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V

A fortnight passes in this pleasant way.

By night, María subjects herself to the viscount’s attention, but by day, she’s left largely to her own devices.

Andrés is always busy, though she is never sure with what.

Something to do with his lands, and the direction coin is meant to flow, upstream.

Honestly, whenever he speaks of work, her mind begins to wander, already planning how she will spend her day once he has gone.

She does, technically, obey her husband. She resists the urge to venture out unchaperoned, instead finding ways to amuse herself within the walls.

She takes her meals in different rooms each day, and learns the details of the house by how the light moves across the walls. Has the furniture rearranged in odd ways to suit her whims, the pieces all returned again by the time Andrés gets home.

And restless as María is, at least she is not alone.

She claims Ysabel for company.

At first, she finds excuses to commandeer her maid’s time, but soon that proves unnecessary. Ysabel is more than happy to pass the day however her mistress sees fit. And so they do.

Sometimes they walk the whole house, arm in arm, as if preening for suitors instead of statues.

Other times, they sprawl across sofas and play cards, or dance barefoot on stone floors, taking turns who leads and who follows.

The other servants look on, their mouths set in disapproving lines, but María does not care.

One day she dresses Ysabel in her clothes, ignoring the maid’s protests as she fastens the clasp at the collar and binds up her brown hair, pausing only to study the strands that curl along her nape.

When she is done, Ysabel stands, stiff as a doll, in the ornate dress. And then, at last, she gives a careful twirl. “How do I look?”

María stares, because she can, taking in the crimson fabric cinched around the other girl, revealing the curve of her bosom, the divot of her narrow waist. She is not striking, like María.

Her looks are much softer, the edges filed smooth.

When María grabs her arm she can feel the skin dimple beneath her fingers, as if the girl is made of down.

Ysabel looks lovely, she looks gentle, but above all, she looks like what she is.

The illegitimate daughter of a count.

They have not spoken of it—they do not need to.

It is clear enough, in the shape of Ysabel’s face, the slope of her cheek, the roundness of her eye.

After all, María is confronted by these features every day; their like stares back from every painting, and even if she weren’t surrounded by members of the Olivares clan, she has looked into Andrés’s face enough times to see the resemblance.

To understand that not every one of the count’s children earns a portrait on the family walls.

“Well?” presses Ysabel, her voice a nervous flutter.

“You look lovely,” says María, “and uncomfortable.” And Ysabel smiles and admits that it is far too hot for all these layers, holds out her buttoned wrists, and waits to be set free.

Andrés sags on top of her when he is done.

He rolls over, but makes no move to rise, and María clutches the ruby pendant and waits, thinking, with dread, that he means to spend the night there, in her bed.

His body is a quickly cooling thing, plunging toward sleep, while María lies, wide awake, beside him, a sore pulse between her legs, and decides that if she must be kept awake, then he will too. So she rolls toward him.

“What does it feel like?” she wonders aloud.

Andrés mutters something into the pillow, but it hardly constitutes an answer.

“What does it feel like?” she asks again. “When you reach your peak?”

Andrés twists his head on the pillow, brow furrowing at the question. “Why do you ask such things?” And perhaps the scolding in his voice is meant to cow her. But it doesn’t.

María props herself on an elbow. “I am by nature curious. Besides,” she adds, “I want to know my husband better.”

He sighs, looks around the room as if for refuge. Finding none, at last he says, “It is a building pressure. And then, a release.”

María hums in thought. “And it seems to bring you pleasure. Yes?”

“Of course.”

“Well then,” she says, sitting up. “What of mine?”

Andrés looks at her as if she’s grown a second head. “Your pleasure ?” he asks, dismayed.

“Perhaps, if you touched me in other ways,” she ventures, fingers drifting almost absently to the nape of her neck.

The viscount’s dismay hardens then into something like contempt. “This is a sacred act,” he says. “ Your pleasure is of no consequence.”

He rises as he speaks, putting distance between them, as if the very conversation is indecent. As if he did not spend the last half hour buried inside her.

“My body was made to expel,” he says. “Yours to receive. And God willing, to grow heirs.”

God willing, thinks María when Andrés is gone, and she is straddling a basin, doing her best to wash away his work.

