Twenty-Three
“Aurora, you sneaky little devil,” Manuela said with relish, as she shoved Aurora into an empty room. “This is why you’ve been hiding from us!”
“It’s not what you think.” That was met with matching expressions that screamed “you’re going to have to do much better than that.”
“Leona, I hope you know we’re not leaving this room until you give us every sordid detail,” Manuela shot back. “The man was squeezing your nalgas so thoroughly I’m surprised he could pry his hands off.”
Aurora could’ve used some kind of Act of God in that moment.
“ That’s who gave you your love bite.” Luz Alana pointed at her neck with triumph, making Aurora regret not climbing out that window earlier.
“You little sucia,” Manuela gasped, with an expression of such delighted awe, Aurora almost laughed.
“I’m not a sucia,” Aurora volleyed back, with feigned outrage.
“Oh yes, you are,” Manu crowed, rubbing her hands like she did when things took a particularly bawdy turn. “This is utterly delicious.”
“There is nothing happening,” she insisted, which was received with a warranted amount of dubiousness.
“All right,” she admitted, refusing to look her friends in the eyes. “On a few occasions—”
“A few,” exclaimed Manuela, with a toothy grin.
“The duke and I,” Aurora continued, “have…” The words became stuck in her throat.
She was not embarrassed of the fact she’d taken on a lover. It was just that Apollo was so, so, so everything she’d never thought she’d be drawn to, and here she was, so lost in the man she’d been caught in the act.
“You have…” Luz Alana urged, whirling a hand in the air with an alarming degree of urgency. This was what she got for being such a damned grouch during their entanglements. Oh, what was the point in resisting, they’d get it out of her eventually.
“We’ve had sexual intercourse!” she blurted out, then covered her mouth with both hands while Manuela launched herself from her chair and began a celebratory dance involving pelvic thrusts and truly obscene hand gestures.
“Finally, Leona,” she cheered, making pistols with her hands and bizarrely firing them in the air. “We’re so overjoyed, we won’t punish you too harshly for keeping secrets from us.”
“Whatever you think this is, it is not,” Aurora warned Manuela, which clearly didn’t register, since she added noises to her festivities.
“Well, I’m just happy you’ve found someone you want to spend time with.” Luz Alana was too dignified to introduce a double entendre, but the glimmer in her eyes relayed quite effectively the kind of time she was referring to.
Manuela finally stopped fluttering around the room and sat down. “Yes, very happy,” she panted, short of breath from all that gyrating. “I want details, the filthier, the better.”
“Well, you’re not getting them.” She ignored Manuela’s pouting and turned to Luz Alana, who was at least pretending not to want a thorough accounting of Aurora’s dalliances. “This is temporary, a distraction.”
“Are you certain of that, Leona?” Manuela asked in a worryingly sober tone.
“Of course I am.” She tried to mask the semi-panicked tone in her voice with a little laugh. “I was reviving that part of me, that’s all.” Immediately Luz Alana’s expression turned contrite, and Manuela softened her stance at Aurora’s allusion to her past. “Despite him being the absolute opposite of what I find remotely fetching in a man.”
Manuela scoffed at that, and Aurora could not take offense to it. The man was unnaturally beautiful. “Leona, even I find the man appealing and I have no interest whatsoever in his entire gender.”
“Fine, he’s handsome.” He was addictive and deadly without his clothes on. But if she allowed her mind to go down that path, she would give too much away. “But he’s also arrogant and manipulative.” She wasn’t certain who it was she was attempting to convince, not her friends, from the dubious looks on both their faces. “And he’s much too boisterous for me.” This claim elicited a bored yawn from Manuela. “We could not be more different.” And yet he’d come to her aid every time she needed him. Was her defender against her brothers. Insisted on keeping her safe, when she wouldn’t even do it for herself. “It’s complicated between us, but there’s nothing there other than what you saw.”
“ I saw fireworks,” Manuela offered, and Luz Alana didn’t seem to disagree.
