Chapter 21 Esmeralda
Esmeralda
“I can’t believe how many people are in line to see you,” Gabriel said as he pressed an eye to the tiny cutout in the wagon wall.
“I can,” Esmeralda said. “I was superb out there.”
Gabriel cleared his throat.
“With your and Camila’s help, of course. Thanks for making me beautiful. Well, even more beautiful than I already am.”
“Always so humble.” Gabriel sealed the hole shut with a cork and turned around. “The tension between you and that godlike, dream of a man didn’t hurt. The crowd loved you two together.”
Esmeralda harrumphed. “The only person who is godlike in this carnival is the tailor.”
She gazed at herself in the looking glass. Jorge had done a fantastic job with her new costume. This time, her dove wings looked more angelic than cherubic. And the cut of her garment was to die for. Every curve of her body was on full, glorious display.
She turned to the side. “Does this make my rump look big?”
Gabriel paused his tinkering with the door lever. He eyed her. “Extremely.”
“Fantastic.” She wiggled the rump in question.
Her friend rolled his eyes. “You are so…”
“Delightful? Exuberant? Wonderfully clever?”
“Sure. Let’s go with that. Dammit.” One of the screws in the pulley system fell out and clinked onto the floor. Gabriel bent to retrieve it.
Esmeralda returned to appreciating her reflection. She pulled back her lips and examined her smile. She gasped.
“Why didn’t you tell me there was pepper in my teeth?” She started digging between her molars with her sharp nails. “Seriously, I haven’t checked my face since supper. You let me walk around like this for a whole hour. What sort of friend are you?”
When Gabriel didn’t reply, she checked for him through the mirror.
He was sitting on the floor. Ignacio’s mint box rested on his lap.
She’d nearly forgotten she’d taken it from him and kept it under her cot.
The lid was open, and what appeared to be dozens of tightly rolled-up papers had been strategically arranged inside.
Of course they were. Anything Ignacio touched had to be organized to annoying perfection.
Gabriel had already taken one out and unfurled it.
Esmeralda’s entire body went numb when she recognized the carefully squared parchment.
“Fourteenth of February, 1919. D plus P: age fifteen,” he read.
Her heart thumped heavy against her ribs. What was this?
Gabriel continued, “Dovie. What is your happiest memory of us? Pigeon. My happiest memory of us is the first time you convinced me to climb out onto the roof. I can’t recall smelling fresher air or seeing more stars.
We talked all night. I was so tired the next day, I fell asleep while scrubbing the dishes. ”
Gabriel’s eyes met hers in the mirror. “Is this…”
Esmeralda couldn’t reply. She couldn’t even force her lips to move.
Her hand went to her chest. Something like panic writhed behind her ribs.
He’d kept some of their notes. Many of them, it seemed.
And from the sound of it, he’d dated them too.
Of course he did. He loved to keep thorough records of just about everything.
She started to pant. She couldn’t get enough air inside her lungs.
Ignacio held on to their letters.
But why keep these when they had parted the way they did?
Her mouth went dry.
Why bring them here when he knew she was a snoop? Was he playing some sort of malicious game?
“What’s eating you, Esmeralda?” Gabriel asked.
She couldn’t catch her breath. “This dress is too tight.”
Gabriel rushed to her side. He grabbed her hands. “Look at me.” She did. “Now slowly inhale. Count to five.” She tried her best. “Release that breath for another count of five.” They did this several times until her pulse slowed, but nothing helped the burning inside her heart.
“Why would he have these?” she whispered.
“Is it not obvious? The boy cares for you.”
“But…that can’t be true.” He’d been cold and indifferent since they’d reconnected. He let Anella kiss him, for stars’ sake.
“Sure seems true to me. What happened between you two?” Gabriel asked gently.
Her brows furrowed. “He let me go.”
“Have you asked him why?”
Of course she hadn’t. Even the thought of asking him made her stomach clench. She wouldn’t open herself up to getting hurt again. Not now, not ever.
She shrugged Gabriel off and returned to the mirror. “I’ve been too busy being fabulous to care why he left. It’s his loss, anyhow.”
“Don’t do that,” he said.
She fluffed her hair. “Do what?”
“Don’t push aside your pain with that nonchalant arrogance.”
She gaped and spun to face him. “I did no such thing. I was busy being fabulous.”
Gabriel sighed. “You’re insufferable.”
“And you’re a pest.”
“Or am I just honest and that rattles you?”
“Dammit, Gabriel.” She grabbed a nearby slipper and chucked it at him.
He dodged it with a laugh.
