“No,” Alicia replied. “It isn’t.”
But she did not cry.
That night, while the carriage left with the other three women, Alicia was beating dust out of carpets in a dark corridor.
She heard the wheels fade into the distance and kept working.
Across the valley, Santa Aurelia shone under hundreds of candles. The ballroom glittered with silk, jewels, fans, tense mothers, and young women calculating their smiles.
Don Cristóbal danced with the women he was expected to dance with.
He listened to what he had to listen to.
And confirmed what he already suspected:
the only woman who interested him was not there.
But what Don Cristóbal did next, in the middle of the ball, left the entire room silent…
and changed Alicia’s destiny forever.
Part 2
He asked for the registry of attendees.
He read the names of the Robles family.
Doña Mercedes Robles.
Miss Rebeca Robles.
Miss Zulema Robles.
One was missing.
He called his secretary and discreetly asked why.
