Free Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

with her sisters’ simpers hidden behind fans and mantillas. When Jacob Todd learned of her father’s plan to banish Paulina to a convent to foil her love affair, he decided, against his better judgment, to help her. Before she was taken away, he managed to steal a few words with her in a moment when her chaperone’s attention was wandering. Aware that there was no time for explanations, Paulina pulled from her bodice a letter so folded and wadded up it looked like a weathered rock and begged Todd to take it to her beloved. The next day the girl, closely guarded by her father, was taken on a journey of several days over nearly impassable roads to Concepción, a city in the south near Indian reservations, where nuns would undertake the chore of bringing her to her senses with prayers and fasting. To rid her of the foolhardy notion that she might rebel or escape, del Valle had ordered her head to be shaved. Her mother collected Paulina’s cut-off locks, wrapped them in an embroidered batiste cloth, and took them as a gift to the charitable women of the Iglesia de la Matriz to make wigs for the saints. Meanwhile, Todd not only succeeded in delivering Paulina’s missive, he also learned the exact location of the convent from her brothers and passed on that information to a greatly distressed Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz. In gratitude, the suitor took out his pocket watch and pure-gold chain and insisted on giving them to his love’s sainted spy, who refused them, offended.
    â€œI have no way to repay you for what you have done,” Feliciano murmured, nonplussed.
    â€œYou have no reason to do so.”
    For some time Jacob Todd heard nothing about the beleaguered pair, but after a couple of months the delicious tale of the girl’s flight was the tidbit of every social gathering and there was nothing the haughty Agustín del Valle could do to prevent the addition of colorful details that made him the butt of ridicule. The version Paulina told Jacob Todd months later was that one June evening, one of those wintry twilights with a fine rain and early nightfall, she had managed to escape her keepers’ vigilance and flee the convent dressed in a novice’s habit, taking with her two silver candelabra from the main altar. Thanks to Jacob Todd’s information, Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz had journeyed south, where he had been in secret contact with Paulina from the beginning, prepared to meet her at the first opportunity. That evening he was waiting a short distance from the convent, although when he saw her it was several seconds before he recognized the half-bald novice who melted into his arms, still clutching the candelabras.
    â€œDon’t look at me like that, Feliciano, hair grows,” she said, kissing him smack on the lips.
    Feliciano took Paulina back to Valparaíso in a closed carriage and temporarily installed her in his widowed mother’s home, the most respectable hiding place he could think of, doing his best to protect her honor although aware that there was no way to keep her reputation from being tarred by the scandal. Agustin’s first thought was to challenge his daughter’s seducer to a duel, but when he acted on that impulse he learned that Feliciano was on a business trip in Santiago. He turned his attention instead to finding Paulina, assisted by armed sons and nephews preoccupied with avenging the honor of the family, while the mother and a chorus of sisters prayed a rosary for their misguided Paulina. The ecclesiastical uncle who had recommended sending Paulina to the nuns tried to instill a little sanity in the male del Valles, but those chauvinists were in no mood for that good Christian’s sermonizing. Feliciano’s trip was part of the strategy he had planned with his brother and Jacob Todd. He left without fanfare for the capital while the other two men set into action the Valparaíso portion of the plan, publishing