Ana María and the Fox (The Luna Sisters, #1)

by Liana De la Rosa

“Put away your claws, Gabriela. I did not mean to cause offense.” Lady Yardley looked to Isabel. “I apologize. I should have been more thoughtful.”

“Not everyone can be perfect like Ana,”

“As if the Valdés family would pay our ransom,”

“Do you know several influential British papers lauded Napoleon for capturing Mexico? One said he was to be praised for defeating”—he raised an arm to crook his fingers into quotation marks—“ ‘one of the most degenerate and despised races of either hemisphere.’

“The English only care about men named Napoleon when they believe he is a threat to them. To Europe. But for his offenses in Mexico, they’ve congratulated him. I’ve been proud to represent Mexico, to speak for the Juárez government here in London, but that article, and dozens of others like it, reminded me that the British see no pride in my role, for Mexico holds no value to them.”

Dios mío, how she wished he were in the room with them now to help them plan. To strategize. To hold her hand and tell her everything would be well.

Ana María willed her wine to numb her tumultuous emotions.

They had been living an idyllic dream since landing in London, but that bubble had now popped.

“So we’re supposed to act like nothing is wrong even while French sympathizers could be working to abduct us?”

His position in Parliament was not because it was his due, but because he had worked and worked, some nights until he could barely keep his eyes open and his fingertips were worn raw from scrubbing at the floors and fixtures of the university library, where he earned extra money in between classes.

His grandmother had once said that the plantation where she was born, the one where she toiled, was the most strikingly beautiful but accursed place on earth.

Anytime he visited grand English estates, it wasn’t just the guests and servants who tracked him with covert stares. For he saw the dark shadows lurking in the brightly lit ballrooms. The veneer of gentility that failed to mask the tainted history imprinted on the foundation. The stares were in the bricks and stones and mortar that comprised the manor itself. The blood of their makers, whose flesh was bought and sold to support such idyllic country houses, called to him. To the burning flame inside his heart that his grandmother protected and carried, and passed on to him.

He had almost expected the earl to turn up his nose at the idea of hosting at his ancestral home the son of a biracial woman and a papist Scot.

Montrose had wagered that Tyrell would balk at another parliamentary measure focused on slavery, so they had worked on ways Gideon could combat such claims.

If he were successful in winning Tyrell’s support, his proposal, his dream of bringing about an end to the slave trade, would be realized. The thought that the grandson of a formerly enslaved woman could have the most powerful empire in the world not only condemn but also abolish the heinous slave trade around the globe formed a knot of bubbling emotions in the back of his throat.

But when he saw her, she was all he could see.

And when her gaze met his, her pink lips tilting up into a secret smile, his goddamned heart soared.

When he should have been focused on his job, Gideon had been thinking of her.

“Do you suppose there’s atonement on Dante’s grand sketch of heaven and hell that takes into account the unique occurrence of a discussion about the marriage of religion and science that doesn’t result in a holy war?”

“Because if I want to bring about change, I need to play the game. I didn’t understand my father’s rigidity, the fierce hold he kept on all of us, until I saw how carefully you held yourself. How every step you take is methodically considered. I hold you in great esteem, Señor Fox, and I would not be able to forgive myself if our friendship were to distract from the very important work you are doing.”

A suffocating heaviness twined itself around his neck. The incomparable Ana María Luna, the woman who had haunted his dreams and every one of his waking hours, esteemed him . . . and thus knew they could not be friends.

As if you could ever be a simple acquaintance,

Gideon’s whole damn chest ached at the idea that Ana María recognized the very real consequences of their friendship.

Had he become so caught up in his ambitions that he had lost track of what he had been fighting for?

Did his grandmother give two damns if he forced England to publicly denounce the evils of the slave trade, or did she care that he had found a measure o...

And being with Ana María—in any way he could, even as just her friend—had ...

Gideon was mortified to feel heat sweep up his neck and spread across his cheeks.

Gideon had noticed that the sisters were assigned seats flanking the earl, and the earl seemed quite enchanted with his young guests. Not that Gideon could blame him. The full weight of Ana María’s regard was a heady thing.

The earl’s gaze narrowed on Gideon as if he were an intriguing cipher. “So you, the descendant of a Scots father and a Black grandmother, have risen to hold a seat in Commons. However did you manage that?”

Can Britain claim to be a world leader, an expansive empire, if it allows such an evil practice to not just exist,

“Those men believe everyone is beneath them. That God blessed them with wealth and pedigree, and in some cases a title, because they are special. When truly, they are anything but.”

but her stubborn heart yearned for a glimpse of him all the same.

“It would seem that despite the frightening reason for your exile from Mexico, coming to England has permitted you a bit of freedom, wouldn’t you say, Miss Luna?”

“And that’s what I hope for. That one day young women are granted the opportunities that are afforded to young men,”

He hesitated for a moment, his gaze fixed on her booted foot, slowly traveling up the drape of her habit, to finally meet her eyes.

Mr. Fox had his hands on her waist, his long fingers dipping into her flesh. Even through her corset and stays, his palms were hot to the touch, and she closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment to simply relish the feel of his hands on her.

Ana María looked up at him, her teeth catching her lip to find his pupils wide. His gaze locked on where she abused her lip, and when his head lowered ever so slightly, she inhaled, certain he was about to kiss her—

Pulling on the fingers of his gloves, Mr. Fox slowly stripped the leather from his hands. Ana María tracked every inch of skin that was exposed. If he had the power to set her ablaze with his gloved hands, what would it feel like to have his bare skin touch her own . . . ?

He’d been frightened. For her.

“And I was taught that a lady should never be boastful.” “What a ludicrous lesson,”

“Because when a young man excels at a certain subject or is learned in a particular area, no one expects him to not talk about such things. On the contrary, most men would prefer for us to believe them experts on topics they actually have no notion of.”

His face stretched into a grin right as he stepped into a patch of sun, and Ana María caught her breath, for never had she beheld a man quite so captivating.

“Distracted by . . . ?” he encouraged, his lips stretching into a smirk. A smug smirk, damn it.

“There is a Mexica myth that says the mountain was once a young warrior who ventured out of the city to visit the grave of his beloved. The gods took pity on the grieving man and turned him into a mountain, covering him with snow.”

“Have you noticed that many myths, no matter which culture they originate from, focus on love or loss or revenge?” Gideon rested his chin on the crown of her head. “Why are humans so consumed with the three?” “Because they remind us we’re alive.”

She was a puddle of want with him pressed against her, his nose and chin nuzzling at her hair. She had never been this close to a man before . . . and frankly, she couldn’t imagine permitting anyone else such liberties.

For no one had ever made her feel the way Señor Fox—Gideon—did. From the moment their eyes had met, she’d felt as if she knew him. And he knew her. This dance they had performed to avoid each other had stung worse, for each of them knew it was prudent to stay away. Yet their connection still pulsed and pulled like an invisible force whenever they were together, whether across a crowded ballroom or separated by the length of a dining table.

In the depths of her soul, Ana María knew he would never hurt her.

“Señorita Luna”—her name was a growl—“I should very much like to kiss you.”

With slow movements, he brought his hands—his deliciously bare hands—up to cradle her face, his thumbs sweeping across her cheekbones in reverent strokes, before he slowly, ever so slowly, brought his mouth down to meet hers.