Valencia is busier than I remembered. Bustling with carriages and people meandering to their next engagement. The bright sun nearly blinds me as I step off the train and I'm thrown back to stepping off onto the streets of Madrid. Catalina was right there beside me, then, wearing her barely kept up dress and her mantilla to cover her hair.
But it wasn't even close to enough to obscure her beauty.
I close my eyes and breathe in the salty breeze coming off the ocean.
"Valrocio," Ramiro says from behind me, "Are you alright?"
"I will be," I answer. "As soon as we find Catalina."
"I've enlisted some help in that regard," he says with a smile, staring out into the crowd until his eyes connect with his best friend and neighbour, Adelina Morales, who bounds through the crowd with an enormous smile on her face.
Finally, she makes it across the square and stands before us. "I thought you weren't coming in until the next train," she says to Ramiro, eyes narrowing into a glare while the smile remains permanently affixed to her face. "I almost missed you."
"I sent word as soon as I could."
"No matter, I'm here now." She turns to face me. "It is good to see you again, Marcos."
"It's lovely to see you," I say with a bow. Adelina shakes her head and dips into a curtsey and then pulls me into a hug.
"I'm just so glad to see you," she says finally, pushing me away to arm's length and taking in my attire.
"Why could you possibly be glad to see me? Has he done something?" I tip my head at Ramiro. "Because I can't fix it if I don't know about it."
"He's not done anything," she says, rolling her eyes. "I just thought for sure you'd still be back home getting married. I saw the news and assumed we were too late."
"Saw the news?" Ramiro asks.
"Yeah, it's all over town 'el excelentísimo señor duque de Valrocio is engaged to be married'." She pauses to look up at me, hands on her hips. "Again."
"I didn't agree to either of those so-called engagements," I remind her. "And I'm here, aren't I?"
"You have good points." She links her arm in the one offered by Ramiro and joins us as we walk down the platform and off into the cobbled streets. "But I've had no luck tracking down the young lady you mentioned."
I throw a glare at Ramiro and stop walking. "You had Adelina doing the dirty work for you? Imagine the danger she could have been in! Do you care for her at all."
She rolls her eyes. "I was running around gossiping with the ladies, Marcos. It may not be my preferred use of time but it is hardly dangerous."
Ramiro smirks at me. "See? I kept her safe. We needed someone Catalina would not be frightened by."
That's pretty smart, actually. "But you haven't found her?"
"No, I definitely found her. Exactly as you described her, living with an uncle here in Valencia."
"Then... I'm sorry, I don't understand. If you found her, how have you had no luck tracking her down?"
"Oh, that. I meant this morning. I was hoping to find her again before you got here, to give her some warning."
"You think I need to arrive with a warning?"
"Yes," she says. "Yes, I do. But let us hope your lovely bride-to-be does not agree."
"We are not engaged," I sigh, running low on energy.
"If you say so," she replies, weaving her way through the crowd to the vendor on the corner.
She drags Ramiro by his elbow, winding further into the crowd, but I'm not moving. And I'm not breathing either. Because I'm having a hallucination and I don't want it to disappear.
My eyes grow tired and sting with the effort to keep them open, so they drop closed, blinking back the tears that try to lubricate my vision once more. But even after I blink she's still there, rushing through the crowd heading straight toward me.
"Catalina," I breathe. And she catches my eye from across the street, her own shoulders slumping with what looks like relief. Or, I hope it's relief.
Taking the space between us as quickly as I can, I'm soon standing right before her, staring down at her large round eyes.
"Marcos," she whispers back, kissing my cheek. "What are you doing here?"
"Finding you?" I would have thought that part was pretty obvious.
"But you are— you're supposed to be engaged," she whispers. "And it's been so long. I'd assumed..."
"It has scarcely been a month since I last saw you. And I am not engaged, no matter what my father should wish."
"What are you doing here?" she repeats, as though asking the question again will garner a different response. Her fingers grip my jacket as if she's afraid I'll disappear if she lets go. I grip her arms with the same fervor.
"I came to find you," I answer again, reaching out to take her hand in mine. "To ask you, again, if you are willing to marry."
I reach into my pocket and pull out the small ring I've had since my mother died. Holding it out between us, I ask again. "Will you marry me, Catalina Juárez?"
"But how—?" Her big eyes blink up at me and I sense a flicker of the hope that warms my own heart.
"I came to find you," I repeat.
"You're here."
"I am."
"You have a ring."
"I do. Though unfortunately no dress, and I'm fairly certain my father isn't far behind, so I'm not sure where we will have to go in order to escape him, but I'm here to ask you if you'll try. If you still want me."
A smile pulls at her cheeks and for a moment I'm certain she's going to give me an affirmative answer. My heart beats a samba in my chest, watching the light flicker through her hair. And then she begins to laugh.
The hand holding the ring falls to my side. She's laughing at me?
