Page 15 of The Spanish Daughter (The Lost Daughters #5)

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THE SANTIAGO FAMILY ESTATE, ARGENTINA, 1939

Valentina lay beneath the ceibo tree, gazing up at the green leaves as she nestled closer to Felipe, the sunlight barely able to filter through the thick canopy above. Their horses were tethered nearby, happy to rest in the morning sun while their young riders stretched out on the grass at the farthest corner of the sprawling farm. From the very first morning that she’d learnt to ride with him, it had become a daily occurrence, so long as the weather was fine, and it had become the one thing that Valentina looked forward to the most.

‘I wish we didn’t have to go back,’ Valentina murmured, turning on her side and staring at Felipe. She propped herself up on one elbow, her long dark hair sliding over her shoulder and brushing his face. ‘I wish we could stay here all day.’

He lifted his hand and skimmed his fingers across the bare skin of her arm, trailing from her shoulder all the way down to her wrist. Felipe didn’t say anything straightaway, instead leaning towards her and catching her lips against his, kissing her so softly she felt she might melt into his arms when they went around her.

‘If your father caught us?—’

Valentina reached down and stroked his hair from his cocoa-brown eyes. ‘Then why don’t we just tell him? Wouldn’t it be better for him to know? I don’t want to keep what we have a secret anymore.’

Felipe’s eyes widened. ‘Tell him?’

She stole another kiss as one of the horses nickered, starting to become restless after so long waiting to be ridden back. They’d been out for longer than they should have, which meant they’d probably have to gallop home now so she didn’t get into trouble, but sometimes she dreamed about not returning in secrecy, of telling her family about Felipe and the love she felt for him. After all these years of loving him, she was ready.

‘Yes, I think we should tell him. I think you should ask for his permission,’ she whispered against his cheek. ‘How long are we supposed to wait?’

‘And what if he says no?’ Felipe asked. ‘What if, once he finds out, we have to put an end to this?’

‘He won’t, I’m certain of it,’ she murmured. ‘All he wants is for me to be happy, and if it’s you who makes me happy, if he truly understands how we feel, then I think he will give us his blessing.’

So long as Felipe didn’t ask her mother’s permission, because she knew that she would rather lock her in her bedroom for the rest of her life than accept that Valentina was in love with a boy like Felipe. Her mother had much grander ambitions for her only daughter, was always talking of the matches she’d like to make for her, tempered only by the fact that her father insisted they wait until Valentina was older, so that she could have a say in whom she married. Secretly, she guessed that her father wanted to keep her at home for longer, and she was only too happy to oblige.

‘We’d best get back,’ Felipe said. ‘Basilio won’t forgive me if he has to send out a search party to look for us. It’ll put an end to us before I ever gather the courage to tell him.’

Valentina sighed and let Felipe pull her to her feet, their fingers interlinked, wishing they could have their morning all over again. But as she was smoothing her hands down her blouse to brush away the creases, not wanting anyone to guess that they’d been rolling around on the grass, she heard galloping hooves and her heart began to race as a lone rider came into view.

No one other than her and Felipe galloped around the farm like that, especially this early in the morning, which meant that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

‘Miss Valentina,’ the breathless rider called as he approached. ‘Come quickly!’

Valentina looked helplessly to Felipe, who quickly leapt up and readied the horses for their ride back.

Please don’t be Papa. Let it be anyone but my darling papa.

‘Papa!’ Valentina called as she ran into the house, throwing her leather gloves to the ground and shrugging out of her jacket, hot from the fast ride back. Her heart was beating so hard it felt as if it might explode out of her chest, her breath coming in heavy pants that made it almost impossible to draw enough air into her lungs.

The doctor was already there, but she couldn’t see or hear her mother, only their staff scurrying around as if they weren’t sure where they should be. Their maid, Ana, was sobbing near the door, and the worker who’d come to fetch her stood now with his hat folded in his hands, as tears trickled down his cheeks, but it was the doctor to whom Valentina gave her full attention, her heart racing even faster as she clocked his solemn expression.

She already knew what the news was going to be.