“Maybe you need spectacles,” Aurora suggested, making her friends laugh. “I’m being honest, we have an understand ing and we agreed to keep it from you because we suspected, correctly, you’d make it into something it’s not.”
“This is why he was asking after you this past week,” Manuela mused, with a sparkle in her eye, which made a warmth spread in Aurora’s chest. One more of her body parts actively working to undo her.
“I’m sure he’s only mining you for information he can later use to torture me.” This only seemed to intrigue Luz Alana further.
“I think he’s trying to determine a way to penetrate your very fortified walls.”
Manuela waggled her eyebrows at that. If her friends only knew how little there was left of her defenses when it came to Apollo Sinclair. “That choice of words is what I call fortuitous.” She should’ve known her Manuela would grab any opportunity to say something obscene.
“Don’t be crass, Manuela.” She pointed an accusing finger at her friend.
“Why not?” she asked, innocently. “I’d say the duke seemed like he wanted to give you a few more rides on his—”
“Saddle?” Luz Alana offered, which sent Manuela into peals of laughter.
“On his very large saddle.” To her great shame, Aurora’s mouth twitched with humor. They were ridiculous, her included.
“And all this time, I believed your claims to detest that big, dark, handsome duke, Leona.” This was from Luz Alana, who had been squarely in the Apollo César camp for months now.
“I never said I detested him,” she retorted, nervously touching her hair as irritating thoughts about his taste for pulling it rose in her mind like a tidal wave. “I merely dislike his… Apolloness.” She was blustering again. It was her perennial state of being when he was even remotely part of the conversation.
“Well, that explains it,” Manuela joked, but Aurora could see her friend was disappointed in her refusal to admit to any feelings toward the duke. She also knew that feeling came from nothing other than their desire to see her happy. But she didn’t want marriage. She wanted independence, and she certainly did not want marriage to someone whom she’d be a complication or, worse, a terrible burden.
“He’s looking for a duchess,” she reminded her friends. “And you know as well as I do, it could never be me.” That dampened their effervescence, but not for long.
“Why can’t you be his duchess?” Luz refuted gently, inciting a series of flutters and sparks inside her that she would never entertain.
“Are you truly asking that question?” Aurora was honestly nonplussed. It was one thing for Apollo to believe the rules did not apply to him, but until very recently, Luz Alana had been a rational person.
“You would make a magnificent duchess,” her friend said with conviction Aurora didn’t doubt she absolutely believed.
“I’d bring him down like an anchor.” With her parentage, with the threat of Philip looming over her, with the work she would never give up.
“Apollo would not care,” Manuela began. Aurora held a hand up. True love might have impacted her friends’ grasp on reality, but she would not entertain the delusion that she somehow was an appropriate woman to marry the first Black man to enter the British aristocracy.
“He might not, but everyone else will care very much if he marries a bastard with a checkered past.” As expected, they both opened their mouths to protest. But there was no use in pretending she was not telling the truth. “It is what I am.”
“I wish you weren’t so severe in your views of yourself,” Manuela protested. Aurora knew her friends meant what they said, but they didn’t know what it was like to be living, breathing proof of your parents’ greatest shame. The reason for whispers and emotional wounds that never quite healed.
“I’m not severe, I’m realistic,” she corrected, endeavoring to not sound resentful or cross. “I know you’ve both recently found your soulmates, but the fairy tale I want doesn’t include a prince,” she told them, even as her mind conjured up a memory of Apollo carrying her to bed. “Luz, you and Evan are a perfect match,” she told her friend, who seemed to be biting her tongue to keep from protesting. When she turned to Manu, she found a similar expression. “And, Manu, Cora was in a position to turn her back on society. But Apollo cannot, he intends to make amends, to do right by his mother, by the people who depend on his duchy, by his siblings. I won’t jeopardize that. Now,” she continued as jovially as she could manage with a knot in her throat and a gaping hole in her stomach, “tell me, what have I missed?” The question was a desperate attempt to change the subject, but thankfully she was saved by a knock on the door.
