Conquistadora Read Online Free Page A

Ana noticed that they moved unalike, too. Ramón’s playful nature was revealed in a looseness of limb and grace that seemed studied in the more serious Inocente. Ramón also talked more, was usually the one to start a joke, the most likely to tell an amusing story. Ana teased them about it, but neither admitted to pretending to be the other. It was as if in their own minds they were interchangeable, one twenty-three-year-old man in two bodies.
    Four mornings a week the twins walked to an office over a warehouse by the wharf and were usually back for the midday meal followedby a siesta, awakened by the sweet airs of harp music as doña Leonor practiced her instrument.
    “They don’t work very hard,” Ana told Elena.
    “They’re gentlemen; they shouldn’t be at an office all day long.”
    “But how can they run a business if they’re just there a couple of hours a day?”
    “Clerks and managers and people like that take care of the details. Ramón and Inocente check on what the employees do.”
    It occurred to Ana that none of the Argosos had any idea of the intricacies of commerce. Neither did she, if it came down to it, but her practical nature guessed that a business needed the active engagement of its owners, not just the appearance of ownership.
    At dusk, Ramón and Inocente joined other young people on promenade around the Plaza de la Catedral or Plaza de San Antonio. They went out every evening, and Ana heard them stumbling over the furniture in the early hours.
    One day the brothers hired a carriage and drove Ana and Elena to the beach. Once they settled the girls, Ramón and Inocente ran back and forth, laughing, lifting a kite into the air, their childlike joy enhanced by Ana’s and Elena’s enthusiastic applause.
    Their mother, doña Leonor, like doña Jesusa, visited and was visited by friends and neighbors to share the local gossip. Ana and Elena smiled demurely as doña Leonor and her friends discussed who was engaged to whom, which officer was promoted, and who failed to impress their superiors. The girls sat straitlaced during these visits, their hands on their laps, their eyes modestly lowered, knowing that they must make a good impression on the
dueñas
, who would, in turn, talk about them the minute they left the sitting rooms.
    Several evenings, doña Leonor and don Eugenio escorted Ana and Elena to high-ceilinged, mirrored halls where military orchestras played into the wee hours. The girls danced with dapper officers in full regalia and with civilians who wore crisp cravats, silk waistbands, ribbons around their knee breeches, and shiny kid shoes.
    The Argosos had no guest room, so Ana and Elena shared a bed and slept wrapped in each other’s arms. Elena always heard the maid coming in the morning to draw the drapes open. She pushed Ana to her side and they settled back-to-back with plenty of space between them. It was the loneliest moment of Ana’s day.
    Doña Leonor was hospitable and polite, but she looked worriedas Ramón and Inocente increasingly turned to Ana for amusement and conversation. She appeared befuddled about which of the twins was wooing Ana, and Ana added to her perplexity by being equally agreeable to both men. She liked their attention, and enjoyed the envious looks of other
señoritas
whose fluttering lashes and powdered bosoms vibrated at the approach of the two handsome young men. Ana was elated as the denied
señoritas
and their
dueñas
practically collapsed when Ramón and Inocente went past them, toward her.
    Next to the other girls, and especially beside the willowy Elena, Ana was at a disadvantage. She was petite, just barely five feet tall, but with none of the vulnerability expected from a small woman. She was healthy, tanned and freckled from exposure to the outdoors. Neither dance masters, nuns, nor Jesusa’s lessons in deportment could refine her brisk, efficient movements into grace. Ana’s own scrutiny showed that she was pretty enough but no beauty. She