The duke answers instead. “You and your daughters will come with us.”
Your spine stiffens. “No.”
Mateo blinks like he didn’t expect resistance from someone with torn fingers and empty pockets. The duke’s eyebrows lift slightly, as if you’ve entertained him despite yourself.
“You’re refusing protection from Julián Santillán,” Mateo says, voice warning you that your life could end on a technicality.
“I’m refusing to be taken,” you say, and your voice is calm because your fear is already busy doing something else, something useful. “If I go with armed men into the night, people will say I stole him, or kidnapped him, or seduced him, or murdered him and hid the body and lied about it. They already call me widow like it means ‘target.’ I won’t hand them a story.”
The duke studies you, and the silence stretches long enough to hear rain arguing with the roof.
“You’re right,” he says finally.
Mateo looks startled. “My lord…”
The duke lifts a hand, cutting him off. “We do this clean. Mateo, bring the priest. Bring the magistrate if the road allows it. We leave a record that she saved me.”
You blink, not expecting fairness from a man with a feared name. The duke’s gaze stays on you, steady and sharp, but not cruel.
“And we pay her,” Mateo adds quickly, as if money can solve everything.
You shake your head. “I don’t want payment.”
Mateo frowns. “Why not?”
Because you’ve seen what payment turns into: obligation, gossip, chains made of gratitude. Because you’re tired of owing men who think kindness is a receipt.
“I want my girls safe,” you say. “I want the truth about my husband’s papers. And I want my home back.”
The duke’s mouth tightens again, but this time the tension looks like respect. “Then you want the same thing I want.”
Mateo’s eyes flick. “My lord, you’re not suggesting—”
“I am,” the duke says, and his voice is the kind that makes arguments fold themselves neatly and step aside. “The Ibarra matter has been circling my estate for months. Your husband’s death was not an accident, Beatriz Salgado.”
The way he says your name feels like a stamp pressed into hot wax. Permanent. Official. Dangerous.
Your throat constricts. “He died of fever.”
The duke’s eyes don’t move. “That’s what they said.”
You remember Tomás sweating through sheets, shivering even in summer heat, his eyes too bright, his hands trembling like leaves. You remember a neighbor bringing “medicine” from the Ibarra house, and the way Tomás worsened after taking it. You remember Rodrigo’s face at the funeral: solemn, respectful, almost… satisfied.
A cold spreads through you that has nothing to do with rain. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” the duke replies, “that you stumbled into a war. And you carried the wounded general into your kitchen.”
Mateo steps closer, lowering his voice. “Señora, if you stay here, you will be questioned. Then threatened. Then bought. Then silenced.”
You glance at your daughters, sleeping in a tight knot like puppies trying to share one heartbeat. You picture Rodrigo’s smile. Doña Mercedes’ dead eyes. The word bastardas like spit.
You look back at the duke. “If I go with you… I become part of your war.”
“You already are,” he says softly. “You just haven’t been given the map.”
The priest arrives near midday, soaked and wheezing from the ride. The magistrate comes too, annoyed and curious, the kind of man who likes power as long as someone else holds the blame.
You stand in the doorway while Mateo speaks, while the duke’s signet ring is displayed like proof of gravity. The magistrate’s eyebrows climb higher and higher, and he keeps darting looks at you as if you might suddenly transform into either a saint or a criminal, depending on which story serves him best.
The duke insists the magistrate write it down: Beatriz Salgado found Don Julián Santillán injured, treated his wounds, and alerted no one because she had no safe way to do so. He dictates it like he’s constructing armor out of words.
The priest watches you quietly, eyes softening when he sees your daughters. When he blesses the room, you don’t know whether you believe in blessings anymore, but you cling to the gesture anyway. Sometimes you need symbols the way you need bread.
By late afternoon, the duke is wrapped in blankets, his leg bound tighter, his face pale with controlled suffering. Mateo brings a small cart with padded boards, and the men lift the duke carefully, the way you carry a sleeping child you’re terrified to wake.
Cecilia stands close to your side, eyes wide. “Are we going with them?”
You hesitate, and it’s strange how a pause can feel like a lifetime. You could refuse and gamble with the night, with Rodrigo, with hunger. Or you could go and gamble with the duke’s world, a world made of titles and enemies and traps disguised as invitations.
You look at the duke. His eyes meet yours, and he doesn’t plead. He doesn’t order. He simply waits, as if he understands that consent matters, even in chaos.
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