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Apollo cleared his throat. “I can escort her,” he told his brother. “I have business in Paris I need to take care of. I was leaving in the morning, but I’m sure my man could get us two tickets on the midnight train.”
“Three,” Aurora announced, placing her empty dish on a small table. She shot Apollo a dirty look, then sent a surly one to Manuela. “I amnotletting you travel alone with this cretino.”
“All these endearments are going to go to my head, Doctora.”
Manuela truly feared for Apollo’s life when he insisted on taunting Aurora like this.
“Perhaps I can come back in a few days’ time—” Manuela began, but Luz Alana didn’t let her finish.
“What do you need, Leona?” her friend asked, no hesitation in her voice, the final straw after days of holding in a heartbreak so wrenching she’d felt like air was scarcely entering her lungs. She threw herself in Luz Alana’s arms, sobbing with relief to finally be able to allow her friends into her secret misery.
“I need Cora, to see her,” she confessed, as the tears she’d not allowed herself to shed in years finally came, and she felt another set of arms and noted Aurora’s familiar scent at her back. There was movement in the room, and Evan’s and Apollo’s hushed voices as Manuela let herself be anchored by her friends.
“Are you still going to marry him?”
Even though Luz Alana delivered the question with utmost gentleness, she felt the sting of it. But this was the question, was it not? With her cheek still pressed to Luz Alana’s shoulder, ensconced in the cocoon her friends had built for her, Manuela could finally admit what she truly wanted.
For so long she’d fed herself such lies about what would make her happy, what she could have, what she was willing to accept. None of it was what she truly desired. In a way her preferences, knowing she could only truly love another woman, had made it easier. She could tell herself there was no possibility of a life in which she could live from her art or coupled to another woman. Knowing the life she would’ve wished for herself was impossible made it easier to tolerate one she detested. But now she’d seen itwaspossible, and she couldn’t look away.
It was choking her, the need to say it, if only to give it air.
“I don’t want to,” she admitted, comforted by her friends’ embrace. “I don’t want to, but I fear it’s too late. Felix won’t take this well, and my parents will never forgive me for the humiliation.” Aurora made a disgusted noise, but instead of her usual barbs, she only held Manuela tighter. “I thought it would be enough to have this time of freedom. To have this one experience to look back on. That the comforts of the life I’d have with Felix would somehow be enough, but I can’t do it.” She was crying again, but with every word she said she felt lighter, clearer.
Luz Alana looked wretched, her eyes brimming with tears. “We should’ve known you were struggling, that you were just putting on a brave face. I am sorry, Leona.”
“Don’t,” Manuela said, even has her friend’s words soothed a deep ache in her. “I hid everything from you. I won’t ever again.”
“You don’t have to keep things inside,” Luz Alana told her, eyes fierce as she took Manuela’s face between her hands.
“You deserve to have exactly what you want, Leona, not the dregs left over once your parents have their fill,” Aurora said in an unusually raspy voice.
“There is no future with Cora,” she insisted, if only to prepare herself for what would happen when she returned to Paris. Regardless of what she felt, of what they’d shared, the duchess had not spoken a word of wanting more with her. “She’d never risk being tied to a scandal like the one Felix will almost surely cause if I end the engagement.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Luz Alana told her. “Maybe she’s in Paris feeling exactly as you do.” Her friend sent her husband a look of such unguarded love, Manuela ached. “Go to her, tell her how you feel. If she can’t give you what you want, at least you’ll know for sure.”
Her friend’s words helped, but she couldn’t lose the niggling of doubt. “She’s very invested in making sure her stepson can return to London without any rumors trailing him from Paris.”
Apollo made an unhappy huffing sound from his perch at the table. “Isn’t this duchess Chilean?” He made a sound of disgust when Manuela nodded. “Why do any of you care about what people with the moral high ground of an anthill think about what you do?” The Earl of Darnick was unable to maintain his mask of indifference for once. “They came to our countries and did what they damn well pleased. Why can’t we do the same? Who cares about the opinion of some soulless ghoul sitting in one of those marble mausoleums on Curzon Street? Que se jodan todos.”
Although she couldn’t disagree with the sentiment that moralistic zealots could all go to hell, it wasn’t quite that simple. They might all be South American, but that didn’t mean society rules didn’t apply to them. Then again, the fact that she was contemplating running back to see her female lover to confess her undying love already placed her well outside the confines of polite society.
Manuela didn’t want to spend one more minute of the time she had left in Europe thinking about anyone’sopinions. All she wanted was to spend it with Cora.
“Que se jodan,” she echoed Apollo, as she pulled away from her friends. Her Leonas, her pride. “I cannot miss that train.”
“Then, we better get moving,” Luz Alana declared, at the same moment that Aurora clapped her hands and ran off to pack them “refreshments.” The rest of the evening was a blur. In one hour they had their trunks packed and ready to be loaded on the carriage, and in two they were arriving at the station.
At exactly one minute past midnight Manuela, Aurora and Apollo pulled out of Waverley station, headed for Paris.
“Querida, you made Laurent cry,” Tia Osiris chided as they walked around their private garden. An activity her aunt had insisted on since she was apparently tired of watching Cora sulk in her study.
“I did no such thing,” she protested, as they rounded a cluster of perfectly manicured topiaries. She couldn’t even muster up any remorse for her horrid behavior. She had been an absolute misery to be around for the past week. She’d lost her temper twice in a meeting, which she was certain resulted in rumblings about her becoming hysterical. Not even finalizing the purchase of the building from Grinaud could lift her mood.
“Youalmostdid,” her aunt argued as she leaned down to pick up a sprig of rosemary and pressed it to her nose. “Querida, why don’t you write her a letter? Tell her you miss her.” Cora pressed her lips together and looked up at the beautiful sky, striving to gather patience so she didn’t yell at her elderly aunt.
“Tia, please, you must stop this,” she pleaded. “There is nothing to be gained from having this conversation. I don’t miss her. Our agreement isdone.” There was no helping the exasperation in her voice, not that Tia Osiris was even remotely intimidated by Cora’s outburst.
Yes, she was...mildly irked this week. It was true that she had felt Manuela’s absence in a way she had not expected. But that didn’t alter the circumstances around their arrangement, nor did it have any bearing on what Cora intended to do. “In a week’s time, the deed will be reverted to me, and it will be done. My personal feelings were never a part of this.”
