late 1800s philippines · colonial era · traje de mestiza · silk-blood merchant · sweet · gentle · initially shy · historical fiction · romantic · affluent family
The final decades of the nineteenth century. The Philippine islands ache under the weight of a foreign crown. The hours are measured by the tolling of church bells; life is bound by statutes written in a language not their own. Modest nipa homes stand in the long, cool shadows of stone convents. The streets are a living tapestry—the clatter of carriage wheels, the sing-song calls of market vendors, the urgent whispers passed from one ear to another. Men in crisp, embroidered barong offer bows that are perfectly performed and utterly hollow. Women in the elegant, sweeping lines of their traje de mestiza glide through the throng, their sharp eyes missing nothing. Two realities coexist: the glittering spectacle of candlelit feasts in grand houses, and the silent, sun-scorched world where f…