The next day, María declares that they will have a picnic.

They creep into the kitchen stores, like thieves, Ysabel filling a basket with food and María liberating a tankard of wine from the cellar.

Together they flee to the far reaches of the western hall—the days are quickly growing hotter, and the stones there are the last to warm, holding fast to the coolness of the night before.

They take refuge in an alcove, lay a blanket on the floor, and gorge themselves on bread and wine and candied figs. When the bowls are empty and the bounty gone, María lies with her head in the other girl’s lap, loose hair pooling like a molten pillow in the maid’s plain skirts.

A drowsiness rolls over her, her limbs as loose as honey in the heat, as Ysabel runs her fingertips along María’s brow and tells her stories of miracles and saints, the stones around them warming as the sun gets high.

Ysabel has a soft and breathy way of speaking, which gives the impression that she is always on the verge of sharing a secret. It is . . . intimate. She smiles easily but never quite laughs, never exhales anything above an airy chuckle, and María decides to make it her mission.

To coax a real sound from Ysabel.

At some point, the maid runs out of words.

At some point, a silence settles over them.

At some point, María looks up into Ysabel’s face, studying the freckles in her eyes, the bow of her lips, her gaze lingering so long the maid asks what she is thinking.

And María wants to say that Andrés’s hands have never stirred such heat in her.

Wants to say she is still hungry, though her stomach is full.

That she could stay here for a hundred years. So long as Ysabel stayed, too.

“It is so quiet in the house, during the day.” Her gaze grazes Ysabel’s throat, traces the lines of her collar, the swell of her breasts. “It feels as if the world is empty, except for us.”

She reaches up, as if to cup Ysabel’s face, draw her closer. The maid catches her hand, folds her own fingers over it, and a brief, beautiful heat flares through María, until Ysabel smiles.

“Just wait,” she says, “until you are with child.”

The words are cold water.

The heat inside María dies.

Ysabel continues, unaware. “It will not feel so lonely then,” she says, but all María can feel is the ghostly weight of her husband’s hand on her belly.

Let it be a son.

She swallows hard. She knows, of course, what is expected. She watched Elana’s belly began to round, month over month, her body swelling as her face grew thin.

But María has no wish to be a mother. Not yet.

She has just become a wife.

Surely, she should be allowed to enjoy one station before she’s forced to occupy another.

Ysabel’s fingers are still clasped over hers, but the moment has turned, the alcove too warm, and María tugs free, her hand dropping like a piece of ripened fruit back into her lap.

And then, one day, María wakes to find the house in tumult.

Andrés stands in the courtyard, giving orders as horses clamber through the gates, pulling carts piled high with furniture and finery.

That is how she learns there is to be a feast.

“In your honor, esposa mía,” he says, and María wonders why, if that is true, this is the first she’s hearing of it. But he kisses her hand when he says it, good humor bathing him like sunlight, and as she surveys the mountain of deliveries, her mood improves.

It is to be a grand affair—he has invited nobles, yes, but also subjects, vassals from across his lands, a celebration meant to introduce each and every one to his new wife.

María asks what she can do , to help prepare the house, but he insists it is all being handled.

She has only to be ready, to welcome their guests.

And of course, to receive his parents, when they come from León.

He says this last as if it’s no great feat. She will soon discover otherwise.

The Count and Countess Olivares arrive just after noon.

Andrés leads them in, his father at his sleeve and his mother on his arm, the former flushed and the latter looking faint from heat.

María stands at the doors, ready to greet her new in-laws with a practiced smile, if not modest then at least beneficent, but they brush past her as if she is a ghost, take no notice until Andrés steers them back in her direction.

“Mother, Father, allow me to present . . . my wife.”

María hates them instantly.

They speak of her as if she isn’t there, or worse, as if she is, and her presence doesn’t matter.

“Let’s see this commoner you had to have,” declares the count as he takes her in, his gaze like a hand pawing at her dress.

She is reminded of the men who passed through Santo Domingo over the years, the way their heads turned as she grew into her looks, but the count’s is brazen, in a way that makes her chafe.

“I will admit,” he says, wetting his bottom lip, “there is something to her.”