“Pardon the interruption, my love.” Luz, despite her distress, lit up the moment her husband entered the room. “I was sent to let you know lunch has been served.” Aurora’s relief at the interruption was short-lived as Apollo came to join his brother in the doorway.
“Doctora, I thought you’d join us.” Luz, Manuela and Evan all swiveled their heads in her direction as though they suspected hot spurts of lava to start shooting out of her head.
It was not too far from the effect the man had on her. As if she were churning inside, and more times than not, he used that to his advantage.
Refusing to let her hide her need from him. Forcing her to lay herself bare for him. Using her own need against her. But right then he wasn’t looking at her like a foe. Besides, she was tired of being angry, and all these damned confessions had made her hungry.
“I guess I have a bit of an appetite,” she admitted, standing up. She didn’t think she imagined the gleeful smiles on her friends at her concession to a meal with Apollo. Neither did she imagine the familiar weight of the man’s hand on the small of her back as he guided her toward the dining room. And when he whispered a husky, “I can smell you on my hands, Fiera,” as she took her seat, she absolutely did not almost swoon.
The meal, to her surprise, was uneventful. At least outwardly. Apollo was unusually well-behaved, conversing quietly with everyone at the table. His countenance the very image of contentment, when merely half an hour earlier he’d practically devoured her in his parlor. One could not tell by his cool demeanor.
The problem, it turned out, was her. At least her awareness of him. Even when she wasn’t looking his way, her body seemed attuned to his every move. The worst part was that she kept noticing the evidence of what they’d been doing when they’d been caught.
His hair was a riot of curls, sprouting in all directions. Knowing her hands were the cause of it made her unhinged. Then, there were his clothes. The knot of his tie was loose, the lapels of his jacket noticeably rumpled, and there was one cuff link missing from his shirt. He looked like a pirate attempting to pass for a gentleman and failing miserably.
The fact that everyone sitting at that table knew she was likely the reason for his appearance did absolutely nothing to tamper her desire to crawl over the table, straddle his lap and work on ridding him of his remaining cuff link. The images her brain conjured had her close to fanning herself with her napkin.
“Perhaps you’ll all help me in convincing the doctor to join us in Nice,” the Duke of Annan announced from his repose at the head of the table. She shot him daggers with her eyes.
“Oh, that’s a marvelous idea!” Manuela exclaimed, then sent her a look that screamed “see, he loves you.”
In fact, it was a terrible idea. The last thing she wanted was to be there to witness every floozy in the continent throwing herself at the man. She was much too volatile in his presence to even try.
“I wish I could go, but I’m much too busy at the moment.”
“We’re not leaving for another week,” Luz pushed.
“I don’t think so,” she said, feeling Apollo’s gaze searing into the side of her face. “The clinics are quite demanding at the moment,” she hedged and stood up with her medical bag in hand—which she’d recovered from the parlor—intending to swiftly take her leave. If all of them ganged up on her, she knew, come next week, she’d be on a train to the French Riviera.
“Don’t go, Aurora—” She was about to battle Manuela’s cajoling when a piercing cry from somewhere outside the room interrupted her. Before any of them had time to react, Apollo’s aunt burst into the room.
“?Que paso, Tia?” Apollo demanded, reaching her in two strides. The woman who Aurora had last seen smiling radiantly at Philip now looked on the cusp of collapsing.
The screams must’ve been hers because when she tried to answer, her voice almost gave out. “It’s Juliana.” Aurora could barely hear the name as it left her lips.
“Is she hurt?” she asked, in the forceful tone she’d learned in her years working in hospitals.
Dona Jimena whipped her head around at Aurora’s question, her eyes stark as she took in the room full of people, and belatedly tried to gather herself.
“Yes,” she said, as she ran a shaking hand over the front of her skirt. “She collapsed at the gallery, her friend just brought her in the carriage.” She began to cry then, deep, racking sobs, as Apollo tried to hold her up.
“Your Grace,” Claude, the butler, entered the room, his demeanor visibly less collected than when Aurora had arrived. “We need a doctor for Senorita Juliana.”
