A place where books are born.
Memories of the horrific scene they’d
come across in the woods still haunted her dreams. The women and children, their sightless eyes
staring up at the brilliant sun-lit sky… Piled in a heap like broken
dolls. “Do not ask me to share it with
you, my lady, for it is not…” The understanding in her hostess’s eyes slammed
into her like a musket from one of the guerrilleros guns.
“You know?”
The duchess nodded, leaned across to
the nearest bell-pull and summoned a servant.
“Tea, and cake,” she ordered when the butler entered after a brief
knock. “I heard Charles telling his
father one day and had the whole story from him. I am so sorry, my dear. No one should see such depravation, let alone
become victims of it.”
Consuela still could not remember how
the duchess had persuaded her to reveal the circumstances of her own widowhood,
and now as the other woman patted her hand Consuela swallowed the comment she
intended to make when the door opened and a maid entered and crossed the room
to place a laden tray on the table beside the duchess.
She looked at the ring on her finger.
Not the one her husband had given her, that she’d thrown away as soon as Juan
proposed and slipped the large sapphire ring in its place. No amount of urging on her part would
persuade Juan to make her his wife before he left. Sometimes she hated him for that reluctance,
even though she understood his concerns.
“If my brother finds out we are
married he will make it his mission of eliminate you as he did my wife and
daughter. No, my dear, you are safer if you remain single. In all honesty I should have resisted the
urge to declare myself, and as for this ring…” He’d paced round the room before
coming to sit beside her, in this very room days after they’d celebrated the
New Year. “Perhaps it would be best if
you did not wear it in public.”