‘What happened?’ she asked, as she entered the ground-floor bedroom where he must have been taken, sitting down on the edge of the four-poster bed and staring at her father’s ashen face. She reached for her father’s hand, but quickly withdrew it when she felt his cool, damp skin. It didn’t feel like her papa’s hand, and if this was the last time she held it, that wasn’t how she wanted to remember his touch. This wasn’t how she wanted to remember him .

‘Miss Santiago, I regret to inform you that there was nothing I could do for your father.’

‘He’s gone?’ she whispered, looking back at her father. ‘But we had breakfast together this morning, I just saw him, I?—’

The doctor reached out and placed his hand gently over her arm, and she found herself staring down at where he touched her. She could hear his words but they made absolutely no sense, and she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to scream at him that he was wrong or slide to the ground and beg him to tell her different news. Because this couldn’t be true—none of it could be true!

‘Your father suffered a heart attack,’ he explained, his voice low and soft. ‘There was nothing anyone could have done to save him, it happened so quickly and so unexpectedly. I’m sorry. Your father was a wonderful man.’

Valentina began to nod, and she wished Felipe had come with her, holding her hand as she’d received the news, so that she hadn’t been alone. Only minutes ago, she’d been imploring him to tell her beloved papa about their relationship, and now he was gone. Felipe was never going to be able to ask him for her hand, and she was never going to have the chance to tell him that she’d loved Felipe since she was a young girl at her very first harvest. That she’d found the love match he’d been so determined that she find.

She blinked away her tears, trying her best to stay composed in front of the doctor even as her body began to tremble. Her mother should have been here, by her side, but instead Valentina was alone.

‘Thank you, for coming so promptly,’ she said, trying to find the right words. ‘I appreciate what you did to try to save my father, that you came here, that…’ It didn’t matter how hard Valentina tried—she simply didn’t know what else to say.

The doctor nodded and let go of her as she lost her words, reaching for his black leather bag and doing up the zip as she watched on, keeping her gaze fixed on him so that she didn’t have to see her father. A shudder ran through her as she realised that someone would have to decide what to do with his body, that the doctor was leaving and there was no one else there to tell her what to do next. Her mother clearly hadn’t been able to cope and had taken to her bedroom or sought refuge somewhere else in the house.

‘He was a great man, Miss Santiago, one of the very best,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m truly sorry for your loss. Please pay my respects to your mother when she returns.’

‘You haven’t seen my mother?’ Valentina asked, confused. Where would her mother be at this time of the day?

‘Unfortunately, I have not. Your maid let me in when I arrived.’

Valentina nodded and waited for him to leave the room, before she rushed back to her father and collapsed over him, her tears coming in powerful sobs as she cried over the body of the man she’d loved more than life itself, still not believing that he was gone.

Why did you have to leave me? Papa, it can’t be true, you can’t be gone.

‘Mama,’ Valentina gasped, rising and holding her arms out to fold herself against her mother when she heard her return. She’d been sitting beside the bed with her father for hours, waiting, not wanting her mother to discover what had happened without being there to break the news. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Something terrible has happened.’

But instead of the embrace she’d been expecting after so many hours of holding vigil alone, her mother’s body was rigid, her arms not even moving from her sides to return her embrace. Instead, she was as stiff and cold as the body lying on the bed.

‘Did you know?’

Valentina blinked back at her mother, wrapping her arms around herself as she stared into her cold eyes. She glanced back at her father, wishing that he was still there, that he’d reprimand her mother for being so cold towards her, that he could see the way his daughter was being treated in his absence. But her father was gone; it was just her against the world now.

‘That he was unwell?’ Valentina asked, confused. ‘That he was going to die?’ She didn’t know what her mother was asking her. ‘If you’re asking whether I knew he might die, then of course the answer is no! But I begged him to see a doctor the day of the polo. Mama, I begged you to make him see a doctor, but you wouldn’t listen! No one would listen to me.’ She was breathless, her hand over her chest now as if her own heart might give out from the pain.

‘Valentina, I want to know why he did this. I want to know what sorcery you used to make your father do this to me!’

