Chapter Five
Agustin felt more settled when he sat down to dinner. Senor Silva had brought in his wife to prepare the meal for everyone. As they lived on the island as elderly managers of the estate, Agustin had to trust that they would be discreet.
He considered the older man right now. If Felipe had visited here any time in the past five years, if the baby was Felipe’s, this man had to know something—and he’d never spoken a word on it. Even now.
“You.”
Agustin looked from the elderly man toward this new voice—Senora Silva. She stood in the doorway between kitchen and dining room, pointing a very large knife at him. Then she gestured with it for him to follow her into the kitchen.
Agustin could not say he was used to being ordered about in such a manner. He glanced at Senor Silva, who only shrugged.
Perhaps the woman needed some help with something that her husband would not be able to heft. They were definitely too old to be handling the needs of a castle. Was his mother aware of how much she was asking of these people?
Frustrated with her—and his own lack of attention to this matter—he shoved to his feet and went into the kitchen.
It smelled amazing, and he realized he was rather hungry. But he was distracted from his hunger by the senora pointing at a line of potatoes on the counter.
“My hands are not cooperating this evening. Arthritis. You will cut.” She set the large knife next to the potatoes.
She wanted him to cut potatoes. “Senora, you cannot be serious.”
She looked him up and down. She picked up the knife, put a potato on the cutting board. In quick, efficient moves with her arthritic hands, she cut the potato into small cubes. “Is this too difficult for you, senor?” she asked.
Mockingly.
No one mocked him. He might have told her that. He might have done a lot of things, but it was clear her hands pained her, and she should not be doing this work. It was not her fault he could not trust any of his usual staff with the delicate matters happening here.
So he approached the counter and picked up the knife, no matter how ridiculous he felt.
Even as a young man, he had not been expected to engage in any kind of what he would call housework.
He’d been raised to take over a company, not cut potatoes or change diapers.
What on earth was happening to him? He had always felt like he’d dealt with his father’s shocking death with fist-clenched determination that had worked, but ever since Felipe had died, everything had gone to hell.
Did you curse me before you died?
And still his only option was to pick up the knife, follow the directions Senora Silva had given him and his own common sense and cut potatoes.
Potatoes.
He was not sure how long he worked at it, but it was not the worst chore in the world.
“Can I help with…” Mara entered the kitchen, Julia held on her hip. She stopped short, looking at him with no small amount of surprise. “Oh.”
“We have it handled,” Senora Silva told Mara with a cheerful smile she had not afforded Agustin. “Will the nina sit? I brought a high chair.”
“I’ll… We’ll give it a try,” Mara said smiling at the senora, but then she eyed Agustin with some suspicion. Like she didn’t trust the fact he was doing labor.
He didn’t trust it either.
“You have good hands, senor,” Senora Silva said looking over the cubed potatoes approvingly.
Agustin gave Mara a pointed look. “See, Ms. Valdez, I am exceptional at everything.”
She made a noncommittal sound, but amusement sparked in her eyes. Just then, Julia reached up and tried fisting a hand over Mara’s dangling earring. Mara gently put her hand over Julia’s, murmuring something soft as she turned away and exited the kitchen.
Such a domestic scene. So different than…well, his entire life. He supposed that was why it left him feeling off-kilter.
Agustin finished his task and then put the potatoes in the stew the senora was putting together, as instructed. He figured that was it, but then she spoke.
“Your brother was…reckless,” Senora Silva said bluntly. “My husband is afraid to say it to you, and perhaps I would be too. I do not like to speak ill of the dead.”
Agustin stiffened, fixing her with a look he hoped reminded her that he was the boss. “Then perhaps you should not.”
“There is a baby involved, senor.” The woman gestured at where Mara had disappeared. “Felipe was…well-meaning, perhaps. Not cruel, no. But reckless. And selfish. And he surrounded himself with the equally reckless and selfish.”
“I was not aware you were so close with my brother,” he said, with the kind of cutting tone and look that would have anyone he worked with immediately falling over themselves to apologize.
Senora Silva only held his gaze. “Not close. No, but I have eyes, and he was here. Much more so than you.” She said this with a kind of accusation.
Which he might have found a bit more perplexing if he wasn’t wrapped up in the fact that this old woman was essentially providing evidence that Felipe had been here and that the little baby in the other room was, in fact, a Delgado.