Someone pounded on the back door. “Dovie, let me in!”
Gabriel’s brows rose. “The spirits must have been listening.”
She rolled her eyes.
Ignacio pounded harder. “I need to talk to you!”
“Take this.” Gabriel opened Esmeralda’s palm and dropped the tin box into it. He wrapped her fingers around the cool metal before moving toward the door.
“Don’t open it!” Esmeralda whisper-shouted.
“You said you didn’t have time to speak to him. Well, now is a perfect time.”
“I have guests to attend to.”
“Let them wait. It’ll make you seem important. I’ll go out there and stir them up by muttering rumors about you. Only the very worst sort, of course.”
The knocking grew more insistent. “Esmeralda. Please, let me in.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “We are through!” he yelled. “You have broken my heart too many times!”
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“I’m breaking up with you!” Gabriel winked before he opened the door and exclaimed with dramatic flair, “You were never truly mine and now I see why.”
Esmeralda’s jaw dropped. Oh, Gabriel is a dead man the next time we’re alone.
She watched him sweep out. But her attention quickly shifted to Ignacio as he rushed in, sweat dripping down his forehead. He slammed the door shut and slid the lock in place, then whirled around to face her.
Esmeralda stuffed the tin box behind her back.
“She’s here,” he blurted out.
“Who?”
“General Keara. I saw her at the tailor’s. She’s coming this way.”
The box in her grasp clanked to the floor.
General Keara terrified Esmeralda. Esmeralda was the comandante’s errand runner and spy.
General Keara was his hound. And she was always happy to sink her teeth into her prey.
Ignacio’s gaze flicked near her feet where his tin box lay.
He blinked, then shook his head as if to say that didn’t matter right now.
“We need to hide,” he said.
“We? Why we? That’s your father’s second-in-command. She’ll never get you in trouble because daddy wouldn’t allow it.”
Esmeralda, on the other hand, could be sent back to the cold cell she’d only barely escaped from.
Her heart sputtered. Stay calm, she told herself.
So long as you’re inside the carnival, General Keara has no claim over you.
But if she didn’t get the lead role, once her year was up with Carnival Fantástico, that would be a whole different situation.
Esmeralda had broken the law by running away before her indenture was completed, and then again when she and Gabriel broke free from the transport cart that was shipping them off to war.
From all she knew about the comandante, he wouldn’t forget or forgive those acts of defiance.
“I haven’t spoken to my father since defecting,” Ignacio spat out.
Esmeralda froze. “You deserted the Blackbirds? But…you’re an officer. I stole your badge.”
“The badge isn’t real.”
Her jaw dropped.
He ran a hand over his cropped hair, something he’d always done when trying to formulate the right words. His arm fell to his side as if in defeat.
“You were right,” he said. “About everything. My father is a warlord. He and his Blackbirds are not battling Dos Palos because Dos Palos is trying to harm us. They are infiltrating Dos Palos because there is something within the lands he wants.”
Voices sounded from outside the front of the wagon. Gabriel was arguing with someone who was demanding to be let inside. General Keara. Esmeralda recognized that voice so clearly.
Ignacio rushed forward and grasped her by the arm. “We’ve got to go.”
Burning heat seared into every part of her skin he touched. It seeped into her muscles, her tendons, her marrow. And she craved it. She was desperate for more. For his warmth to cover her and shield her from the world as it once had.
The notch in his throat bobbed.
Did he feel that still-burning flame too? Did he look at her and long for what had once been?
She met his gaze. Praying. Hoping. Searching for a hint that he felt something. Anything.
“She can’t know I am here,” he said. “Someone inside the carnival has information I can use against my father.”
Just as suddenly as the heat came, it disappeared. Ignacio didn’t care about protecting Esmeralda anymore. He didn’t feel the embers of love still smoldering. He was only worried about himself.
His hands on her felt suddenly suffocating. She tore herself free.
The voices outside grew louder. Gabriel and General Keara were at the wagon’s front door.
Esmeralda closed her eyes and exhaled. “Leave.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Scram. Go before she finds you. Clearly, she knows who I am already, or she wouldn’t be trying to get inside. It’s too late for me to hide, but she might not know you are here. Find your information and wipe your conscience clean of your father…and of me.” Her words hurt to even say.
“The latter is not what I want,” he whispered angrily.
His confession nearly leveled her.
“I won’t leave you,” he said.
Her brows pinched together. “You said that once before.”
The entry handle wobbled. Despite Gabriel’s protestations, the door squeaked ajar.
Esmeralda met Ignacio’s eyes. “Hide.”