Conquistadora Read Online Free PDF

debilitating and mysterious illness that no physician could diagnose or cure. Chills so severe that her bed shook followed high fevers. Shallow breathing that kept her from sleep on consecutive nights evolved into slumber from which she couldn’t be roused. A poor appetite caused such rapid weight loss that Jesusa feared Ana would waste away.
    The alternating symptoms kept Ana in bed for nearly two months. During her illness, Ramón (at least that’s who Jesusa thought it was) visited to inquire after Ana’s health, begging to be allowed to speak to her. The distance between Sevilla and Cádiz was over one hundred kilometers, and the still unstable political situation made travel unsafe. Even Gustavo was impressed with Ramón’s devotion and willingness to endanger his own life in order to woo his daughter.
    While Ana’s dowry seemed generous to Eugenio, it was to be half what Gustavo had received upon marrying Jesusa, not including jewelry she inherited from her grandmothers. Gustavo looked at his daughter critically. At seventeen, she appeared older and—in spite of fashionable clothes, colorful shawls, and hairdressing—common.
    Gustavo had studied her in society, where her tart tongue caused other women, and some men, to turn away. Sevilla was a big city, but Gustavo and Jesusa knew everyone worth knowing. No other young man of their acquaintance was interested in Ana. If she never married, she’d be dependent on him the rest of his life and, after his death, on her uncle’s charity. Ana lacked altruism and Gustavo couldn’t imagine her as the soft-voiced, sickbed auntie in his brother’s rambunctious household, or as one of the charitable spinsters who ministered to the poor, or as a companion to the elderly and infirm. She was an intelligent girl, and he was sure that she, too, had considered the same scenarios.
    Gustavo ordered his lawyers to inquire discreetly into Marítima Argoso Marín. Reports were encouraging. The company was healthy and the colonel’s experience leading men might translate into business acumen. Gustavo was less impressed with Ramón. He was a popinjay, and Gustavo imagined his plain daughter thought she was lucky to have caught such a peacock. She, at least, had some sense, and he imagined Ana would peck Ramón into submission as soon as they were married.
    So, eight months after Ana declared who her husband was to be, her father agreed to the engagement.
    Ana’s recovery was swift once Ramón was allowed to visit. He stayed a few minutes, chaperoned by the tight-faced Jesusa. His good humor and gentle manners, however, won her approval. Over the next month his visits became longer until they stretched into mealtimes, when Jesusa and Gustavo elicited information about theArgoso and Mendoza families that they could later use to justify their daughter’s marriage to a liberal with Jewish ancestors. As soon as Ana could sit upright without exertion, a date was fixed for days after her eighteenth birthday.
    The Larragoity Cubillas home in Plaza de Pilatos was impressive if one was dazzled by portraits of men with starched ruffs and shapely calves and women encased in lace and velvet trimmed with ermine. Swords, harquebuses, and daggers were displayed along the walls as if to remind the viewer that the Larragoity men were not to be trifled with. At the bottom of the stairs was a knight’s suit of armor, complete with a shield emblazoned with a heraldic emblem featuring an enormous cross capped with a halo of thorns. According to Gustavo, he was a direct descendant of the knight who wore that particular chain mail and plate in the Crusades. But Ana suspected that, like so much of the Larragoity and Cubillas family lore, this was an exaggeration. She didn’t believe that either side of her family had risen above village life until centuries later, when the
conquista
made it possible for penniless boys to go to sea in search of fortune. She noticed, however, that Gustavo’s and