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Manuela didn’t have that kind of fortitude. She’d thought she did when she’d dreamed of the art school with her grandmother. But all those years when their family had to beg and borrow, the humiliations they had all endured to keep up appearances, had broken something in her. She didn’t have the strength to give everything up for her convictions. To turn her back on position and a life of comfort to pursue a passion that even her parents dismissed as unimportant. She painted because it was like air to her, but was merely breathing truly living?
“Manuela del Carmen.” Aurora’s reproachful tone told her that her friend had finally wised up to her tricks. “You are wicked—”
“I am,” Manuela said, preening, but Aurora was not amused.
“Why are you not taking this chance to break free from your parents, Leona?” Had she used her typical haughty tone, Manuela could’ve returned with something cutting or even told her to mind her own business. But she could hear and see her friend’s agony on her behalf.
“I am not like you, Aurora,” Manuela told her friend, who sent her one of those pained expressions. They’d already had this conversation many times. In New York where they’d all met to embark on their voyage to Paris. On the steamer to France, and multiple times since their arrival in the city. Aurora still couldn’t understand why Manuela would choose to marry a man who she could not love, when she technically had a way out.
“Don’t you want to be free, Manuela?”
“What exactly does the wordfreemean to you, Aurora?” Manuela asked, suddenly irritated. “The sale of Baluarte is not going to support my family forever. What do we do when the money runs low again?” she demanded, her face hot with shame and indignation. Because it was true that Aurora had never backed down from what she wanted, but she’d also never had to see her own father on his knees begging lenders for mercy. She hadn’t been the one keeping track of every penny as she watched her mother and father overextend the family to the brink of ruin.
“You are not responsible for your parents, Manuela,” Aurora countered with the guileless fervor of the lavishly wealthy. And that wasn’t fair either: her friends just wanted to help. “That’s probably why your abuela didn’t tell them she’d recovered the land. She knew they’d want to use it for themselves. You didn’t tell them to go into debt. You didn’t tell your father to make those unfortunate business decisions.”
Manuela hadn’t, that was true, but her actionshadcost him an investor who could’ve saved them, and she had to atone for that. She had been for almost a decade now. She may not have caused their debt, but she had been the reason why their last chance at saving the business had fallen through. She simply could not walk away and leave her parents destitute, as much as she might like to.
“Aurora, I am not like you. I would not be content living in some squalid hovel here in Paris so that I could be an artist.” She sounded angry, and Manuela made a point to never let that kind of emotion dominate her. Anger, resentment, regret were emotions that did not serve women in her position. They made one bitter, and bitterness was such a useless emotion. It required so much energy, almost as much as pretending did. Manuela could hardly muster up the reserves required for that. “I can’t love Felix, that is true, but it’s not as if I could marry a person I could fall in love with.” She shut her eyes when the tall sinewy figure from Le Bureau flashed in her mind again. She wondered what it would be like to taste that mouth again, decided she’d make sure to find out.
“Ilikecomfort. I like staying here in this beautiful town house and dining at Le Grand Véfour and buying dresses at the House of Worth.” She could never love her husband, but she could be content in a life full of luxuries. She didn’t think there was anything, other than giving up painting, that could tempt her to risk losing that. “I want my parents to be comfortable and something must be sacrificed in order for that to happen.”
“Your happiness shouldn’t be it,” Aurora declared into the uncomfortable silence.
Manu shrugged and tipped back the glass of port. Her mind swirling with images of what she’d seen at Le Bureau. The women dancing in each other’s arms, the open desire in their eyes. Happy, free, unafraid. Nothing that could keep a roof over her head, nothing she had any permanent use for.
“I am doing the best I can, Aurora. The art school was Abuela’s dream. A silly dream.” She lifted the port to her lips and drank again, telling herself that the ache in her chest was not coming from the words she’d just said.
“I loathe this for you, Manu,” Aurora said in a strangled voice, her hard gaze on the gaudy ring Felix had placed on Manuela’s finger.
“Don’t. Be happy for me, because this is enough.” It had to be. She would make sure that it was.
“You deserve more.” Amaranta whispered in hushed indignation.
“Perhaps, but this is what I have, and I mean to make the most of the time I have left. No more letting Luz distract me with her business or you with your list of good deeds,” she announced, making light of things by pinching Aurora on the cheek. “I will be the very picture of feminine licentiousness. Depravity and indulgence will be the only things I strive for.” Aurora whimpered and Manuela laughed. Again, those bright lavender eyes appeared in her mind. “At least there’s three of you to douse all the Parisian fires I mean to leave in my wake,” she joked, making her friends wince.
After a moment, Aurora capitulated by raising her glass. “May God have mercy on the unsuspecting souls you decide to unleash the full force of the Manuela Caceres Galvan inferno on.”
They drank in silence for a while and Manuela’s mind once again drifted to her encounter at Le Bureau. She was still recalling the sensations of that kiss when Luz Alana spoke up.
“But why go to the meeting at all?” she asked, pointing to the note card in Manu’s hand. Her business-minded friend was much too observant to allow Manuela to distract her from the matter at hand for too long.
“I am curious,” she confessed, running her fingers over the embossed name on the creamy white card.Cora Kempf Bristol, Duchess of Sundridge.“How often can one boast of dining with a duchess?”
“What could you possibly have in common with a matronly aristocrat who is probably being forced by the menfolk to bully you into selling them the land? Because one thing is certain, she is not likely to be the one calling the shots for these railway negotiations,” Luz Alana asserted, with the derision of a woman who’d been turned away by every man she’d attempted to do business with since she’d arrived in Paris.
“I am sure we won’t have many shared interests,” Manuela conceded, then amused herself by imagining the duchess’s horrified expression if she was to share the details of what she’d gotten up to that very evening. “But this old biddy has invited me to Au Rocher de Cancale and—” she lifted a finger in the air for emphasis “—I hear the oysters are excellent.”
“I thought you were going to search for the mystery woman from the brothel tomorrow,” Aurora pointed out, then winced as Amaranta shot them a very unhappy look.
“That will beafterthe oysters, Leona.” Tomorrow she’d go to luncheon and enjoy her champagne and oysters. Then she’d apply herself to exploiting the last weeks of freedom she’d bought herself.
Three
“La duchesse arrive!”
Cora Kempf Bristol, Duchess of Sundridge, jumped in surprise at the loud thump on the side of her carriage. “For God’s sake, Maggie, tell them to stop. They’re going to alert the entire street that I’m here.” She leaned out the window to look at the two young boys who shot off like tiny missiles in the direction of her offices, announcing her arrival at the top of their lungs.
“Of course, Your Grace,” her secretary promptly replied before sticking her head out of the carriage window in order to quietly berate the footman for not suppressing the boys’ enthusiasm.
