"The Contessa..."

 

The Contessa Maria Theresa Isabella Emilia Lucia Gabriella Rosalina Liliana Paloma

It has become the talk of every corner of Port Dominion: the arrival of Contessa Maria Theresa Isabella Emilia Lucia Gabriella Rosalina Liliana Paloma, whose name alone exhausts the English tongue. In the manner of her people, such abundance of names is a matter of pride and lineage. Yet among the English, her identity is already shortened for convenience to “The Contessa Maria,” “The Contessa Maria Theresa,” or, in more private circles, “Contessa Maria Paloma.” Only the very bold—or very favored—may dare to call her simply “Maria.”

She arrived under the delicate cover of the fragile truce that currently binds the Spanish, English, French, and Dutch to their uneasy peace in these waters. Her caravan of servants, attendants, and endless trunks of silks, jewels, and ornaments stirred both awe and resentment as it made its stately procession into the town. She has taken up residence in a fine new villa at the edge of Dominion, a house so freshly built its plaster has scarcely dried. Its location, uncomfortably near to both Lord Mitchell’s estate and the Governor’s residence, has set tongues wagging and tempers rising. The Mitchells, in particular, are said to be quite indignant at the encroachment of so high-born and foreign a neighbor.

But her proximity is not what excites gossip—it is her person. The Contessa is possessed of a beauty dark and smoldering, with eyes like candleflame in shadow and a bearing that mingles pride with suggestion. Her every movement, from the slow turn of her head to the faintest quirk of her lips, seems imbued with some sultry promise. Already, men of the garrison and merchants alike are said to be stumbling over their own tongues in her presence, and more than one respectable wife has complained of husbands returning home distracted and sighing.

And yet—there are murmurs. Whispers carried in corners of taverns and kitchens, spoken with half a laugh but the sign of the cross made after. Some claim that the Contessa’s beauty is not entirely natural, that her arrival coincides too closely with strange tides, uncanny dreams, and the sudden death of livestock in fields near the town. Others mutter of witchcraft, voodoo, or darker pacts—stories carried, no doubt, from Spain’s own troubled colonies. Whether these tales are the inventions of envious tongues or contain some element of truth, none can say. But few fail to note how easily she seems to command attention, charm even the skeptical, and unsettle the pious.

One cannot help but wonder why a woman of such wealth, power, and mystery has chosen this island. A mere indulgence? A quiet exile? Or some hidden design beneath her velvet gowns and golden rosaries?