Dinner was a casual affair. Oddly comfortable. Julia sat in her high chair, happily banging her toys against the plastic tray. Senor and Senora Silva joined them, as did the doctor and Paulo, the head of Agustin’s security, once they arrived.
Such a disparate group of people, and yet they found things to talk about.
Mostly the castle and its history. The island.
The Delgado family. Mara had always prided herself on knowing everything there was to know about the Delgados, but she realized that what she knew was all wrapped up in Sosten, in Agustin.
Not Agustin’s mother and the somewhat exaggerated, surely, lore of her long-ago royal ties.
When Senora Silva rose and began to collect plates, Mara hopped to her feet. “Let me, Senora. You should rest. You’ve already done so much.”
The older woman waved this away. “We will work together. Bring the bebé. She will watch us women work while these men grunt and make big decisions.”
Mara smiled in spite of herself. Perhaps she didn’t love the idea the men would make the decisions while she cleaned, but them grunting about it together was amusing. Besides, Senora Silva should not be cleaning all this up on her own, and Agustin had helped with dinner preparations.
Something Mara still couldn’t believe she’d seen with her own eyes. Agustin Delgado chopping potatoes. She smiled in spite of herself. The image would bring her enjoyment for years to come.
Before she could carefully roll the high chair fully out of the dining room, Agustin stopped her by putting a hand on her elbow. He leaned close and spoke in a low voice.
Mara was not new to being pulled aside, to having his needs expressed in a close, low voice.
It must be the castle’s fault that she became all too aware of how big his hands were, how tall he was, how dark his eyes could be when he was serious.
And how each of these things seemed to flutter about inside of her like butterflies.
Or giant bats.
“See if you can get a name out of her,” Agustin instructed quietly.
“A name?”
“Of Julia’s mother.”
This pulled Mara out of her bodily reaction. She glanced at the kitchen where Senora Silva had disappeared. “She knows?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. See what you can do.”
Right. Yes. Mara’s job was his assistant. So she was meant to assist him in all things. Even cleaning kitchens and seeing what information she could draw out of an elderly woman.
So she sucked in a breath and then forced a smile for the baby. As Senora had instructed, she carefully rolled the high chair across the floor and into the kitchen.
Senora Silva was already working on cleaning up the dinner debris, so Mara jumped in to help. “I can handle everything if—”
Senora made a gesture that had Mara closing her mouth. Clearly, she would be insulted if Mara continued to press, so instead she moved in to help while Julia played with the little dollop of mashed potato Senora Silva had put on the tray of her high chair.
After a few moments of moving in quiet, companionable silence, Mara decided to broach the topic directly. Senora seemed like the kind of woman who appreciated direct. At least from others.
“Did you know Felipe?”
“Mmm. I suppose I did not realize it at first when he began to come around, but I believe the younger Delgado used this place as a kind of…escape.”
“He was very good at escape,” Mara replied, the same pang she always felt at such a wasted short life. “Until he wasn’t.”
Senora Silva nodded, putting food away in containers. Mara collected scraps and wiped down counters, putting all stray dishes in the sink. She would have left it at that, but Agustin wanted more answers.
“Mr. Delgado was not aware he came here.”
“I have deduced as much,” Senora Silva said, nodding along as they scrubbed pots and loaded the spacious dishwasher. “But Felipe did. With his…” She looked back at the baby. Julia was still happily pounding her new baby spoon and old baby rattle. “…friend.”
“Do you know…” Mara trailed off too, because the moment seemed to call for it.
Senora Silva shook her head. “I could not give you a name or a place of origin. I could not tell you where she is. She and Felipe would arrive, have their fun, then leave. We are discreet, my husband and I. It was not our business to ask questions, so we kept out of it. Told no one. But I can tell you, it surprises me not at all that she would leave a baby behind for someone else to take care of. She was as reckless and selfish as he.”
Mara frowned at the characterization of a woman she didn’t even know. “People can change.”
“Perhaps,” Senora Silva said, but her tone was incredibly disbelieving. “But our Julia here is what? Four months?”
“Five, according to the papers left.”
“It seems perhaps her mother did try and then gave up when it didn’t suit.”
“Maybe she’s in distress. Maybe she needs help.” But Mara knew how desperate she sounded. She’d sounded that desperate before.
Papa told us he was coming back. He wouldn’t lie. You are lying.
He will never come back, because he does not want to deal with you.
“Maybe,” Senora Silva agreed.
But it wasn’t agreement at all.