“It’ll be all right, baby,” he said.
She held him tightly. He kissed her hair.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Oh, Christ!”
He ran his hand down her spine.
“Señorita, your question has been answered,” he said.
“What?”
He took her hand and guided it to his groin. “Our friend has also waken up,” he said.
She held him.
“If I could see your face, would you be blushing?” he asked.
“Shut up, Peter,” she said, and lay back on the bed, pulling him down on top of her.
Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, now wearing a shirt and trousers, knocked at the bathroom door.
“I’m brushing my hair,” Alicia called softly, and he pushed open the door.
She was standing in front of the mirror in her underwear. She smiled at him. “You didn’t have to get up,” she said.
“I’m going to drive you home,” he said.
“I’m going to take a taxi,” she said. “We’ve been through this before.”
“Christ, you’re as hardheaded as you are beautiful.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve explained the rules to you,” she said. “I pretend to have been dancing with friends at the Alvear roof garden, and Mother pretends to believe me.”
“You’ve had a lot of experience with this sort of thing, right?”
Her smile vanished, replaced by a look of hurt and anger. “You know better than that,” she said.
He knew better than that. Alicia had been a virgin.
“Just a little joke,” he said.
“I don’t like your sense of humor,” Alicia said, and began to furiously brush her hair.
After a moment she said, “I learned the rules from Isabela.”
Isabela was the older of the Carzino-Cormano girls.
“And has el bitcho been dancing at the Alvear tonight, too?”
“Don’t call her that, Peter, I’ve asked you.”
It had been loathing at first sight when Isabela and Cletus Frade had met. Clete had dubbed her “el bitcho.” Though it was neither Spanish nor English, the term had immediately caught on. Alicia often caught herself thinking of Isabela that way, and she had even overheard one of the maids calling her that to another maid.
“Has she?” he pursued.
“I don’t know what she did last night. She’s been…” Alicia stopped herself just in time from saying “bitchy,” “…difficult about the wedding. She really doesn’t want to participate.”