Secret Honor (Honor Bound 3)

That was all now impossible, because of the careless carnal impetuosity of the couple.

An immediate marriage was the obvious solution, but that itself posed problems, primarily because the groom was just beginning the year’s mourning for his late father, during which, without a special dispensation from the Church, he could not marry.

Obedience to the canons of the Roman Catholic Church regarding marriage was required, even though the bride and groom were Anglican and Episcopalian, respectively. Roman Catholicism was the official religion of the nation, and therefore only Roman Catholic marriages were regarded as legally valid.

Father Kurt Welner, S.J., not without difficulty, had found solutions to the ecclesiastical problems. Welner was not only a close friend of the Frade family (and had been a trusted friend of Jorge Frade), he was an expert in canon law and an adviser to the Cardinal Archbishop.

First, he had obtained from the Right Reverend Manuel de Parto, bishop of the Diocese of Pila, in which Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo was located, a waiver of the year of mourning requirement for Cletus Frade. The waiver was not in fact difficult to obtain. He had had to mention to the Bishop only twice that more than half of the diocesan budget came from the pious generosity of el Patron of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo.

Father Welner had not mentioned to Bishop de Parto that, in deference to the feelings of the bride and her mother, and the groom’s almost belligerently Episcopalian family, he was also seeking from the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires a special dispensation permitting the bride’s priest, the Very Reverend Matthew Cashley-Price, of the Anglican Cathedral of Buenos Aires, to take part in the wedding ceremony.

The Cardinal Archbishop had told Father Welner that he had to think long and hard about this, and it had taken him until last night to decide how to handle the granting of the dispensation needed to make the Anglican priest a part of the wedding ceremony. Once the decision was made, he himself had decided that he had to be the one to inform Bishop de Parto. Both Welner and the Cardinal were aware that the Bishop would be very uncomfortable with the notion of the Very Reverend Cashley-Price having anything to do with the wedding.

As would the two priests of El Capilla Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, who tended to the spiritual needs of the more than 1,400 people who lived and worked

on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, and in whose chapel the wedding would be held.

And so would Monsignor Patrick Kelly, of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, who would celebrate the mass, representing the Cardinal Archbishop. The Cardinal would not be able to personally participate, as he would “unfortunately be tied up with pressing business,” or so he had explained to the Jesuit.

Monsignor Kelly, the family priest of the bride’s father and of the groom’s aunt and uncle, had made it quite clear to Father Welner that he held him responsible for this outrageous business of having a bloody English Protestant involved in the wedding.

But there were other problems, of a more social nature.

Though Señora Carzino-Cormano—who had been “a very dear friend” of the groom-to-be’s father and was a close friend of the bride’s mother, and whose daughter Alicia and Dorotéa had been close since childhood—had felt that she had both the right and the obligation to provide any assistance she could, and would open Estancia Santo Catalina to the family of the bride to use as their home until the marriage was accomplished, her ministrations could not make straight what had long been crooked.

Enrico Mallín, for example, the father of the bride and Managing Director of the Sociedad Mercantil de Importación de Productos Petrolíferos (SMIPP), was having a very difficult—and only partially successful—time concealing his unhappiness with his daughter’s intended.

Worse—or at least generating more problems—the groom’s maternal aunt, Beatrice Frade de Duarte, had been under the constant care of a psychiatrist since the death of her son, the groom’s cousin. The psychiatrist spent a large portion of his time feeding her just enough tranquilizing medicine to keep her behavior under control while not putting her into a trance. When not so controlled, she moved rapidly between euphoria and black depression. Usually, he was successful.

Señora Claudia de Carzino-Cormano, the mistress of Estancia Santo Catalina and its 80,599 (more or less) hectares, was a svelte woman in her mid-fifties, with a full head of luxuriant, gray-flecked black hair, drawn up from her neck to the top of her head.

When Sarita, her maid, entered to inform her that Padre Welner had just arrived and wished to see her, she was standing before a triple mirror in the dressing room of the master suite in the main house, wearing a simple black silk dress and holding a cross on a chain in each hand. “Where is he?”

“On the veranda, Señora.”

“Offer him coffee, or something to drink, and tell him I will be with him in a moment.”

“Sí, Señora.”

Claudia dropped her eyes to the crosses she was holding. The simple gold cross on its delicate chain in her left hand was quietly elegant, and was entirely appropriate for luncheon. The cross in her right hand was maybe three times the size of the other. Its heavy gold chain looked sturdy enough to hold an anchor. There were four rubies on the horizontal bar of the cross and six on the vertical. At their junction was an emerald-cut 1.5-carat diamond.

It looks like costume jewelry, Claudia thought. Of the type worn by a successful brothel madam.

But it’s real. The best that money could buy—if taste doesn’t enter the equation.

I can’t even remember any more what Jorge did, just that I had every right to be angry with him, and he knew it, and this was his peace offering.

She had imagined then, and imagined now, Jorge standing in the jewelry store off the lobby of the Alvear Plaza Hotel, being shown their entire collection of crosses and picking this one because it was the most expensive.

Anything to make peace. He couldn’t stand it when I was angry with him. He really loved me.

Oh, Jorge!

Her eyes watered, and she closed them, and then she put the simple cross back in her jewelry box and fastened Jorge’s cross around her neck.

Padre Welner will understand.

Señora Claudia de Carzino-Cormano and el Coronel Jorge Frade had been lovers—in fact, all but married—for many years. Though both of their spouses had died, for various reasons marriage had been out of the question.