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Luz yelped, startled by Amaranta’s reproach coming from somewhere in the dark expanse of the house.
“Diablos, we were so close!” Manuela cried with heartfelt regret. From behind her she could hear Aurora’s curse and Luz Alana’s guilty gasp. “Amaranta, querida, you didn’t have to wait up for us!” She tried to infuse her words with as much guilelessness as one could while caught in the act of slinking back into a house after an evening of brothels and champagne...and kissing strangers.
“Not one of you is as sabia as you think you are,” Amaranta scolded as she made her way to them, illuminating the space with the small gas lamp in her hand. “Manuela, wipe that smirk off your face. Your mother would have me skinned alive if she knew what I’m letting you get away with.” Despite her threats, their chaperone looked more amused than disgruntled as she ushered them into the parlor where she’d apparently been holding vigil. There was a half-empty glass of port and Luz Alana’s copy ofBlanca Solby Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera on the small table next to an armchair. Amaranta had only started the book that afternoon, and Manuela noticed she was almost halfway through. She’d clearly been there a while.
“Ay, prima, we were just celebrating Luz Alana’s triumph at the judgment tonight. Her rum got a ribbon at the exposition.” Luz Alana shot Manuela a pointed look as she arranged her gown on the settee. Her friend clearly didn’t want to expound too much on her own adventures that evening.
“I tried to tell them, but you know how they are.” Aurora didn’t even attempt to provide an excuse and went over to the sideboard to pour herself some port.
“Aurora,” both Manuela and Luz Alana chided. She had always been the weakest link, confessing to a crime before they were even suspected of it.
She sent them both a look that saidI can’t live with the weight of these liesand to Manuela’s horror launched into her confession. “They dragged me to a live—”
“Ah, ah, ah!” Amaranta frantically held up her hand, shaking her head. “I donotwant to know. That way I’ll at least have some plausible deniability of your whereabouts. Besides, I’m waiting up for a different reason.”
At that, Luz Alana looked concerned. “Did Clarita give you any trouble, prima?”
Amaranta sighed in feigned exasperation at the mention of their charge, but the indulgent look on her face told a different story. “She was very cross that Manuela left before they could do their daily boberia, or whatever it is they call it.”
Manuela wished she could wake up the little fresca. Clarita and Luz Alana had lost their mother ten years earlier and their father only two years before. For Luz Alana, it had been devastating. For Clarita, who was only eleven, to lose both parents at such an early age had made her wise—and morbid—beyond her years. The child also possessed a streak of wildness that Manuela could connect to. That was why she’d devised their daily boberia. Each afternoon Clarita came up with something absolutely ridiculous for them to do which Manuela dutifully went along with. So far, they’d played various pranks on the very unamused porter, had attempted multiple magic tricks with varying degrees of success, and on one occasion spent a day creating an astonishingly lifelike papier-mâché mouse they’d left in Aurora’s medical bag. It was the most fun she’d had in Paris, until tonight. “Ah, we will have to make sure to do two of them tomorrow,” she declared, then took a seat across from Amaranta, who thankfully seemed more amused than upset by their sneaking around.
“I don’t think you’ll have much time for boberias tomorrow,” their chaperone countered, pulling a small card from her dressing-gown pocket. “This came while you were at the opera, Manu.” The pointed tone in which Amaranta saidoperatold Manuela their cousin knew they’d never planned to go to the theater.
“What’s that?” Aurora asked, as she poured them glasses of port.
Manuela took the card from Amaranta. “I have agreed to have lunch with one of the people interested in purchasing Baluarte.”
“Oh,” Luz Alana said in surprise, as she reached for the small glass Aurora passed her. “I didn’t know you’d reconsidered selling it.”
“I haven’t,” Manuela retorted, awkwardly, not entirely sure why she’d agreed to this lunch. “But,” she said and lifted a shoulder, focusing on reading over the note so that she didn’t have to look at her friends’ concerned faces, “it won’t hurt to listen to their new offer, even if I don’t accept it.”
Baluarte was a piece of land in Puerto Cabello, on the western coast of Venezuela, that Manuela’s grandfather had purchased shortly after arriving in the country seeking exile.
Twenty-five years earlier—when Manuela had only been three years old—her family had been forced to leave their native Dominican Republic for opposing the ruling government’s plan to annex the country back to Spain. They’d managed to establish themselves well enough. Her paternal grandparents brought their knowledge in candle making to Venezuela and opened a factory that thrived under Ramon Prospero Caceres Santoro’s leadership.
