Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [126]
Doña Leonor berated Ana for only occasionally wearing a hat outdoors, and for rolling up her sleeves and exposing her arms and hands to the sun.
“I have work to do,” Ana answered. “I don’t think about my appearance as much as I worry about what needs to get done by the end of each day.”
Leonor was offended by Ana’s response, and later told Elena that Ana worked harder than usual when they were there because she didn’t want to spend time with them.
There was some truth to that, Severo thought. Ana shared little with her mother-in-law and Elena. The years on the plantation had hardened her, although no one would mistake her for a campesina. She was still imperious when necessary and spoke the refined Castilian of her convent education, but compared with the proper Leonor and the ethereal Elena, she’d lost polish in her years at Los Gemelos. Six years ago, when he heard the voice that told him she’d be his wife, Severo couldn’t have so much as looked at a woman like Ana was then. But he’d risen in status, and she seemed determined to descend from hers. It was only natural that they should be reaching toward each other.
Ana was on her new rocking chair, built by José, lower and with a narrower, shallower seat than one for an average-size woman so that her feet reached the ground, her spine rested comfortably against the slats, and the carved armrests and back were like a protective embrace. The late afternoon was uncharacteristically quiet as she waited for Severo Fuentes.
She had an idea what was on his mind, had felt his gaze as she moved through her days. She admired his restraint, appreciated his devotion, and wasn’t averse to his attentions, but the most she admitted to herself about him was that she respected and trusted him. On the other hand, he did have a sixth sense about what she needed, whether for the plantation or her person. She also liked that he was clean, fastidious even, in his habits. He wasn’t well educated but made up for it through prodigious reading. Admiration of those qualities, however commendable, still didn’t add up to love.
She was twenty-five and had known physical passion from the time she was sixteen. She’d lost her self-consciousness about sex with Elena, and knew how good it felt but also how quickly the feelings dissipated. She dreaded male sexual attention like Ramón’s and Inocente’s, the violence of it, the deathlike languor afterward. In spite of that, she had wondered, more than once, what it would be like to be held by Severo Fuentes, whose powerful, compact body was so different from those of her long-limbed husbands.
Beyond longing, beyond the fantasies of coupling with Severo, beyond the flattering attention of a man in love with her, there was the question of who he was and who she was. In Spain, Severo wouldn’t be admitted into the servant’s quarters of the house in Plaza de Pilatos, let alone into her bed. For him to propose marriage to her would be an act of impressive confidence and courage, but it would put her in an awkward position. Severo was a Spaniard, and regardless of his former or current social standing, he lived by the male strict code of the español—pride and honor above all. If she refused him, Severo might be offended by her rejection of his proposal and the humiliation would drive him from Los Gemelos.
Some weeks earlier Ana had written to Eugenio. She’d become aware of Severo Fuentes’s attachment to her, she wrote, and was convinced that it was sincere.