But there weren’t a lot of places to go. I didn’t want to go to Martin’s house or to Vinces, either; it was too long of a walk. There was one more option, though not ideal.

I headed toward the creek. I needed to think about what had just happened. I needed to understand what I was feeling, to put my thoughts in order. A tingling sensation ran through my body, energizing me. I had an urge to break something.

Things had not gone as I expected them to at all.

But what had I been expecting? Welcome hugs? Tears?

Not after my deception.

“Nobody wanted you here. Nobody.”

Elisa’s words kept ringing in my mind.

None of them had denied what she’d said. They weren’t even mildly relieved that I was still alive. Though I understood their surprise and shock, their coldness hurt. It reminded me that I didn’t mean anything to them, that they didn’t know me. They only knew the façade of Cristóbal.

And that was my own fault.

Not even Catalina seemed pleased. And I thought she genuinely liked me.

I didn’t stop until I reached the neighbor’s house.

Don Fernando stopped cold when he saw me sitting in his parlor in men’s clothing but without looking particularly masculine with no facial hair or spectacles.

“Señor . . . ?”

“Señora,” I said. “I’m María Purificación de Lafont y Toledo, Don Armand’s oldest daughter.”

Such was his shock that instead of shaking my hand, he sat on the couch, gaping.

“But I thought Doña Purificación passed away. At least that was the rumor around town.”

I shook my head.

“Wait, weren’t you supposed to be her husband?”

I explained to him, as succinctly as I could, the entire situation. By the end, he had an amused expression on his face that I didn’t particularly care for. Still, I proposed a deal to him. If he let me stay in his house while the inheritance was being processed and distributed, I would renegotiate with him, in more favorable terms, the border issue that had caused such a headache for him and my father. My siblings might not be happy with the agreement, but it was about time that I started making decisions regarding the plantation—it was what my father had wanted. And maybe he had a good reason for it.

Don Fernando looked at me with apprehension, but after a moment, he smiled.

“All right, you have a deal, Doña Puri.”

“One more thing,” I said, before shaking hands with him. “I’ll need you to send one of your employees to collect all my things from my father’s hacienda. I don’t want to set foot there until this is all over.”

* * *