“Pi?eiro,” the nurse prompted her.
The dowager nodded, apparently satisfied with her prompter’s performance.
Vicente gulped down another of those balls of acid saliva. The burning rejection of his stomach forced a shudder he couldn’t hide.
“I’ve been employed for five years on the estate, assisting Catarina.” The very act of pronouncing her name came out like an anguished moan and robbed him of all courage. “I’ve been very happy all that time, I’ve enjoyed my work very much, and I’ve done my best, not only fulfilling my regular duties, but also working with a devotion I believe far exceeded what one might normally expect of an employee.” He raised his head and saw the dowager still motionless, regarding him without any indication his words were having an effect. Or that she was even attempting to understanding him. He paused.
She merely waved at him to continue. “Se?or . . .”
“Pi?eiro,” the nurse’s emotionless voice repeated.
“I believe I already asked you to be brief. What is it you want?”
He swallowed another caustic globe of saliva. This time it made him slightly dizzy.
“What I want is”—his breathing accelerated; he was panting as he continued—“to have my job back. I need to come back to my work on the estate.” He stepped toward the old woman, but she stopped him instantly by raising one perfectly drawn eyebrow to signal beyond any doubt that his approach was not allowed.
“What you’re requesting is impossible. I do regret it,” she replied, without a trace of regret in her voice.
Vicente began stubbornly moving his head from one side to the other. “I beg you, se?ora, I don’t know what mistake I might have made or how I might have displeased the family, but I beg you to pardon me and allow me to return to my work.” He heard his voice break as he pleaded.
The old marquess again lifted a hand, this time to stop him. Only when she saw he wasn’t going to continue did she lower that hand. She pushed aside the blanket with an elegantly graceful motion and slid her legs off the sofa so she was in a normal sitting position. “Se?or . . . Pi?eiro, wasn’t that it? The truth is that I don’t know the point of all this. As you just stated, you have provided your services to this estate for the last five years. I’m not familiar with the details of the contracting process, but I understand that you were not a permanent employee. Unless I am mistaken, you had a time-limited contract. Isn’t that correct?” She looked at the nurse, who confirmed it. “We no longer require your services. I see no reason to make a drama of this.”
Vicente was shaking, but even so he found the courage to reply. “But . . .”
The old woman lifted a hand. She had reached the limit of her patience. “There is no ‘but.’ You are wasting my time. I am appalled to find you so discourteous. Can it be that you’re not aware of the current circumstances of this household? Events that I have no reason to explain to you have brought us to the decision to dispense with your services.”
“But Catarina will need help. Next month we have several floral events planned, and we’ve already confirmed our attendance—”
“In all sincerity I tell you I believe Catarina will not be attending those events. She will dedicate herself in the coming months to her husband and to the care of her own health, now that she once again is with child.”
The despairing grimace that had planted itself upon Vicente’s face froze when he heard her last words.
“Catarina is pregnant?”
“The matter does not concern you, but yes, she is.”
“Since when?”
The elderly marquess gave him a calculating smile before she answered. “She is almost four months pregnant. This time we waited a prudent length of time before ringing the church bells.”
“Four months,” he whispered.
Suddenly he felt that all the air seemed to have gone out of the room. The gardener gasped and felt cold sticky sweat break out upon his brow. He staggered to one side and looked around for something to grasp to keep himself erect.
He found the back of an upholstered chair, and without asking permission he stepped around it and sat down. Exhausted and confused, he struggled to speak. “I have to speak with Catarina.”
The old dowager glared at him with contempt. “And why do you suppose she would wish to speak with you?”
The gardener’s expression was almost joyful. “You don’t understand. This changes everything.”
“You’re mistaken, se?or Pi?eiro. I most certainly do understand. Everything. And it changes nothing at all.”
His sketchy smile went rigid. “But . . .”
“As I said, you are no more than an employee who provided services, and that is all you were for Catarina. Your work is done. We no longer require your services.”
“No,” he replied, raising his head to look directly at the woman for the first time. “You know nothing about it. Catarina . . . appreciates me . . .”
The dowager maintained her scrutiny of him, glancing away from time to time to exchange an expression of bored impatience with the nurse. But she did not interrupt the tirade that followed.
“Catarina is better than the rest of you. I know she’s at the clinic taking care of Santiago, but when she comes back and learns you’ve fired me the way you did before, things won’t stay the same. She’ll hire me back. She’ll come find me the way she did before when you fired me.”
Definitely losing her patience, the marquess waved to the nurse. “You tell him, please.”
The nurse smiled and sat up straight like a dog encouraged to demonstrate a trick. “Se?or Pi?eiro, Catarina was the person who ordered your dismissal.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s like last time; you people fired me, but she came to find me and bring me back.”
“Are you really so obtuse? Ah, God grant me patience!” exclaimed the old lady in disgust. She held out a hand to the nurse for help in getting up. She looked at him as if expecting a reply. “I’m sorry, but no, se?or Pi?eiro, Catarina will not be contacting you again. You are no longer needed. We have made certain everything is in order.”
Terror filled him. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not unusual for a first pregnancy to result in a miscarriage. Catarina lost the baby in February. The creature wasn’t properly implanted, and I suppose she was too hasty when she announced it at Christmas.” She smiled with vicious delight. “A regular Virgin Mary.”
“That’s when you fired me,” he babbled.
He was so dazed that he had to use his fingers to count the months. He tapped each against his knee like some drunken pianist. It couldn’t be. It was impossible, because it was mad. It couldn’t be, because it changed everything. “But she came and hired me again. That must have meant something. It had to mean something!”
The marquess conceded that point. “Of course it did. After she was released from the hospital we needed your services again.”
Vicente’s fingers kept hammering out melodies on his knees. He opened his dry, sticky mouth. It filled with the burning, cauterizing saliva that had seared his insides. “She said they’d taken out her appendix,” he cried out in disbelief.
“Se?or Pi?eiro, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. Do as I do; put your faith in numbers.” She touched her thumb to one finger after another in serene imitation of his frantic counting. “Numbers don’t lie.”