Chapter 8: Liquid Courage

An Unusual Evening

Don Rodrigo was away in Manila for three days—business with the banco, meetings with other plantation owners, the sort of trip that required his presence but not Mateo’s.

Which meant the house felt different. Lighter. The oppressive weight of his judgment temporarily lifted.

Mateo had spent the day in the fields and come back exhausted, eaten a solitary dinner, and gone straight to his chambers without asking for either woman.

And Mia and Alana found themselves with something rare and precious: an evening entirely their own.

They’d taken dinner in Mia’s sitting room instead of the formal dining room—just the two of them, served by discreet servants who left the wine and disappeared.

The first bottle had been innocent enough. Just something to accompany the meal, to celebrate the temporary freedom.

The second bottle was where things began to shift.

“More?” Mia asked, holding up the bottle.

“Why not?” Alana’s cheeks were already flushed, her usual careful composure softening at the edges. “It’s not like we have anywhere to be.”

“Or anyone to perform for,” Mia added, pouring generously.

They’d moved from the small dining table to the chaise by the window, both of them in simple house dresses, hair down, shoes discarded. The intimacy of it—the casual domesticity—felt dangerously like something more than friendship.

“To freedom,” Mia said, raising her glass.

“Temporary freedom,” Alana corrected, clinking her glass against Mia’s. “But we’ll take it.”

They drank. The wine was good—a Rioja that Mia’s father had sent as part of her dowry. Rich and smooth and far too easy to drink.

“I’ve been thinking,” Alana said, settling deeper into the cushions. The wine was making her bolder, loosening the careful control she usually maintained. “About what you said in the bath. About this—us—being the only real thing in this house.”

“And?” Mia turned to face her, tucking one leg under herself.

“And I think you’re right. Everything else is performance. Duty. Survival. But this—” She gestured between them. “This is real. Whatever ‘this’ is.”

“Do you want to know what I think ‘this’ is?” Mia asked. The wine had made her bold too.

“Tell me.”

“I think,” Mia said slowly, “that I’m falling in love with you.”

The words hung in the air.

Alana went very still. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m tipsy. There’s a difference. And it doesn’t make it less true.”

“Mia—”

“I know it’s impossible. I know it’s sin. I know the Church would condemn us and society would destroy us.” Mia leaned forward. “But I don’t care. When I’m with you—when we’re like this, just us—I feel more myself than I’ve ever felt with him. More alive. More real.”