Chapter 5 A Banquet of Appearances

MERCEDES

The sandstone palace’s private dining room smells of roasted meat, waxed wood, and the melted resin of the silver candelabras anchoring the long oak table.

It is a solemn space, sealed off from the outside world by heavy maroon velvet drapes.

In here, flanked by Dean Valenzuela, Dr. Montero, and three other old-guard professors from San Griselmo, I should feel safe.

This is my world. A world of order, hierarchy, and ecclesiastical respect.

Yet I can’t drag my eyes away from the far corner of the table.

Claudia is sitting there. The black knit dress she is wearing isn't indecent, but that boat neckline—exposing her pale collarbones and the graceful curve of her neck—looks unbearably sensual in the flickering candlelight.

The older professors treat her with a paternalistic condescension that turns my stomach, but she maintains her composure, nodding politely as she sips her red wine.

"The moral drift of today's curricula, Dr. Almeda, is frankly alarming," Dr. Montero pontificates beside me.

He is a seventy-year-old man with bushy eyebrows and a stale sense of self-importance.

"Young people no longer seek the truth; they only seek self-indulgence.

I imagine you see it every day in your seminars. "

"Young people seek answers, Dr. Montero," I reply, keeping my voice level as I take a sip of Rioja to cool my throat. "Our duty is to channel that search, not censor it before it begins."

"That depends entirely on what they are looking for," Dean Valenzuela intervenes with a sly smile, glancing sideways at Claudia.

"Sometimes, young minds get lost down dangerous detours. I was reviewing the working title of your student’s thesis, Ms. de la Vega.

Freedom of Choice versus the Moral Norm.

A rather thorny subject for San Griselmo, wouldn't you agree? "

I feel the tension at the table spike instantly. Claudia sets her glass down and sits up straighter, her cheeks flushed, ready to defend her work.

CLAUDIA

The atmosphere in this room is suffocating. All these gray-haired men look at each other as if they hold the absolute truth of the universe, speaking to me with a smug superiority that makes me feel microscopic. But I am not going to sit here and be quiet. I’ve worked too hard on this draft.

"With all due respect, Dean," I say, forcing my voice to sound firm and mature.

"My focus doesn't question the validity of the moral norm itself.

It explores how the individual manages guilt when their natural impulses clash against it.

I believe that internal conflict is where true ethics reside, not in blind obedience. "

Dr. Montero lets out a dry, barking laugh, dripping with an academic chauvinism he barely tries to hide.

"My dear, theory looks lovely in books," he says, resting his plump hands on the table.

"But the reality of the human soul requires a firm hand.

Without a rigid structure to hold them upright, human beings surrender to the first breeze of weakness.

What you call 'natural impulses,' the Church calls concupiscence.

And concupiscence isn't managed; it is fought.

Isn't that right, Dr. Almeda? You had better guide your student carefully, lest she confuse philosophy with a justification for her own disorders. "

I freeze. The humiliation burns hot in my cheeks. Instinctively, I look to Mercedes for help, for any sign of support, but she keeps her eyes locked on her plate, her jaw set so hard it looks carved from marble.

My heart sinks. Javi was right. Deep down, Mercedes is just one of them—a rigid conservative who would never stick her neck out for a student against the faculty elite.

Suddenly, the sharp clink of silver against porcelain shatters the silence. Mercedes sets her knife down with an icy calm and raises her gray eyes. She doesn't look at the Dean. She stares dead at Dr. Montero.

"You are fundamentally mistaken, Dr. Montero," Mercedes snaps. Her voice is a scalpel, slicing right through the murmur of the room.

MERCEDES

I will not let this pretentious dinosaur humiliate Claudia in front of me.

Not because of her thesis, and not because of her youth, but because I know exactly how many hours, how much passion, and how much sheer brilliance went into every single word she wrote.

Her intellect is impeccable. Seeing that flash of hurt in her dark eyes has awakened a protective fury in me that I cannot repress.

"Excuse me, Dr.?" Montero blinks, taken aback.