Tears began to slip down Valentina’s cheeks as she stared back at her mother, registering the coldness of her gaze. ‘Mama, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Valentina whispered. ‘But Papa is dead, Papa?—’

‘Left you almost everything!’ her mother erupted, her cry echoing through the room, loud enough for anyone else in the house to hear. ‘Our home, the business, most of his fortune… everything ! The only mention of me in his last will and testament is to ensure that I’m not left destitute by having a roof over my head and a monthly stipend, a request that he implores his beloved daughter to uphold. And my Bruno has received nothing more than a collection of watches and the house in Buenos Aires!’

Valentina swallowed, quickly wiping at her cheeks with her fingertips. But it didn’t help, because more only fell, making her skin slick with tears as she realised where her mother had been and why she hadn’t been there to sit with her father’s body. Why she had already left the house before the doctor arrived. Her father had been deeply in love, he’d told Valentina as much when they’d been together, recounting the story of how he met his wife and how he still adored her, but clearly the same could not be said for her mother.

‘You’ve already met with the lawyer?’ Valentina forced herself to ask. While he was lying here? While I was sitting with his still-warm body? Before the doctor even arrived? ‘You were here when it happened, and instead of staying with him and waiting for the doctor, you just left? You thought it was more important to travel into town to discover the contents of his will than to stay with his body?’

Her mother stared back at her, her gaze still so cold that it sent a shiver through Valentina. And she couldn’t help but notice that her mother never even looked at Basilio’s body, not once—the man who’d been the heart and lifeblood of their family, who’d meant everything to her, suddenly seemed invisible to her mother. Valentina had expected her mother to be in floods of tears, to appear broken; but instead, she was calculating how much money she expected.

‘I didn’t know, Mama. How would I have known something like that?’ she whispered.

‘All those hours you spent with him, the times he took you to the office and you had his ear,’ her mother said, ‘he must have said something. What did you do to make him turn on me like this? What kind of lies did you tell him?’

Valentina straightened her shoulders, hearing her father’s voice in her head, and suddenly knowing in her heart why he’d chosen her. It had always been her—she could see now that he’d been preparing her for this day her entire life—only she’d never expected her mother to be her enemy. And it was likely her father had never expected this day to come so soon, either. He would have thought he had years to prepare her for taking over the family business and managing their affairs, and instead here she was, a girl of only seventeen, facing the most difficult challenge of her life at the same time as grieving the one person in the world that she loved the most.

‘Papa wanted me to take over the family business,’ she said, forcing her voice to be clear and lifting her head, even though her throat was hoarse and her eyes were so gritty and sore that it hurt just opening them. ‘Papa said that I was like him, that I could continue to make our family business prosper, that he was teaching me so that I understood his way, and the way of his father before him. But he never told me that?—’

‘Bruno will run this family’s business!’ her mother snapped. ‘Your father indulged you your entire life, Valentina, making you believe that you could do anything. But this is a man’s world, no matter what he told you, and your brother will be managing our family’s affairs from now on. I don’t care what his will states, Bruno is the man of the family now that your father is gone, and you will show him the respect he deserves. You’re not even an adult, so I’ll have no problem taking over from here.’

Valentina lowered her gaze, not about to fight with her mother when her father’s body lay behind them. He would not have wanted them to argue, but she also knew that he didn’t want her brother to be his successor, either. Basilio had been a wonderful stepfather to Bruno and cared deeply for him, but he’d wanted his own flesh and blood to take over what he’d built, to care for the people in his employ and grow their wealth for generations to come. Someone he trusted to uphold the traditions he’d instilled.

‘I will appoint your brother to find a suitable husband for you in the interim, while I arrange everything with the lawyers. I’ll have the will overturned immediately, so that it remains a secret.’

‘Mama, no,’ Valentina said. ‘I want to know all the contents of Papa’s will. I intend on honouring whatever he?—’

‘Valentina, he wanted to gift his stablehand a house, and all his employees thousands of pesos on his death! He was clearly not in his right mind, and any fool would be able to see that. I won’t be giving away any of our fortune to anyone, and if you think I’ll let you follow his wishes, then you are very, very wrong.’

