Veiled (32 page)

I tried to influence his
thoughts, but he was as stubborn as a mule. Besides, he didn’t know
Max yet and so my suggestions made no sense to him at all. To make
matters worse Don Marco’s guardian angel was a disembodied spirit
who was never around and could not hear me either.

I called Leo and brought
him up to speed on the new developments on Celeste’s life. He in
turn let me know that Max was about to finish his studies and get a
parish of his own and Leo was working on getting him assigned to
Celeste’s town.

“
All we can do now, Tess,
is wait to see who they choose for her, and run him off. Is she
very eager to have a boyfriend?” Leo asked.

“
No, she doesn’t seem to
be. All she thinks about are roses and birds.”

“
Good, she needs to stay
that way as long as possible.” He paused for a moment, we were
talking through the calling stones, but somehow I could still tell
that he was smiling when he added, “We may have to get our hands
dirty for this one. Are you up to it, Tess?”

“
Get our hands dirty? What
do you mean?” His sinister tone of voice worried me a
little.

“
You know…scare away
whoever Don Marco chooses. Or make him look bad—whatever it
takes.”

“
Oh…well yes, of course.
I’m in, Besides, she would do it for me.”

This, I must admit, marked
the beginning of my not-so-angelic duties. I wanted to feel guilty
about spying on Don Marco and Doña Rosa, but I never could. I
followed them around and tried to get as much information from them
as possible. Don Marco was a creature of habit. His day followed a
strict schedule of meals and meetings that culminated with him
sitting in his study with a glass of wine and the newspaper. Every
Sunday evening he had the town’s priest and one more guest to
dinner, and that was the extent of his social life. That’s why I
got suspicious when one Sunday, he invited his estranged brother
and his wife to dinner, instead of the priest.

Mateo was Don Marco’s
younger brother, who had been disowned due to his disgraceful
marriage to a girl with no family or money. But the marriage had
yielded a son who was said to be in the Spanish Armada, and for
lack of a better suitor, Don Marco decided to put differences aside
and meet this nephew of his.

The evening turned out to
be stiff and quiet. The conversation never strayed from the light
subjects of children and weather. Don Marco was very disappointed
when his nephew didn’t show up to the dinner because he was
currently away on Armada duties. But the proud parents, sniffing
money, had no trouble answering all the questions that Don Marco
asked about their son. It was with forced cordiality that Don Marco
and Doña Rosa shook hands with their relatives after the meal, and
eagerly asked to be immediately informed of Ricardo’s return from
his training in the Armada.

“
Do you think they want
Ricardo to marry their daughter?” Mateo’s wife asked her husband as
they were leaving the estancia.

“
Yes…he’ll get it all back
for us, just wait and see,” Mateo said with relish. “Life has a way
of making things even, doesn’t it?” he added greedily.

Now I was panicking. How
did Celeste end up with this bunch as her relatives? Ricardo? I
hoped against all hope it wasn’t the same Richard that managed to
temporarily charm Celeste back in heaven. Sure…the spell didn’t
last long, but here it would be different—she was young, he was
not. Oh…this could be disastrous!

I passed the news on to
Leo, who in turn went about trying to locate Ricardo and find out
more about him. Now that Max was studying to be a priest, he didn’t
need to be watched over all the time, so Leo had more free time on
his hands.

It didn’t take Leo that
long to get information on Ricardo. Just a few days later, he
stormed through Celeste’s bedroom door and told me the
news.

“
It’s Richard!” Leo said
with a smile.

“
And why are you smiling?
This is terrible news!”

“
He is still just as
deceived as he’s always been about how great he is.” Leo was
laughing now. “Spirits just don’t change that much.” He shook his
head “Just because they get a body, it doesn’t change a thing about
who they really are.”

I rolled my eyes. I simply
could not stand this guy, and here he was again, popping up into
Celeste’s life uninvited.

“
Um, he was invited.” Leo
corrected my thoughts with a smug look. “Celeste’s parents are
inviting him.”

“
I fail to see the joke,”
I said sourly.

Leo’s smile faded too. “I
know I have a warped sense of humor, but I also have an idea,” he
said and he started pacing back and forth. “We could find him a
pretty lady and get them to marry before Celeste is of age,” he
suggested cunningly.

“
It’s worth a try. How do
we know who he would like?” I said, shedding my
scruples.

“
You leave it up to me,
this is my specialty.” Leo flashed a wry look my way.

“
You have a specialty?
Leo, if I didn’t know you better I would peg you for a Fallen
Angel. You can be quite devious when you want to.”

He smiled, made a bow, and
flew out the window. I chuckled. Leo seemed to be an open book at
first, but behind the playful smile and bright eyes, were several
intricate layers of contradictions. He appeared to be always
joking, but in fact he was very serious. He appeared to want to
follow the rules, but he would bend and break them without a second
thought if he thought they got in his way. But in spite of all
this, I liked him and I trusted him.

Two months went by without
a single word from Leo. Meanwhile, Ricardo sat in full uniform,
looking strikingly handsome right here in Don Marco’s dining room.
He had been invited for lunch, a very unusual thing for Don Marco
to do, since he never liked to stray from his routine.

Celeste had been introduced
to Ricardo and she was her usual cheerful, friendly self.
Thankfully, I didn’t notice any romantic interest on her part, but
Ricardo was as charming and playful with her as his best acting
skills would allow him to be. He teased her in a friendly manner,
and she giggled a great deal, like any fourteen year old would when
being courted by a twenty-two year old man. He pretended to be
interested in her hobbies and even walked around the garden with
her. She talked the whole time about her roses, he nodded and put
in the appropriate comments when they were needed, but anyone
watching would have been able to see that he didn’t hear a single
word. His mind was preoccupied with many other thoughts.

