The Hacienda(14)

If she ever answered my letters begging her to come. I could only hope that she would stomach the sight of Rodolfo.

I shoved the thought aside and pulled on my leather gloves, laying siege to the flower beds. I weeded violently, leaving piles of deadened flowers in my wake. With the exception of a break for lunch and a short siesta in the cool of the house, I continued until the shadows grew long in the courtyard.

“What on earth are you doing?”

I jumped.

Juana stood over me, eyes narrowed as she scanned the sweat-stained rim of my hat and the dirt on my dress. Her cheeks were pink from the sun; sweat darkened her blouse beneath her armpits and below her throat.

“My brother would say this is what we have servants for, Do?a Solórzano,” she drawled.

I jerked my hands out of the dirt, brushing off the gloves.

Was she mocking me? I could not parse her expression as I rose and shook out my skirts. It was evident from our one dinner together that Juana did not hold what Rodolfo thought in high esteem. Nor vice versa. Nor that she believed caring for the gardens was as important as tending the maguey. But why?

“My husband would say he admired women who understand the amount of work that goes into running a property.” I had heard him talk about women’s education and the importance of widows running haciendas in the country in the wake of the war with his colleagues and twisted his words to make them sound as if they were approving of my behavior.

Juana snorted softly. She surveyed the pockmarks my labor had left in the soil. “He may admire them, yes. But he doesn’t often marry them.”

I busied myself with taking off my gloves to hide the curiosity in my expression. So Juana had never caught María Catalina weeding the garden, that was for certain. What else did she know about my husband’s first wife? They had lived together on the hacienda for a time, hadn’t they?

“I’m joining you for dinner tonight,” Juana said abruptly.

She announced this as if she were the host and not I, as if the house were hers and not mine. I bit back the retort that sprang to my lips.

The animosity between my husband and his sister, the fact that Juana was such a curiosity to Do?a María José and the other hacendados’ wives, the rumors about the departed María Catalina . . . there was so much I didn’t know about Hacienda San Isidro.

So much that Juana did.

If she warmed to me, if she saw me as unthreatening to her way of life here, perhaps she would confide in me.

I would find my place as lady of the house. I would make it my own. But I could not risk alienating Juana, not yet.

I followed as she strode into the house.

“How do you like it?” she wondered, her chin tilted up, gaze skipping over the high ceiling of the entryway. It was an idle question, perfectly innocent on the surface, but something uncertain lurked beneath it.

“It’s . . .” I let the word trail off. Juana turned and faced me, the evening light from the open doorway illuminating her face, dancing off the flyaway bronze hairs that had come loose from their knot at her nape. Her wide, pale eyes met mine so frankly I couldn’t help but respond in kind. To say exactly what I was thinking as I untied my hat and took it off my sweaty hair. “I want to blast the roof off. It seems like the only way to let in the amount of fresh air I want.”

A peal of surprised laughter burst forth from Juana. It swept up to the high ceiling, tangling in the cobwebs. “I thought Rodolfo said you were a general’s daughter, not of an artillery man.” A warm curl of pleasure had unfurled in my chest at making Juana laugh, but it cooled quickly. Rodolfo had told her about me—why hadn’t he told me a single thing about her? What other secrets was he keeping from me about San Isidro? About his first wife?

“What other violent plans do you have to clear the air?”

What I wanted to do was take a tlachiquero’s machete to the walls to carve more windows.

“Color,” I replied curtly.

“What if the house doesn’t like color?” Juana teased. Was she toying with me or trying to be friendly? In the capital, women played chess with their words, moving coyly around china and silk to check one another, to protect their territory, to take one another off the board. I had never been close with anyone but Mamá—even my cousins and friends from before Papá’s death were sharp clawed and evasive, keeping me at bay with barbs and sideways looks.

“The house will like what I tell it to like,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. Because it is my house, I added silently. “We will start with blue.”

Juana’s thin lips vanished as she grinned. “I like you,” she said bluntly. “What shades of blue do you have in mind, General Beatriz?”

My folded arms loosened. My experiences since my father’s death had laid stone after stone in my chest, building walls so impenetrable that Mamá commented on how hard it had become to reach my heart. But still, I liked being told I was liked.

I waved to Juana to follow me to the stairs. “I brought silks from the capital,” I said. “Blues the likes of which you’ve never seen.”

A moment of hesitation, then Juana’s boots followed me down the hall.

She did not speak, so I filled the silence by lecturing her about what I would do with each room as we passed. I would model the dining room after ours in the capital, where Papá and Mamá once hosted generals; the parlors I would decorate in colors that would please Mamá, like soft yellows and pinks.