Free Savage Enchantment by Parris Afton Bonds

oddity."
    Simon laughed aloud. "That's something I've found out for myself."
    The hours flew by with Simon's stories of the Californios who would be at the fiesta. But never did he once speak of the host and hostess's beauteous daughter, Francesca.
    By the time they arrived, the guests were having their midday feast at tables set out in the gardens or on blankets spread beneath the trees. Kathleen's mind spun with the long, difficult names of those she was presented to, many of them requiring the Castilian lisp to pronounce correctly.
    Simon seemed to find it amusing when Doña Lucia at once cornered her, demanding to know of the latest fashion in the United States.
    "Not nearly so femine as your lace mantillas and high-backed Spanish combs," she told the pompous matron politely.
    But when Kathleen turned back to Simon, she found he had abandoned her to talk with a gentleman who still wore his graying hair clubbed at his neck with a ribbon, a style that had gone out a decade earlier.
    "That's the Lord of the North, Mariano Vallejo," a woman with warm brown eyes and a friendly smile said, joining Kathleen. "All his daughters are married to American men.
    "Which is all the more reason for Vallejo to join us, Doña Arcadia," the man at her side said, his heavy jowls quivering with anger. "If Vallejo listens much longer to that damned Sutter, we won't stand a chance against Micheltorena!"
    "José!" Doña Arcadia said warningly, and hastened to present Kathleen to the ex-general of California, José Castro.
    Well, you can't ignore the fact," the man said indigantly, after the introductions were made. "The Californios are suffering under Micheltorena -- Santa Anna's puppet!"
    Warming up to his subject, the general rocked back and forth on his heels as he continued his tirade. "And Micheltorena knows we want him removed. It's no secret. What's more, if there were a separation of the political and military commands, there wouldn't be such discontent among the Californios!"
    His diatribe on California politics would have continued indefinitely had not Doña Arcadia rescued Kathleen, saying it was time for the siesta. "A voluble man, but a brilliant general," she said with a smile as she led Kathleen to the room that had been assigned her.
    Kathleen had not yet become accustomed to the siesta, the hour which promised to make a young woman's eyes more brilliant by candlelight but unfortunately also brought about matronliness. During this hour the women gathered in the spacious recameras, the bedrooms, which were cool and dim after the hours of untempered sunlight, and gossiped of the day's flirtations.
    For a while Kathleen talked with the woman she shared the bedroom with, Anita de la Guerra, who, although only twenty-five, had been married for eleven years to the American shipping agent at Santa Barbara, Alfred Robinson. But after a while, Anita grew drowsy and dozed off.
    Unable to sleep, Kathleen used the hour to freshen herself. She was sitting before the marble-topped bureau, repairing her wilted hairdo, when a girl of no more than sixteen or seventeen years entered. Small in height, she was elegantly dressed in black lace and yellow silk, with a high-backed comb of black pearls securing the heavy ebony tresses.
    Her jet eyes flashed at Kathleen. "Perdóneme," she said. "I have the wrong bedroom."
    "That's quite all right," Kathleen replied to the girl's image in the mirror, an image that was both seductive and innocent -- one that Kathleen imagined would lose its appeal with age.
    "I am Doñanita Francesca Escandón," the girl announced imperiously.
    "My name is Kathleen Summers." What did the girl want?
    "You are Simon's little tutor?"
    "I work for him."
    Francesca stood in the doorway a moment longer, her curiosity clearly not satisfied, unable to think of any further excuse for remaining. "Con su permiso," she said finally, with pouting lips,a nd closed the door.
    Kathleen breathed a sign of relief with Francesca's departure,