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“Por supuesto, the same as the boys. Mathematics, science, economía política—”

“I want you to dismiss them all tomorrow.”

“And do what with her? You won’t allow her to go to school. Her only friend is the cookmaid’s daughter. You can’t hide her away from the world, Bernard. She’s not a wax doll to keep on a shelf.”

“Have her learn embroidery or take singing lessons. Something appropriate for a girl in her situation.”

“What situation is that, mi amor?”

The term mi amor had never sounded like less of an endearment.

“The daughter of a kept woman,” Papa said flatly, “who will likely follow in her mother’s footsteps. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Our arrangement makes you very happy—you’ve always said so.”

“Reina may want something else. Her tutors say she has a very good mind, Bernard. They say she’s the cleverest girl any of them have ever—”

“They flatter her to impress you, Manuela—and I don’t believe I need to explain what those young men desire. No, I will hear no more of it. No tutors, no Latin, no science.”

Mamaíta didn’t reply.

“Furthermore,” Papa continued after a moment, “I want you to teach her to be charming. Have some prettier dresses made for her and do something about her hair—it’s as rough as a pony’s mane. It should be smooth and tied with ribbons, like my—like other girls.”

Something about the silence that followed was so dreadful that it hurt Reina’s ears as much as a scream.

Then, her mother’s murmur. “I will see to it, Bernard.”

Reina retreated to her room in a daze. The importance of pleasing Papa had been impressed on her since birth. She had always understood, deep down, that their survival depended on it.

As she went to the oval-shaped looking glass and pushed down her hair with the flat of her hand, she tried to imagine the sisters she’d never seen. Maybe their skin was lighter. Maybe their eyes were blue instead of brown.

How could she fix what was wrong with her?

Slowly, Mamaíta’s image joined hers. A flush had sent banners of pink across the crests of her mother’s cheeks. Her dark eyes were burning. One of her hands came to Reina’s, gently uncoiled a lock of hair, and smoothed it back.

“Mamaíta,” Reina asked, “will I be pretty like you someday?”

“You already are, mija. But that will never be the most important thing about you.” Mamaíta kept smoothing her hair with fingers that trembled a little. “Óyeme bien. You will have the same education a son would—I’ll see to that. You’ll have all the books you can read. It is for no one to say what you cannot do. Women have ruled empires. Women have led armies. You will be reina de tu propio castillo, sí?”

“Sí, Mamaíta.”

Papa had never mentioned the propelling pencil afterward, perhaps having forgotten about it. Reina kept it as a token of the foreign masculine territory navigated with the use of pocket watches, walking sticks, and leather-bound memorandums. It was a world in which some women were married and others were kept, and some children were legitimate while others were an unmentionable word. It was a world that had been created by men like Papa.

But Mamaíta had changed Reina’s life with a single phrase: reina de tu propio castillo.

Queen of your own castle.

There was magic in those words.

They bestowed power on a girl.

Chapter One

A Bustle in the Bank

“But they to him were denizens of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames.”

—E. M. Forster, Howards End

London, 1877