Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [25]
As the day cooled, they walked in circles, elbows linked, their voices rising and falling in the moist breeze as the sweet thrums from doña Leonor’s harp rose into the night. Ana and Elena spoke of everything except what lay beneath their seeming closeness. Since her marriage to Ramón, Ana hadn’t come to Elena in the night. She’d married Ramón, but contrary to their plan, Inocente hadn’t proposed to Elena.
A few days before Ana and Ramón were scheduled to sail for the hacienda, Elena knocked on Ana’s door. She peeked into the room, her cheeks flushed, as if expecting to find Ramón and Ana in a marital position. Ana was with the maid, who was clearing her breakfast tray.
“Has he left already?” Elena asked.
“Oh, yes, they both went to meet with their lawyer.” The maid pulled up a chair for Elena next to the bed, where Ana laid several stiff petticoats, silk bodices with matching skirts, dainty kid shoes, and delicate lace gloves and mantillas. “I should’ve left these things in Sevilla. I certainly won’t need them where I’m going.”
Elena fingered a pale blue taffeta bodice. “Everything is so tiny. They look like doll’s clothes.”
“If you weren’t so much taller, I’d give them to you.”
“You talk as if you’re not coming back.”
“Well, it is unlikely we’ll travel to the city as much as we’d like. Ramón has learned that the roads between here and Hacienda los Gemelos are impassable half the year.”
“Hacienda los Gemelos?”
“They’ve decided to name the plantation after their twinship.”
“I see,” Elena said, the two words brimming with hurt.
Ana waved the maid toward the door, and she left the room on silent bare feet.
Elena stood and grabbed the chairback as if to keep from falling. Her eyes were moist, and her breath was shallow within her corset as she fought for control. “Inocente told doña Leonor—” She choked on her tears.
Ana wrapped her arms around Elena’s waist and let her cry on her shoulder.
“I know, I’m so sorry.…” Ana moved to kiss her cheek.
Elena jerked back. “You know?” She stood at least a head taller than Ana, and she now looked down at her like a mother who’d just discovered her child’s mischief.
“What I mean is, I know it hurts,” Ana said, feeling like the child found out.
“What hurts?” Elena flicked tears from her cheeks as if the gesture gave her courage, but Ana heard the rustle of her petticoats within the narrow, corseted frame.
“Elena,” Ana said, trying to soften her words. “Inocente doesn’t want to marry you.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes,” Bastoncito said, looking up at La Madona.
Elena fixed her eyes on Ana’s. Oh, yes, she knows, Ana thought. She’s afraid to say it, to think it, even. What we did with each other is not half so bad in her mind as what I’m doing with Ramón and Inocente. The dread in Elena’s face reflected her terror that loving a woman might send them both to purgatory, but loving two men consigned Ana forever to the fires of hell.
Ana felt warmth between her legs, a pulsing desire to kiss that beautiful face, to unlace the tight corset and suck Elena’s pink nipples, as she used to do under the covers at the Convento de las Buenas Madres. As Elena did to her.
Elena blushed and turned away. “I came in here,” she said, her back to Ana, “to tell you that I’m not angry. It’s not your fault.” She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it to her nose.
She’s splendid, Ana thought, so lovely, so good, so candid. Ana wrapped her arms around Elena’s waist again, from the back this time, and leaned her face against Elena’s shoulder