The Spanish Daughter(68)

I grimaced. “Did you get caught?”

He shook his head. “They were licking their fingers by the end of the meal.” He patted his flat belly. “I tried them, too.”

“And?”

“Not bad. Similar to rabbit.” He grabbed the pitcher of water and served me, as if he hadn’t just uttered the most disgusting thing. “What about you? Did you ever play a prank on anybody?”

“Nothing that wicked,” I said, taking a sip. “I once put salt inside the sugar bowl for my assistant’s tea. But only because she annoyed me.”

“How so?”

My ears warmed up. “Uh, nothing important.”

“Then, why are you blushing?”

“?Por amor de Dios! Do you have to know everything?”

“Yes.” He leaned on the table. “I want to know everything about you.”

I sat back and glanced at the door leading to the kitchen.

“She criticized my singing.”

“Oh, your singing.”

“Save it!”

“All right, all right.” He covered a chuckle with his hand. As if I couldn’t hear him. “So, acting like a man. What are your thoughts? Is it what you imagined?”

“Well, aside from the obvious advantages of having more freedom and wearing more comfortable clothes, it’s given me a better understanding of my husband, of how his mind worked.”

“In what way?”

“By being forced to act like him, I’ve had to suppress a side of my personality that had been prevalent all my life.”

“Which is?”

“The need to persuade others to do what I want.”

“You think this is a feminine trait?”

“Not necessarily. But certainly, Cristóbal wasn’t that way. He let others act as they saw fit; he was reserved, discreet, and always in control of his emotions. I, on the other hand, couldn’t be quiet for more than a minute and constantly had the need to fix everyone’s lives.”

“Like Mayra’s?”

“Like Mayra’s.”

“Interesting. Angélica has those same traits.”

*

I was still thinking about Martin’s words when I returned to the hacienda.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he’d said right before I left, “but you’re a lot more pleasant as a woman. Cristóbal is a little too straitlaced for my taste.”

I could see why he thought that. It had been such a relief to have a conversation without having to watch everything I said or did every second.

As soon as I walked into the foyer, Ramona flew toward me and landed on my shoulder. She seemed to have taken a liking to me. Interestingly, she never approached Laurent. She repeated something I couldn’t understand, something that sounded like the word “lobo.” From the parlor, Angélica greeted me and invited me to have a drink with her.

I sat down, clutching a glass of whiskey. What could she want to talk to me about? She’d never showed much interest in me. She had at most offered me food and drink and asked if my accommodations were to my liking. But that was about it. We’d never had a regular conversation, an exchange of ideas.

“Where is Do?a Catalina?” I asked by means of breaking our cumbersome silence.

“Sewing. She has to finish our dresses for next week.”

“The town’s festivities?”

“Yes.”

She took a sip of wine.

“Don Cristóbal, I’d like to thank you for your help during that . . . unpleasant episode with Don Fernando today.” Somewhat flustered, she explained that he’d been her fiancé for a brief time, but after the breakup, relations with the family had turned sour. She mentioned the fencing issues, the lawsuits, and the problem with the German client.

After her long explanation, she leaned forward. “It was touching to see the way you attempted to defend us, but why did you do it?”

Us? The last person on my mind had been Angélica. I just couldn’t stand to see him beating Martin.

“It’s what my wife would’ve wanted,” I said. “She had a strong sense of justice.”

In a way, I was not lying.

Angélica’s face lit up. “Tell me about her, about my sister.”

It was so rare to hear her call me “sister.” She always referred to me as María Purificación, that very formal name I despised especially when pronounced in that sanctimonious tone. It reminded me of the times my school teachers had scolded me for being bad (“Ni?a María Purificación, stop distracting your classmates.”). But today, Angélica had used her sweetest tone to call me “sister.” With that angelic expression on her face, it was hard to believe she would ever plot to hurt anyone, especially her own flesh and blood.

What was happening to me? At times like this, it was hard to sustain my anger. What if none of my siblings had ordered Franco to kill me? What if it had been someone else, someone I didn’t even know about? But no, I shouldn’t continue with that line of thought. I didn’t want to face the possibility of what that meant about me, about my actions.

“What would you like to know?” I tasted the whiskey which, oddly, was growing on me.