Blood and Honor [calibre 2.45.0]

"Straight's fine," Clete said.

"Maybe for you," Claudia said. "Send for ice, Alicia." She looked at Clete. "I don't think I've ever seen you looking so elegant."

"I bought this to be my diplomat's uniform," he said.

"You will stay now? At your embassy, I mean?"

"I declined the appointment. But I will stay."

"Meaning what, Cletus?"

"I entered Argentina on my Argentine passport," he said. "I have, in a sense, come home."

"Oh, my!" Claudia said.

"Your Argentine passport?" Isabela said. "But you're a norteamericano."

"Isabela, I was born here," Clete said. "I'm as entitled to an Argentine passport as you are."

"I never heard of such a thing!" Isabela snorted.

"I'm sure there's a lot of things you haven't heard about," Clete said.

"Don't you two start!" Claudia said. "I couldn't stand that."

"Sorry," Clete said.

"Your father is in the Edificio Libertador," Claudia said.

"We just came from there."

"I'm sure he would like it, but I found it rather macabre."

"It was impressive," Clete said. "But, yeah, I think el Coronel would like it."

A maid appeared with a bucket of ice.

Too soon to be in response to Alicia's sending for someone,Clete decided. Somebody decided we would need a drink.

"Your aunt Beatrice was over there all day. She came back not an hour ago. We are to have a small—family, I suppose—dinner."

"How is she?" Clete asked.

"She's not here," Claudia said. "She's in the arms of Jesus and/or morphia."

"Mother!" Alicia said, shocked.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Forgive me."

There was a barely audible tap on the corridor door, and when Humberto Valdez Duarte turned his head to it, he saw the door open just wide enough to show his butler's face, his eyebrows asking permission to enter.

Duarte, a tall, slender man of forty-seven, who wore his thick black hair long at the sides and brushed slickly back, held out his hand, palm outward, and shook his head "no."

He quickly swung his feet off his wife's delicate, pink and pale-blue silk-upholstered chaise longue, on which he had been resting with a cup of coffee, and walked out of the bedroom and through the sitting, to the door.

"Se?or Frade is here, Se?or," the butler said.

"Thank God!" Duarte said softly.

"I put him, and Capitan Lauffer of the Husares, in the reception, with the Carzino-Cormanos."

"Fine. Please offer them whatever they wish, and tell them the Se?ora and I will join them shortly.

The butler nodded, then withdrew his head from the door and closed it softly.

Duarte went back into the bedroom. Beatrice Frade de Duarte was sitting before her vanity in her slip, brushing her long black hair. She smiled at him in the mirror. His wife was six months older than he was, a tall, slim woman with large dark eyes and a dazzling smile.

"What was that, carino?" she asked.

"Cletus is here."

"Oh, good! In time for dinner."

"He has Capitan Lauffer of the Husares with him. What would you like me to do about him?"

"Invite the Capitan to join us, of course. I've always liked him, and you know how fond Jorge was of him."

"Would you like me to go to them now, or wait until you're ready?"

"You go down now, of course, offer my apologies, and tell them I'll be there shortly."

He walked to the vanity, smiled at his wife in the mirror, touched her head, and finally bent over and kissed it. She smiled and put up her hand and caught his.

Then he turned and left the room.

The fact that his wife had developed serious emotional problems did not cause Humberto Valdez Duarte to love her less, he often thought, but rather the opposite. Sometimes—like now—he felt a tenderness for her that was surprising in its intensity ... a desire to wrap her, figuratively and literally, in his arms and to continue to protect her from all unpleasantness.

They had known each other all of their lives, and had married at twenty-one, on Humberto's graduation from the University of Buenos Aires. While everyone agreed that the marriage was a good one, uniting two of Argentina's most prominent families, there were some raised eyebrows at the time—even some whispers—about their tender ages. People of their social position usually married no younger than twenty-five, and often later. Unless, of course, there was a reason.

The whispers died thirteen months after their marriage when Beatrice gave birth to their first—and as it turned out, only—child, Jorge Alejandro.

The first indication of emotional problems came when Beatrice's postpartum depression required the attention of a psychiatrist.

Now that he thought about it, there had been indications of emotional difficulty all along, most often manifested in Beatrice's detachment from reality— her unwillingness to accept the existence of anything unpleasant—coupled with a growing religious fervor. She began to go to mass daily about the time Jorge started school, and developed an unusually close relationship with her confessor, Padre (later Monsignor) Patrick Kelly.

Humberto often wondered what she had to confess. When he went, infrequently, to confession, there was generally some act or thought for which he really needed absolution. Try as he could, however, he could think of nothing Beatrice might want to confess more sinful than possible unkind thoughts about one of her friends, Jorge's teachers, or her brother, Jorge Guillermo Frade. The latter seemed most likely. Having un-Christian thoughts about her brother was very understandable.

During the six months since Jorge Alejandro had been killed, he had confessed the same thing many times.

Jorge Alejandro idolized his uncle from the time he could walk. Children are prone to adore indulgent uncles, especially when the uncles are dashing cavalry officers and superb horsemen, and who delight in making available to nephews the toys—fast cars, highly spirited horses, firearms, airplanes—their parents would just as soon they not have so early in life, or ever.

But neither he nor Beatrice could bring themselves to deny Beatrice's brother the company of his nephew. After Jorge Guillermo Frade lost his wife— and for all practical purposes, their son—he never remarried. And it was clear that he really loved Jorge Alejandro . . . saw him as a substitute for the son he had lost.

In his third year at St. George's School, Jorge Alejandro firmly announced that he had no intention of becoming a banker—with the clear implication that in his view banking was a profession about as masculine as hairdressing and interior decorating. He announced that instead he intended to follow his uncle to the Military Academy and become an officer—after all, he carried the blood of Pueyrred?n in his veins. There was nothing Humberto, who was Managing Director ( In Argentina, as in Europe, the term is equivalent to "President" or "Chief Executive Officer.") of the Anglo-Argentine Bank, could do about it except hope that Jorge Alejandro would find the discipline at Campo de Mayo too much to take.

That hope did not materialize. Like his uncle, Jorge Alejandro was appointed Cadet Coronel during his last year at Campo de Mayo. And like his uncle—by then el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade, commanding the Husares de Pueyrred?n Cavalry Regiment—he was commissioned into the cavalry. Almost certainly because of his uncle's influence, he was "routinely" assigned to the Husares.