Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [11]
Eugenio traveled from Cádiz to Sevilla to present his son’s proposal. Gustavo listened politely, but firmly rejected the request for his daughter’s hand. Jesusa then reminded Ana that her impetuous nature sometimes caused her to make hasty decisions.
“Remember when you wanted to be a nun because you so admired your teacher Sor Magdalena? Two weeks later you changed your mind.…”
“I was ten, Mamá. What ten-year-old doesn’t want to be a nun?”
“You’re insolent to your mother,” her father said. He threatened to exile Ana to a Carmelite convent in Extremadura if she didn’t give up her foolish obsession.
Neither reminders of close calls nor threats of a fate she considered for herself (albeit briefly) succeeded in changing Ana’s mind. This was the man she wanted to marry. And now.
A well-raised señorita in mid-nineteenth-century Spain didn’t challenge her parents. Ana was a good daughter, even if willful and stubborn. She knew it was impudent to argue with Mamá and Papá, so she did what young women of her place and station did when they couldn’t get their way: she developed a debilitating and mysterious illness that no physician could diagnose or cure. Chills so severe that her bed shook followed high fevers. Shallow breathing that kept her from sleep on consecutive nights evolved into slumber from which she couldn’t be roused. A poor appetite caused such rapid weight loss that Jesusa feared Ana would waste away.
The alternating symptoms kept Ana in bed for nearly two months. During her illness, Ramón (at least that’s who Jesusa thought it was) visited to inquire after Ana’s health, begging to be allowed to speak to her. The distance between Sevilla and Cádiz was over one hundred kilometers, and the still unstable political situation made travel unsafe. Even Gustavo was impressed with Ramón’s devotion and willingness to endanger his own life in order to woo his daughter.
While Ana’s dowry seemed generous to Eugenio, it was to be half what Gustavo had received upon marrying Jesusa, not including jewelry she inherited from her grandmothers. Gustavo looked at his daughter critically. At seventeen, she appeared older and—in spite of fashionable clothes, colorful shawls, and hairdressing—common.
Gustavo had studied her in society, where her tart tongue caused other women, and some men, to turn away. Sevilla was a big city, but Gustavo and Jesusa knew everyone worth knowing. No other young man of their acquaintance was interested in Ana. If she never married, she’d be dependent on him the rest of his life and, after his death, on her uncle’s charity. Ana lacked altruism and Gustavo couldn’t imagine her as the soft-voiced, sickbed auntie in his brother’s rambunctious household, or as one of the charitable spinsters who ministered to the poor, or as a companion to the elderly and infirm. She was an intelligent girl, and he was sure that she, too, had considered the same scenarios.
Gustavo ordered his lawyers to inquire discreetly into Marítima Argoso Marín. Reports were encouraging. The company was healthy and the colonel’s experience leading men might translate into business acumen. Gustavo was less impressed with Ramón. He was a popinjay, and Gustavo imagined his plain daughter thought she was lucky to have caught such a peacock. She, at least, had some sense, and he imagined Ana would peck Ramón into submission as soon as they were married.
So, eight months after Ana declared who her husband was to be, her father agreed to the engagement.
Ana’s recovery was swift once Ramón was allowed to visit. He stayed a few minutes, chaperoned by the tight-faced Jesusa. His good humor and gentle manners, however, won her approval. Over the next month his visits became longer until they stretched into mealtimes, when Jesusa and Gustavo elicited information about the Argoso and Mendoza families that they could later use to justify their daughter’s marriage to a liberal with Jewish ancestors. As soon as Ana