She looks up and sees my confusion etched on my brow. "Oh, I'm sorry. It's just..." she laughs again, drawing the attention of passersby. "It's just... sorry. One second."
She hides her laughs behind her hand and I notice Ramiro and Adelina come to a stop just a few feet from me. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a letter I'd recognize anywhere. Because I wrote it for her.
"I have a confession," she says through her giggles.
Did she get married since she's been here? No, Adelina would have told me, surely. "Will this confession hurt me?"
She shakes her head. "I certainly hope not."
"Do you ever plan to answer my proposal?"
"I haven't answered?" Her brows pull together and she looks down at her hand. "Oh, so I haven't."
The bustle of the city carries on around us, blissfully unaware of the earth shattering power this woman holds over me.
"I believe I was the one to propose initially," she clarifies. "And then you proposed again and I accepted then, too. So, for the third time, I'd love to marry you... Marcos."
I'm so elated I forget myself, placing a kiss on her cheek that glances dangerously close to her lips.
Adelina clears her throat and walks over to join us. "Is this the infamous Catalina?" she asks.
"I am," Catalina answers. "You must be the bespectacled woman searching for a ... cousin, I believe it was."
"It was," she says with a smile. "Though if you are to marry that man we'll be as good as cousins anyway. Because those two are like brothers." She waves her hand between me and Ramiro.
"I'm glad you found me," Catalina says. "I was beginning to think he would never come back."
"I've been under constant watch at home," I explain. "I didn't want to lead them to you."
"Is that why you left me on the train?"
I wasn't expecting to have this conversation in the middle of a Valencia street, but I guess I don't have a choice. "No. I left you on the train because I knew you had a chance to really be free of your father. You deserved the chance to try."
"And you didn't?"
"I did. I see that now. But it's much easier for me to live with someone I don't like than it would be for you. I am not beholden to my wife's willingness to pay for me."
"I think that's part of what I like about you," she says, smiling. "Are you going to give me that ring or not?"
"Are you going to tell me your confession?"
"Only if you give me the ring."
"I like how she bargains," Ramiro says, threading Adelina's arm into his once more and holding her delicate hand in his.
Hands shaking only a little, I slide the small ring onto Catalina's finger, where it's still slightly too big. "I can have it resized."
"You'll do no such thing. This ring will not leave my finger until I say so. I'll just put it inside my gloves, or wear it over my gloves. It'll be just fine."
She stares down at her hand and then up at me and the love she's not yet confessed to me pours out of her eyes. I send the same back to her. The rest of the world fades away entirely as we breathe in time with each other.
She wants to marry me. She's going to marry me. Once I can figure out how to get married before my father finds us.
"Wait." I step in closer to whisper in her ear. "What happened with your father? Has he not managed to find you?"
"According to my uncle, he was sent on a wild goose chase by a young man at a train station in Madrid," she answers, pulling at the edges of my coat sleeves. "And by the time he returned, the gentleman he wished to see me married to had found another. Given how difficult I was to deal with, my uncle convinced my father that letting me stay missing was best for his reputation. I'm sure he'll realize eventually that it isn't true, but for now I'm in the clear."
I laugh heartily at the idea of her being more work than she's worth. As though she could ever achieve that. She's barely any work and has infinite worth.
"Was that your big reveal, then?" I ask, desperate to hold her in ways entirely inappropriate for a public street, so settling for holding her hands a little tighter.
"Not quite." She looks down at the letter in her hand again. "Remember when I came here we were planning to get married once we arrived?"
"Yes, of course I remember."
"Well, I guess I'm a bit of an optimist because once I explained my situation to my uncle, I went to my room and opened a certain suitcase belonging to a duke I met once on a train. And what I found there made me believe he would come for me. So I went straight to the priest and had him post banns for us."
"You did what?"
"I convinced the priest you were coming soon and reminded him who my uncle was and in no time he had the banns posted. We've been allowed to marry since last week Tuesday," she says with a shrug.
I could kiss her.
"So, that's why I was here. At the train station," she finishes.
"You're at the train station to marry me?"
"No. I'm at the train station to head home because there's no way I was going to let you marry her."
"I was never going to marry her."
"I didn't know that, though. And I'm quite convinced at this point that you are meant to be my husband. Why else would the magical carriage have dropped me off with barely any time to catch a train? Why else did I stumble right into you? Why else did you risk everything to help me?"
"I risked everything to help you because you're worth the risk, Catalina. I would do it twenty times if it meant you could be free to live the life you wanted."
"And the life I want is wherever you are, Marcos. Wherever you are."
"Even if I'm at a train station?" I joke, pulling her into a hug.
"Even if you're on a train," she says with a smile. "So when are you going to make me a duchess?"
"How far is the church?" I joke.
"Not far," she says, smile pulling at her lips.
"Isn't that a little fast?"
"Of course not. After all, we've been married for a month already. Might as well make it official."
Remind me to pay that magical carriage a visit. With Catalina in my arms one thing is clear: I owe that driver my whole life.