beautiful bouquet of colored roses and wildflowers.

Don Alejandro pensively watched him from a window as he was doing that, then turned to refill his wine glass.

ZZZ

"You know, Victoria," Don Alejandro uttered the following day, as the two of them were having an afternoon coffee together at an isolated table at the back of the taproom, "I think Don Sebastian might be in love with you." Saying that he glanced at the large bouquet from the Count displayed on the bar

"What?" She asked, distracted by very different thoughts.

"I said that I believe Don Sebastian is in love with you," he repeated.

"I doubt that." She replied. "Were that so, he'd have tried to prevent me from marrying Juan yesterday. But he didn't even come to the wedding…"

"There was no wedding, though."

"True. But he couldn't have known that." Victoria replied. "Besides, now I know Diego is alive, and I have no intention of misleading another man. I only accepted the flowers because I didn't want to offend him."

"Yes… You know, I've been wondering about what you said since yesterday. And something about this has been nagging at me… If Diego truly is alive, and that note was from him, that means he is close; that he is in Los Angeles… So why –"

"He didn't come to us?" She continued. "I've been wondering the same thing since yesterday. And the only explanations I could find are that he is either afraid to do it, or he can't for some reason."

"I thought the same… But why would he be afraid to come to us? He knows how much we love him, doesn't he?"

"I'm sure he does." Victoria agreed, pensively. "What if he is ashamed to? What if something happened to him? What if he was in some kind of accident and was left with an ugly scar… or worse…"

"My son is not the sort of man who would let a scar cause him to feel less certain of himself."

"What if it's worse? What if he's missing a leg… or an arm?"

"He'd come to us either way… No, Victoria. Whatever is keeping my son away from us is worse than a missing body part or an ugly scar."

"What can be worse than that?"

"I don't know… Unless…" the don considered, "it is not about him but about us… What if he's staying away to protect us… Or to watch over us…"

"Like Zorro?" Victoria said with a smile that faded as soon as she took that idea seriously.

Don Alejandro stared at her. "Correna's wife did say Diego was a great swordsman. The best in his generation."

"Risendo said the same about him… And Zorro is the best swordsman I've ever seen…" Victoria mused. "And he is as tall as Diego…"

"He also wears his mustache just like my son used to wear his…" the caballero uttered.

For a few moments, they just stood in silence, contemplating the idea that Zorro could, in fact, be Diego.

"He has a cave…" Victoria uttered. "Zorro, I mean. He took me there once, to look after me when that woman tried to kill me… But it's a strange cave: partly man-made… and there are some stairs, though I don't know where they lead."

"A good hiding place for someone who would want to avoid being seen by anyone who might know him…"

A couple of minutes of silence followed.

"Zorro saved Felipe and did so before his first appearance here. I did the math a while back…" Don Alejandro said.

"Zorro saved Felipe?"

"Yes, my dear. He came by the hacienda to tell me that, the day De Soto had arrested me for complicity in the prison break at the Devil's Fortress…"

"Diego would have never left Felipe to rot in that place," Victoria uttered. "But do you think it's really possible? That Diego could be Zorro?"

"I don't know what to think. He might not even be alive anymore. That note you found… It could be just a coincidence…"

"And if it's not?" She asked. "Don Alejandro, I know how this sounds… But I truly feel Diego is still alive. I am not sure he is here. I have no idea if he is or even could be Zorro. I'd certainly be worried sick if he was. But I know he lives… I know we'll see him again. I know it!"

The old don nodded. "God willing, my dear!" He said. "God willing!"