“I can see her,” Aurora told the man, who looked gratefully at the bag in her hand, then glanced at Apollo in question. Before answering, the Duke of Annan bent his head to his aunt’s ear and spoke quietly. She nodded once, eyes closed, as she held on to her nephew.
“Yes.” Apollo nodded with authority, but he looked dazed, like he’d woken up in a strange room and was yet to get his bearings. “Show Doctora Montalban to Juli’s room, Claude,” he ordered, leading his aunt out. As they ascended to the upper floor of the mansion, Aurora noticed that the older woman seemed almost scared of what she’d find.
People reacted differently in moments of crisis, some desired to be as close as possible to the patient, others nervously paced in the periphery.
One thing Aurora could not abide were people who could not self-command during emergencies. If you were not injured or in distress, as far as she was concerned, you should stay out of the way. The exception to that rule were mothers, who normally could not be pried from their ailing child, no matter how old their offspring, but Dona Jimena followed Aurora and Claude up the stairs, not the other way around.
Once in the bedchamber, Aurora’s focus was solely on the small figure hunched in on herself in a lovely, canopied bed. It was the bed of a girl, she thought, with its frilly pink lace and satin. But right now, the princess of this palace seemed to be in a nightmare.
Aurora’s own stomach twisted as she came closer and smelled the sour scent of vomit and sweat. Her face was barely visible with her head curved into her stomach. She kept moaning, in that droning, constant hum people made when the pain was unbearable.
“Juliana,” she said softly, kneeling down to get a closer look at her pupils, which were dilated. With great care, Aurora lifted the girl’s face and the eyes that looked up at her had a blankness to them she’d seen many times.
“What’s wrong with her?” Dona Jimena asked from the door. The sound of her mother’s voice made Juliana start shaking.
“Give me a moment, please,” Aurora said to the woman, then turned her attention back to Juliana. Her pallor was a concerning gray and her hair was matted with perspiration. “Juliana,” she cupped the girl’s cheek, which was concerningly clammy. “I’m Doctor Montalban, do you remember me?” Aurora forced herself to relax her face, smooth the frown she was certain kept wrinkling her brow. With her mask of placid competence in place, she tried asking again. On the second try, she received a small nod.
On instinct, she leaned in closer, so close that she could feel the girl’s quick, hot breaths on her face. “I’m here to help you. Where does it hurt?”
“Here.” Juliana clutched her abdomen, her pretty face streaked with tears, as Aurora began pulling out supplies from her bag, already fairly certain what was wrong. When Aurora tried to touch her abdomen the girl wailed, which in turn sent Dona Jimena into a fresh wave of sobs.
“I don’t want my mother to know,” the girl whispered shakily in Aurora’s ear before closing her eyes and hiding her face in her pillow.
Once she’d given Juliana something for the pain, Aurora turned to the doorway where her mother waited, she could hear Apollo’s heavy footsteps pacing in the hallway. “Can I please have a pitcher of boiling water and a clean basin?”
“I can get them,” a young maid said from the corner of the room, her worried gaze pinned to Juliana’s form.
“I’d appreciate a few minutes to speak with Juliana in private,” Aurora said, turning to Dona Jimena, who was crying openly, her hands clutched tightly to her midsection as if she was physically experiencing her child’s pain. And yet, she kept her distance.
“What if she needs me?” the woman asked, with the voice of a lost child.
“Ten minutes, please,” Aurora asked, then Juliana complained again, and her focus was back on her patient. She heard retreating steps, but she did not look back to see if the older woman had gone or not.
She ran her palm over Juliana’s clammy forehead, forcing her voice to remain steady. “This is just between us for now,” she said, hoping she could keep her word. “But I must know what happened.”
There was a small moan of pain and a series of shuddering breaths before Juliana spoke.
“He said he’d find someone who could make my menses return,” Juliana admitted softly, her pretty mouth in a tight grimace. “He said it would be fast, that no one needed to know.” A cold fear spread through Aurora as she listened to the story.