His thoughts were hideously
boring to me, all the stuff I would have expected to read in his
mind—his father’s admonition to secure a marriage arrangement with
Celeste, his constant daydreaming about having this house all to
himself, the gambling debts, and then…there! An Italian actress
named Anabella, whom he had the fortune of meeting just before she
left Madrid. I couldn’t be sure, but I suspected that this last
thought was Leo’s handy work.

Ricardo had played his part
well at the DeLeon’s plantation. So when he left, Don Marco had
made up his mind about him. “Ricardo is as good as any,” he
thought, “but with the added benefit of being a DeLeon.” The mere
thought of losing the family name was grotesque to him.

* * * * *

Chapter 27

The following week, Ricardo
was invited back and this time I was privileged to hear all of his
thoughts on his budding romance with Anabella. Things had
apparently progressed in the week of his absence from the DeLeon
estancia, and Ricardo just couldn’t believe his good
luck.

In spite of how
all-consuming his thoughts were for Anabella, he managed to impress
both Doña Rosa and Don Marco, to the extent of having an open door
invitation to the home. Of this he made full use, and pretty soon
he spent all the time he had away from Anabella, over at the DeLeon
home. He was even given one of the guest rooms as his
own.

I had to admit that Celeste
and Ricardo made a handsome couple at her fifteenth birthday party.
He was dressed in his uniform and she had on a beautiful soft pink
dress that made her look too grown up. If I had had substance I
would have wrung Ricardo’s neck for the thoughts he was having
about her. He was the basest of persons and Celeste had not
realized it yet. I felt like we were trapped in a vicious
circle—just like in heaven, she was falling for him. I would have
to make sure she saw through him before it got too late.

“
Wow, she looks
beautiful,” Leo said while we watched the Quinceanera
party.

“
Yeah, I know,” I said
bitterly.

“
Oh,” Was Leo’s curt reply
to Ricardo’s last thought.

“
Yeah…he is vile,” I
retorted.

Leo shook his head and
tried to forget Ricardo’s last thought. “Well…I did it!” Leo
changed the subject.

“
Did what?”

“
Max is finally
coming.”

“
What, here?”

“
Yep, here to Leon,” he
said with pride.

“
Wow. You are good. How
did you pull that off?”

“
Don’t ask questions, just
thank me,” he said as he waved a dismissive hand in front of
me.

“
OK. No questions, if you
insist. But how will I learn to get things done, if you don’t tell
me?”

“
Trust me. You don’t want
to know how I get things done.” He smiled to himself and blocked
all his thoughts. “Suffice it to say that Max is done with his
studies, and his first assignment is to take over for whoever is
here, and to conduct Mass for the good people of this
town.”

As soon as Max took over
for the old pastor, every seat at church got filled during Sunday
mass. Women turned devout Christians and attended church several
times a week to light candles, repent and kneel on the pews for
hours until they got a glimpse of Max.

He was, after all, young in
his mid twenties, strong built, and good looking—though not too
strikingly so. He had dark brown hair, thick dark eyebrows, a
straight prominent nose and intelligent dark chocolate eyes. He had
a look of goodness about him and he seemed to be completely
oblivious to the upheaval he was creating in the town. He literally
walked with a book in front of his nose, everywhere he went, and
most of the books were in a different language.

One of his first priorities
was to set up a library, he felt very strongly about education, and
from personal experience he wanted education to be available to
anyone who sought it. “Knowledge is light,” he would often preach
from the pulpit, his sermons being in plain Spanish and not Latin
like his predecessor’s were.

When asked by a group of
men why his Mass was so full now, he calmly admitted that is was
due to one simple fact.

“
No use in teaching in a
dead language. That only means the message is dead as well,” he
would explain in a sagely manner.

The men in town were still
unsure about how to regard him. They suspected, of course, that his
sermons were not the only reason why their women flocked to church
so often, but on the other hand his age and strong build proved to
be a great help to them as well. Max was not above hard labor, and
would often drop whatever he was doing to lend a hand, never asking
if help was needed.

For this reason Don Marco
liked him. “He can’t help his age, a priest has to start being a
priest at some point. And this one is quite useful, not like the
last one that sat in his cozy chapel all day and did nothing for
the people,” he said, forgetting the fact that the old priest had
been an honored guest at his house many times. But now it was Max’s
turn to be a guest of honor at the DeLeon household on Sunday
evenings—along with Ricardo.

I used these dinners as my
chance to point out the differences between the two to Celeste. I
hovered over her as she ate. The conversation almost never included
her, so she sat silent and listened to me.

“
He is hiding something
from you,” I would warn her when Ricardo would speak. “He is so
arrogant and full of himself,” I pointed out, after he would make a
comment that aggrandized himself. These type of comments were so
frequent though, that I could hardly point this out to her every
time. But I could tell that she was getting the point when I caught
her rolling her eyes after one such comment from
Ricardo.

Max on the contrary,
listened a great deal more than he talked. This made him look all
the more interesting when he did speak—even Don Marco paused to
listen to his comments and regarded them of much more value than he
did Ricardo’s.

At first Ricardo treated
Max with the contempt of one who thinks himself free and fortunate,
but after the third dinner they shared, Ricardo started to envy
Max. He envied the respect that Max had earned in such a short
period of time, and he envied the quiet, peaceful, uncomplicated
existence that he seemed to have. He also resented the way that the
DeLeon family treated him, Celeste included. And feared for his
position. His dealings in the town of Leon were getting a bit
complicated for him.