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“Mademoiselle, the Duchess of Sundridge is requesting an audience with you and your parents.”
Manuela turned toward the door in an instant, her heart thumping in her chest.
“The duchess?” Manuela’s mother asked, flustered. It was one thing to disapprove of her daughter’s association with an aristocrat, it was something quite different to have said aristocrat in your home.
Cora had come for her. She’d come.
“I’ll go fetch her,” she mumbled, already heading to the foyer, her heart pounding in her throat. She’d come here to help Manuela, to help her break free from this at last, so that they could be together.
“Cora,” she gasped, her throat convulsing at the sight of her beloved. Manuela flung herself at her. She should probably be more discreet, but she needed the reassurance of this embrace after enduring Felix’s. “I didn’t think—” She cut herself off, not wanting to voice the terrible fear of the last hour. Cora wrapped her in an embrace for a moment, her arms so tight around Manuela it was almost painful.
And then let her go.
“Where are you parents?”
Manuela stiffened at the chill in Cora’s voice. When she looked up, she didn’t find a trace of the warmth she’d seen there in the past week. This was not the woman she’d danced with in the maze. This was the forbidding, haughty Duchess of Sundridge.
“I have been talking to them,” she said cautiously, wanting to reassure her that she hadn’t just accepted her fiancé’s return. That she was ready to fight this battle with her family. “I was about to tell them that I won’t marry him.”
“Take me to them.”
Manuela’s initial elation at Cora’s arrival began to flag when she refused to look at her. But she told herself that it was probably how she was preparing for what awaited them. That this was Cora putting on her armor of the duchess before facing a very ugly scene. Without a word, Manuela showed her to the room.
Manuela’s parents scrambled to bow to Cora, their words and their movements awkward. But if Cora noticed the clumsy greeting, she did not give them any indication. She got straight to the point.
“Podemos hablar en español.” Every word out of her mouth sounded like an edict. Even the way she stood was different now. Her back straight, her head tilted in a manner that placed a distance between herself and everyone else. It was like the Cora who had woken her up this morning with dozens of kisses had been swallowed up by this icy, unfeeling woman.
“Would you like to sit, Your Grace?” her mother offered meekly, the bravado from minutes ago dissolved in the face of such a commanding presence.
“I prefer to stand,” Cora declined, her gaze locked in the empty space between Manuela’s parents. “Your daughter signed a contract agreeing to sell me a parcel of land in Puerto Cabello, six hundred hectares of coastland. I believe you call it Baluarte,” she began.
Was this why Cora was here? To make sure Manuela didn’t go back on her promise to sell her the land?
“Manuela, what have you done?” her mother cried.
“Abuela always said I should use the land for something that was mine and mine alone,” she told her mother defiantly. Even now, as she realized that Cora was apparently only looking out for her own interests, she didn’t regret what she’d done.
Cora continued as if Manuela hadn’t spoken. “I am willing to offer you whatever price you ask for the land. In exchange, you will let Manuela out of her engagement. You will forbid him to make claim on any more of her time, and you will leave her be.”
Manuela’s legs refused to hold her up after that, her head spinning. Happiness and disbelief thrumming through her veins like fire.
“That is preposterous!” her father cried. “You have no right to tell our family what to do.”
“I am not telling you what to do. I am buying the right to do so,” Cora countered in the same impassive tone. Manuela’s mother’s nerves seem to give out, and she tumbled onto the chair she’d been leaning on.
“What is your price? Fifty thousand pounds?” Cora asked, unconcerned with the chaos around her. Manuela’s father was purple with fury, his countenance a mask of disbelief. “A hundred thousand,” Cora threw out when no one spoke. She crossed her arms over her chest as she continued to pile more money on the offer.
In her twenty-eight years of life, Manuela had never seen her mother at a loss for words, but now she was standing there, mouth in a silentO, as if speech had completely deserted her.
“I don’t understand,” Consuelo Galvan de Caceres finally said, her voice almost a whisper.
“I don’t want that man to marry Manuela, and I will pay you to release her from the engagement,” Cora repeated impatiently. “Tell me how much you want.”
Her mother blinked, and when she opened her eyes, Manuela could see that familiar greedy glint in them, but her father, for the first time ever, spoke first.
“I will not allow this family’s name to be tainted. We will not break our word to Mr. Kingsley so Manuela can run off and disgrace herself.” Of course that would be what he cared about: the family’s reputation. Even after his own behavior had marred it for years.
“Father, you can’t stop me from going with her,” Manuela declared, ready to face this down, no matter what it cost her. “I don’t want to marry Felix. I have a right to be happy. I lo—”