She knew there was more she should ask, but she was afraid of the answers. Once the maid returned with the water, Aurora washed and focused on the examination. As suspected, she found some bleeding and a cut that was already an angry red. There were bruises on the girl’s pelvis and thighs, as if she’d been held down. Aurora gritted her teeth as she cleaned up the careless work.
“Where did you go?” she asked a drowsy Juliana. The ten drils of the morphine already taking hold. The girl moaned weakly when Aurora pressed on her belly, feeling for inflammation.
“He took me to a doctor.” She gulped down a sob. “He was very rough, and the place was dirty. I wanted to leave, but he promised I would be fine.” He had been rough with her, but thankfully it didn’t seem like the infection was quite as bad as she’d thought. She continued to examine Juliana and was relieved to find her injuries were all treatable. At least the physical ones.
Aurora asked a few more questions that Juliana answered quietly, avoiding the one she knew she must ask. Once she’d taken care of everything she could, she forced herself to do it.
“Was it Philip?” Juliana’s eyes flashed open, even half asleep there was surprise and fear in her face. Aurora’s own body went cold as she waited for the answer.
“Yes.” Tears rolled down Juliana’s face. She looked so small and wretched. Like all hope had bled out of her.
“I’m sorry, Juliana.” She reached for the girl’s hand and squeezed it, which brought on more tears.
“I don’t know where he is, he just left me.” If she had to guess, the desgraciado was already on his way out of Paris, and quite possibly France.
Aurora breathed through the hot, pulsing fury stiffening her limbs, then relaxed her jaw and settled on fixing the things she could in that moment.
“No matter what you did, you didn’t deserve being taken to someone who’d hurt you,” she whispered to Juliana, her voice catching a few times. Aurora comforted her patient while she grappled with the fact that over a decade later Philip was still destroying lives.
Aurora wanted to think that Apollo would not cast out his cousin. That Dona Jimena would hopefully see where the true blame lay in this situation. That she could care for her child even if she was disappointed in her. Aurora would try to help the girl, as much as she could. Though she couldn’t make the Philips of the world disappear, she could make sure the Julianas received the care they deserved.
Juliana had fallen into a fitful dozing when there was a soft knock on the door. After a second, Dona Jimena walked in carrying what looked like bedclothes, with Apollo on her heels.
“How is she?” he asked, quietly, his handsome face stark with worry. Aurora didn’t look at him, or at his aunt, as shame and rage churned inside her.
“She has a minor infection, but I’ve cleaned up the worst of it and the bleeding has stopped.” She stood from the chair next to the bed, which Dona Jimena promptly occupied. “She needs rest and some remedies I’ll send for at my clinic.” The older woman nodded, her frown deep as she looked at her daughter. “I will stay here tonight in case her fever worsens.”
“I should’ve known,” Dona Jimena said, as she lifted the girl’s limp hand and kissed it.
“No, Tia,” Apollo gently rebuked his aunt, then kissed the top of her head as she started to cry. “No es tu culpa.”
Aurora was out of reassuring words in that moment. She was much too sick with guilt to muster up anything other than useless platitudes, but it was a relief to see that perhaps Juliana’s mother could stand by her.
“Do you need anything, Fiera?” he asked, seemingly unaware he’d called her by her nickname. Even in her misery, the blunder comforted her.
“Not right now,” she said, wanting to lean into him, but knowing now more than ever that she needed to keep her distance. Because he would despise her when he knew what she’d kept from him.
He nodded, then sent his cousin a worried glance before turning back to her with a smile. But there was a hardness there too. She wondered if he suspected what had happened to Juliana.
“I’ll look in on you soon,” he told her. For a second, he hesitated and her heart stammered in her chest. She wanted to go to him, feel those strong arms around her. Instead, she put some space between them, by taking a seat on the other side of Juliana’s bed. She’d known the end would come eventually. She just didn’t feel ready. Had she known she wouldn’t have wasted the past week. But this was the right thing to do, even if the thought made her chest ache.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she told him without looking his way, her gaze focused on the rain lashing against the windowpane.