"I said you are demonstrating a remarkably superficial understanding of classical thought if you reduce freedom of choice to a mere 'disorder'," I continue. My tone is so sharp, so precise, that Dean Valenzuela’s smile vanishes instantly.

"Miss de la Vega is not justifying weakness.

She is analyzing the tension of the will.

A concept that—had you read Saint Augustine with even a fraction of attention—you would know is the very core of grace and redemption.

Her methodological rigor is excellent, and it is a point of pride for my department that she is the one defending this research here in Salamanca. "

A dead silence falls over the room. Montero turns a mottled red with indignation, but he can't utter a single word to refute me; my academic authority on Augustine is absolute.

I glance at Claudia out of the corner of my eye.

The humiliation on her face has melted into total awe.

She is looking at me as if she’s just watched an angel descend from heaven—eyes shining, lips slightly parted.

The devotion in her expression is so pure it forces me to look away before I completely lose control of my own pulse.

Beneath the table, hidden by the heavy white linen draped to the floor, I try to cross my legs to calm my agitation. As I shift, my right knee bumps directly into hers.

CLAUDIA

The sheer force of her defense knocks the breath out of me. Mercedes defended me. She eviscerated Dr. Montero in front of the Dean just to protect me, to validate my mind. A warmth so intense expands in my chest I can barely process it.

What an incredible woman. What strength. What a staggering mind.

Then, I feel it. A touch beneath the tablecloth.

Mercedes's knee, wrapped in the fine wool of her trousers, brushes against my bare knee beneath my dress. The contact is firm. Direct. I tense up instantly. I know it’s an accident—a clumsy bump in the cramped space under the table.

The logical thing would be for me, or for her, to pull away immediately with a silent apology.

But neither of us moves.

Mercedes doesn't pull back. She maintains the subtle pressure of her knee against mine.

Through the thin knit of my dress, her body heat hits me like an electric shock, paralyzing my legs.

I look at her face across the table. She is calmly discussing tomorrow's panel schedule with the Dean, looking utterly unbothered.

But I can see her pulse hammering at the base of her throat, right above her gold cross, and her knuckles are completely white around the stem of her wine glass.

Why isn't she moving away? Did she not notice? No, that’s impossible.

A strange, heavy tingling creeps up my thigh, a foreign vibration that steals the air from my lungs.

I try to focus on the conversation about the conference, but my entire universe has shrunk to that single point of contact beneath the table. To her heat. To her hidden proximity.

Javi, Madrid, the thesis... it all fades into the shadows of this dining room. The only things that exist are her, me, and this perfect symmetry beginning to fracture beneath the linen.

MERCEDES

I am sinning. I know it with every rational fiber of my being.

I feel the weight of her knee against mine, the soft friction of her knit dress against my trousers, and I do not pull away.

I keep talking to the Dean about tomorrow's speaking order.

My voice sounds fluid, professional, flawless, while inside I am burning alive in my own concupiscence.

Lord, let this cup pass from me. Save me.

But my body refuses to obey my prayers. I revel in the friction, in the forbidden heat of her leg, in the clandestine certainty that she isn't pulling away either. Does she know what she’s doing to me?

No. It’s Claudia. My innocent student. She probably thinks it’s just a lack of legroom, or she’s too intimidated to move and disturb her professor. Her passivity is just respect.

Or, at least, that is what I have to tell myself so I don't lose my mind before dinner ends.

When the Dean finally concludes the evening and we stand up, the chill of the dining room hits me the second I lose contact with her body. Claudia rises slowly. She looks at me with a mix of shyness and a new, feverish intensity I have never seen in her eyes before.

"We start early tomorrow, Claudia," I say, turning my back to her quickly so she can't see the frantic rise and fall of my chest. "Go upstairs and rest."

"Yes, Dr.," she murmurs, her voice huskier than usual. "Thank you for... for earlier. For defending me."

"I merely defended academic truth," I lie, walking briskly toward the elevator without waiting for her, fleeing, once again, from the only presence with the power to ruin me.