Ramon purchased Baluarte as a gift for Manuela’s grandmother, Carmen Delia. The two hundred acres of seafront property were to be used to fulfill Carmen Delia’s lifelong dream of opening an art colony where women from the Americas could come and learn. Once Manuela began to show interest and talent for the arts, her grandmother shared her dream with her granddaughter. For a long time, Manuela imagined her future self at the helm of a school that welcomed and nurtured promising women artists. But when the family’s business began failing once Manuela’s father took over the reins, they were forced to sell their holdings to keep the family afloat: including her beloved Baluarte.
To Manuela’s—and her parents’—surprise, six months ago, almost two years after her grandmother’s death, a solicitor appeared at their home to inform them the beachfront property once again belonged to the family. It appeared that when Carmen Delia sold Baluarte, she’d included a clause allowing for her to buy it back within five years of the sale. Without her son or daughter-in-law’s knowledge, the matriarch had managed to cobble together the funds for the purchase and left the deed in Manuela’s name. It had been her final attempt to not only keep that lifelong dream alive but to give her granddaughter a chance at some independence, though, by the time the land came to her, Manuela was engaged to be married, the dream of the art school long dead.
The solicitor had also brought with him the news that Baluarte was very valuable to a consortium who wanted the land to finish a South American railway. When the offer came, Manuelahadconsidered it, but the sale, at the consortium’s originally offered price, would barely cover what Felix had already given her family to pay off debts and restore their home to its former glory. It would not be enough to maintain her parents—and her own—lavish tastes for long. Still, her parents had insisted that she sell, claiming the land should’ve rightfully gone to Manuela’s father. For once she’d set aside her guilt and sense of duty and stood firm.
Manuela thought of the letter from her grandmother the solicitor had given her. The elegant loopy writing and the familiar scent of the camphor oil she rubbed on her joints.
Use it for something that makes you happy. No paying off debts. Your parents have taken enough from you.
“I don’t understand you, Manu,” Aurora moaned, flopping down on one of the armchairs. “You could sell this land and get rid of that social-climbing blowhard you agreed to marry. You could finally have some independence.”
Of course, Aurora, whose family was one of the biggest producers of vanilla in the world, thought that being independent was as simple as selling a piece of land. “I don’t understand your wardrobe choices either, Aurora, but I still love you and willingly go out in public with you.”
“Why would you get her started on that, Manuela?” cried Amaranta while Luz Alana clamped her mouth shut.
“I need to dress in a way in which I can do my work, and physicians are always on duty...and don’t change the topic! I am serious about this.”
“Tell me again, about your society,” Manuela asked, very seriously while Amaranta threw herself on an overstuffed cushion and Luz Alana pretended to knock herself out with her fan. Manuela almost laughed at the ease with which Aurora could be distracted by simply dangling one of her causes in front of her nose. The evils of women’s fashions as a hindrance to their ability to succeed in the workforce was at the very top of her list.
She was still wearing the same walking suit she’d left the house in that morning. Both Manuela and Luz Alana had changed into something more appropriate for their evening plans, but Aurora could not be bothered. Their friend was a devoted advocate of the Rational Dress Society which had been founded in London at the beginning of the decade and for years now had repudiated what they calledimpractical clothing for modern women. Aurora had even started her own chapter of the society in Veracruz with moderate success, to the horror of her father and three brothers. By the time Aurora was done with her lecture on the folly of bustles and corsets as subjugation devices, Manuela’s land would be forgotten.
Unlike Manuela, who had never been strong enough to stand by her convictions if it meant losing her comforts, Aurora lived by her principles. As much as she relished giving Aurora a hard time, she admired her friend for that. Aurora did not back down from what she wanted. When she’d set out to become the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Mexico, her father had threatened to disinherit her, but she had persevered. Even now she was in the midst of a row with the man over her decision to use the inheritance she received from her mother building women’s and children’s clinics. When she informed her father of her plans, he promised to see her destitute before he’d ever allow her to do it. Instead of pleading her case, Aurora defied him by coming to Paris to organize the venture with other women physicians. She intended to test model clinics in Paris together before they took their findings back to their own countries. She would do it too, even if it cost her everything. There was nothing that Aurora was not willing to sacrifice for her work.