No, you’re wrong, Mama. He knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to reward those who’d worked hard for him, and Felipe’s father was more than just a stablehand, he was his right-hand man, the person he trusted with his most prized ponies. And he would never have called him his stablehand, either.

‘I will not marry,’ Valentina said, more boldly than she’d ever said anything to her mother before. ‘You cannot simply make me marry any man whom you or Bruno choose. My job?—’

‘Your job ?’ Her mother laughed. ‘Your job is to be a respectable daughter, Valentina, who will appropriately mourn her father and then take a husband. You’re seventeen years old and I should have had a fiancé arranged for you months ago, instead of letting your father indulge you with his notions of a love match. You’ll be your husband’s problem after that, and whatever I do allow you to inherit will become his property, not yours.’

‘He wanted a love match for me, so that I could have what he had,’ she whispered.

‘You thought your father and I were a love match?’ her mother laughed again. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, I loved your father. But if he’d been penniless I wouldn’t have so much as cast an eye towards him. I loved him because of the life he could give Bruno and me, and I will mourn him with great love because of the fortune he has left behind.’

For me. He left that fortune for me!

Valentina tried not to cry, but it was impossible. She felt like a little girl again as she fell to her knees, her sobs uncontrollable as her shoulders shook, her face buried in her hands. Her papa had insisted that she could choose her own husband one day, that she would have choices in her life, that no one would ever force a Santiago to do anything against their will. How wrong you were. He’s not even cold in the ground and everything is being taken from me .

She took a deep breath and looked back at her mother, knowing that she couldn’t wait any longer to tell her the truth. If she was going to be left penniless, then she was at least going to marry the man she loved. ‘Mama, I already know whom I want to marry.’ Valentina paused. ‘I’m in love with Felipe, and I will leave with him and you’ll never have to so much as look at me ever again.’

‘Felipe?’ she repeated, before her eyes narrowed. ‘The stableboy?’

She wanted to tell her that Felipe wasn’t just a stableboy—he was the son of her father’s most trusted and loved employee—but she didn’t get the chance.

‘Valentina, your father told you fairy tales your entire life. But you listen to me, and you listen to me very, very carefully,’ her mother said, bending down and roughly forcing her fingers beneath Valentina’s chin, making her head jut up. ‘I make the rules now, and that means there will be no more riding, no more unaccompanied visits to the stables, and no more seeing that stableboy again. Do you hear me? You will marry a respectable young man of my choosing, and you will most certainly not be disappearing. We have a family name to uphold, after all.’

Valentina had never known hate before, but as she stared back into her mother’s cold eyes, she understood what it was to despise another human being. Her mother had often been aloof with her; it had always been her father who’d swept her into his arms and showed affection, but she understood now how much her mother had resented their closeness. That she’d never loved Valentina’s father so much as she’d loved the life he’d given her, that she’d chosen to bear his child to strengthen their marriage, to provide a life for the son she adored.

‘Yes, Mama,’ Valentina lied, her voice low, closing her eyes as her mother let go of her, the clack of her heels telling Valentina that she was walking away. There was no point in arguing with her, not now.

But once the room was silent, Valentina pushed herself to her feet and went to her father, bending low over the bed and pressing a final kiss to his cheek, lingering as she did so, inhaling the gentle scent of his cologne and committing the softness of his skin to memory. How such a strong, wonderful man could be taken from the world without warning was beyond her, and even as she gazed down at him, it was almost impossible to believe that he was gone. But he was gone, and she was going to have to learn to live without him.

I won’t let her do this, Papa. I won’t let her take away everything you wanted, I promise. I will spend the rest of my life making you proud.

And she wouldn’t stop seeing Felipe, either. He might not be wealthy or from a landowning family, and he would never live up to her mother’s expectations, but he loved her, and right now she needed to be held, to be comforted by someone who’d loved and respected her father. By someone who knew her for whom she truly was, and who knew the man her father had been.

Valentina whispered her goodbyes to her papa and tiptoed from the room, taking off her shoes so she could walk silently through the house and slip out the door, running across the grass barefoot and not stopping until she came to the stables where she knew he would be waiting for her.

Felipe would know what to do, and if he didn’t, then they would both find a way to honour her father’s name and be together.