He was lost to her, she knew that. She understood it too. Since the funeral eleven days earlier, there had been nothing from him: no messages passed, not a word uttered. Every night she stood by her window, looking for a dark shadow running across the fields or standing by the trees. And every day she looked to see if he had put the shark’s tooth in their secret hiding spot, his only way of forgiving her for being a Mendoza. But the deafening silence was intimidating and instead left her listening for footsteps behind her or bracing for confrontations on the steps of Señor Martin’s office as his father had done. Her eyes searched for him everywhere. She knew he was still in Ronda – instinct told her – but she did not dare return to the old town. The flash of threat in his eyes that day had been enough to ensure she hadn’t left the latifundio since.

Not that she felt any safer within the estate. Things had changed since Juan Esperanza’s murder. There was an edge now between her and Vale and Montez, a trace of menace lurking beneath their interactions – the next morning after the murder, under Vale’s watchful gaze across the table, she found a shard of glass in her breakfast dish – too big to miss but a warning nonetheless; another day they instructed the cook to cancel her dinner altogether, saying she was feeling ill. She felt their gazes on her every time their father walked into the room, not trusting her to remain quiet, but for once, she didn’t try to fight them. They had already proved they were capable of anything. What was it Arlo had said? She had to pick her battles? Well now she felt she had no fight left in her. She was defeated.

Moving away from the window, she unbuttoned her dress, letting it fall listlessly to the ground. She stepped into her new riding habit – midnight velvet, again made especially for tonight. It was heavy and would be impossibly hot in this midsummer heat, but the rich brushed pile was so perfect against Indigo’s gleaming hide. She fastened the jacket up to her chin, her fingers fumbling with the scarlet frogging. It was close-fitting and stiff and she tugged it down at the waist as she examined her reflection, the full skirt falling around her in deep plush folds.

She was putting on her hat when the bedroom door was suddenly flung open and Arlo fell in. He was the only one of her family who never knocked, feeling he had special dispensation to burst in whenever he liked. That she was a young woman who valued her privacy, and modesty, never seemed to occur to him.

‘Woah!’ he cried, mid-leap onto her bed as he caught a proper look at her. ‘Look at you.’

She looked back at her reflection again. Yes. Look at her indeed. She too was transformed tonight. In the party dress she had looked simply . . . pretty: more than attractive, less than beautiful, she’d have said. But in this habit, even if she did acknowledge it herself, she looked magnificent. She twisted, doing a half-turn one way, then the other, admiring her fashioned silhouette, the dark lines and curves of the midnight velvet.