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“I do.” Alejandro’s eyes softened as he looked at our baby. “I’d like Miguel to come, as well. Because he is their future. And they are his.”
I bit my lip, trying my best not to look nervous. “Right. Four hundred years on this land, right? So it’s in Miguel’s blood.”
“Something like that.” Alejandro put down his napkin and rose to his feet. “We’ll see the Widow Ramirez first. She was my governess, once.”
The thought warmed my heart. “She taught you as a child?”
“Both me and the...housekeeper’s son.”
“You mean Miguel,” I said softly. “Your friend.”
“Yes. We played together as children, studied together, fought. It didn’t matter that one of us was a future duke and the other just the housekeeper’s son. We studied the same subjects, lived in the same house. We both loved Abuela. We were friends. Until Miguel died that day.”
“And you survived,” I said gently, touching his shoulder.
“Yes. I survived.” He turned away. “I’ll get the keys.”
I finished my breakfast and my orange juice. When Alejandro returned, he said, “Señora Ramirez is no longer as sharp as she used to be, but she still has a lot of influence with the other tenants.”
“No pressure,” I muttered, my heart suddenly cold with fear. I looked down at my pink shirt and floppy cotton skirt. “Maybe I should change.”
He barely glanced at me. “You’re fine.”
“I want them to like me....”
Alejandro laughed. “Fancy clothes won’t make them like you. In fact, if you showed up in a designer dress and five-inch stiletto heels, they’d like you less. The farmers respect honesty, hard work and kindness when it’s called for. Bluntness when it’s not.” His dark eyes gleamed. “You should get along just fine.”
“Oh, all right,” I sighed, sure he was wrong.
A half hour later, the three of us were in his estate vehicle, a black, open-air Jeep, headed over a dirt road that crossed the wide fields and hills belonging to the Castillo de Rohares.
The Widow Ramirez’s house was a snug little cottage on the edge of the estate, where she grew organic peaches and persimmons, aubergines and artichokes, and raised goats that produced milk and cheese. Frail and wizened, barely as tall as my shoulder, when she answered her door she looked at me with critical, beady eyes. But by the end of the visit, she was smiling and pushing more of her homemade butter cookies toward me.
“Eat, eat,” she pleaded. “You must keep up your strength if you are to give your husband more children.”
I felt Alejandro looking at me, and blushed.
“Gracias, Pilar,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “We wish for more children very much.”
“Of course you do,” she said, pouring him tea. “I know it was always your desire to have a larger family, growing up so lonely, up in that huge castle, with your older sister off working in Granada. And your mother,” she sniffed, “working night and day, when she wasn’t distracted by the duke....”
“Sister? What sister? Alejandro is an only child,” I added, frowning up at him. “Aren’t you?”
He cleared his throat, glancing at his old governess. “You’re confused, Pilar,” he said gently. “You’re thinking of Miguel. Not me.”
Her rheumy eyes focused on him. Then she nearly jumped in her chair. “Yes. Yes, of course. That was Miguel. You are El Duque.” She abruptly held out a plate to me. “¿Más galletas?”
“Yes, please.”
She beamed at me. “It makes me so happy you like my cookies. Alejandro—” she looked at him severely “—barely ate one.”
He laughed. “I had three.”
“Hardly any,” she sniffed. She smiled at me. “You should take the example of your wife, and eat four or more.”
“Gracias,” I said happily, and took another one, buttery and flaky and sweet. “I will need this recipe.”
“I’ll be delighted to send it to you!”
Shortly afterward, as we rose to leave, Alejandro hugged the widow’s small frame gently and looked at her with real love. “Take care of yourself, Pilar. We’ll see you soon.”
