Jason Weiser

She challenged.

It was no less than Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras, the man hissed, adding that his name might not be known, but theirs were, and their faces were known from here to the coast.

Heart pounding in her ears, Doña knew that she had names.

Two rich, young nobles.

She needed more.

Picking up her cards and then setting them down, she crossed her arms and sat back, legitimately searching her memory.

She nodded and asked what nobles were doing begging in Mercia when they had a palacio on the hill overlooking the bay.

The dealer, with the two men on either side, said that this cavalier had fine knowledge of the world.

Such words did not usually come from lips, on which hair had not yet grown.

Such is the burden of knowledge, it seems.

Dunya picked up her cards and gestured to the man's head, shining apart from the few wispy scraps of hair that remained.

All at the table broke out into laughter, and they got on with their game.

Over the next hour, Doña dug for information using a nonchalant mention that she had a cousin married to a Contreras, and whatever affected the honor of that house affected her own.

A probably correct assertion, since both of her parents' families were so enmeshed with the local nobility as to nearly lose themselves to it.

Certainly enough to lose their daughter, and it seemed, the man she loved.

Doña Josefa Ramirez nearly responded when she heard her own name, but the recognition was tempered by unease.

The passion with which the men said it, speaking of her, the great beauty of the time, as if she was a goddess who descended for their admiration or pleasure, filled her with loathing.

It was in that moment, though, that she knew why Don Pedro had died.

The men at the table only confirmed it.

In the two young nobles' own words, Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras had been traveling from giving gold to sad, orphaned children to giving more money for sadder, more orphaned children when they saw Don Pedro, noble in name if not in holdings, singing up to Doña, the great beauty, someone so beneath her that even the sight of it was insulting.