But at lunchtime, as they ate fruit and salted meat beneath their tree behind the workshop, Antonio shared his reserves. He read to her from Victor Hugo’s second letter, printed in the paper—this one addressed to all the people of Cuba—in which he preached abolition and praised the Cuban rebellion against colonial rule, sending encouragement to the rebels whose numbers increasingly waned. Sometimes she cried at Hugo’s words. More than once, Antonio gathered her as María Isabel shivered and shook in his warmth. She had found in Antonio a friendship she hadn’t thought possible with a man, he of a gentler variety, seeming to relish in María Isabel the same spirit most sought to smother.

Behind the workshop, Antonio read to her from La Aurora, too. More and more each day, Porteños disallowed large portions of the lectors’ newspaper in the factory. He was impartial to both sides of the war, but his were commercial calculations. Business was failing yet Porteños held on, sure that the Spanish would win, that resolution would come and, with it, a return to prosperity. So he held on, feigning loyalty to his gubernatorial overseers. And María Isabel began to realize why he censored La Aurora—the editors grew more alarmed at the repression overtaking the country each day. They denounced the tobacco factory owners who had banned the practice of lectorship as impeding the progress of culture, keeping workers calculatingly ignorant. Porteños determined to prove them right, she thought.

“They are careful not to write in favor of the rebels,” Antonio said to her. “But the intimation is obvious.”

The day Antonio asked her to marry him, a storm of fat, thick rain surprised them beneath the tree, and they ran for shelter under the roof ledge of the workshop. No one was around—not even Porteños, who went home to the plantation for his meal. Soaked, she unfastened the pins in her hair and let her curls loose around her face. He raised a hand to a sodden lock, and she pulled away, unable to look at him. She knew he was enamored of her; that much was obvious. But they had never spoken of marriage, and though he knew there was no one to ask for her hand, she knew little of his family, of his plans. Increasingly she grew wary of his intentions, wondered whether he saw in her a passing amusement and little more.

He bent before her, holding his hat, his own hair glistening with rain. “I know I have little fortune to offer,” he said. “But I love you and promise I always will.”