Page 16 of Vistaria Has Fallen

“Duardo, you know Nicolás Escobedo?” Calli asked.

He shrugged. “Everyone does.”

“I don’t. He is related to the President?”

“He isel Presidente’shalf-brother.”

“Half-brother?” Calli repeated. She thought it through.“That explains the red hair, those eyes.”

Duardo’s expression was wary. He knew where she took the conversation, then.

“He has no formal role in the government?” she asked.

“No.”

“I see.” She glanced across the room where the general and his party sat at the long head table. Nicolás Escobedo was there. He bent his head, listening to the general with deep concentration. As far as Calli couldtell, he had not glanced her way at all.

She looked at Duardo, who still watched her. “I know who he is.”

He shook his head. “Do not speak it.”

“Speak what?” Minnie asked.

Duardo’s preoccupation with the subject let him pick up Minnie’s hand and kiss it, like a man soothing a fretful child. “It is nothing.”

“You keep telling me that,” Minnie complained.

He stirred and shook off his mood.He glanced at Minnie. “We dance, yes?”

“Mmm, yes,” she agreed with a smile.

He glanced at her. “Excuse me, Miss Calli.” He stood to lead Minnie to the dance floor.

Calli sighed as they left her alone at the table and stole one more glance at Nicolás Escobedo. He was also standing, talking to an officer behind the general’s chair, one hand in his pocket.

She reached for the champagne and sipped,trying to quell the schoolgirl leap of joy because she knew his secret. He had warned her at the police station that the country was three steps away from violent revolution and Americans were unwelcome. Good reasons existed for secrecy, for quiet manipulations behind the scenes, for maintaining appearances. None of them quenched the rush of pleasure she experienced when he looked at her.

Toeven hope he might share those feelings was a fantasy more foolhardy than Minnie’s infatuation with an honorable soldier in the Vistarian army. Had Uncle Josh really thought Calli capable of watching out for his daughter?