What Dreams May Come (Daughter of Montague #2)

CHAPTER ONE

In Fair Verona Where We Lay Our Scene

Midnight at Casa Montague

Natural reasons why you can’t fall asleep

Neighbors having a party (and why wasn’t I invited?).

Aging dog ate garlic cabbage soup.

Nurse snores (like a saw cutting marble).

Parents dialoguing about their love and desire in their bedchamber down the hall and around the corner with their door shut, but our house is built around an open courtyard and sound travels (my parents are Romeo and Juliet, so you’d think I’d be used to it).

All of the above.

As opposed to stupid reasons why you can’t fall asleep

After twenty years of a happy single life that, as the oldest daughter, involved managing the Montague household and my six younger siblings, being caught in a moment of passion with (I believed) my One True Love only to discover, when the torches flare, that I’m kissing the wrong man and he, who set up this ambush, swiftly moves to claim me in honorable and holy matrimony. Me! Who since I was thirteen years old has outsmarted every attempt to marry me off!

Except...well, the last time my betrothed was stabbed through the heart. I had nothing to do with that. Really. Pay no attention to the rumors put about by the malicious, sniggering neighbors who are even now no doubt having that party to celebrate my virtuous downfall at the hands of the canaglia who so skillfully trapped me.

No wonder they didn’t invite me to their abhorrent party!

What’s the problem, Rosie? you ask. Is your betrothed unsuitable? Ugly? Poor? Old, fat, lecherous, of low character? Not at all. He’s wealthy, well-formed, a little scarred and with a limp, but from a good family, a man of power who will protect me and our children in this fair and contentious city of Verona.

First world problems, you say.

Yes, thank you for your kind analysis. I know that. Yet it’s the sting of humiliation that has me tossing and turning, seeking sleep yet unable to relax as time and again, I flinch from the realizations that not only did I fail to realize my error, but then I compounded that error by responding passionately to the wrong man, then I compounded that error by getting caught because—oh, this is the worst—I had arranged to get caught in the arms of my One True Love so we would be forced to wed.

My fault! I did it! Everything should have worked! And it did, except for that small detail about who my groom should be.

Every time I drift off, I startle awake, seeing again the lords’ smirking amusement, Nurse’s horror, Papà’s astonishment at my (to him) successful conspiracy to make a fabulous match.

As if.

If I’d been able to sleep that night, things would have been much different...

Luckily, I was awake and staring with dry, hot, wide eyes at the night candle’s flame when I heard the furious whisperings of two familiar young female voices on the balcony next to mine.

With a glance at Nurse, who was snoring heavily on her cot and more than partially responsible for my recent not-death and who would move swiftly to make sure nothing untoward happened to me ever again, I slipped out of bed and moved to fix whatever had upset my sister, Katherina, and her best friend and our princess, Isabella of the House of Leonardi. Because that’s who I am: Lady Rosaline Montague, fixer of all things or, as a less than pleasant acquaintance called me, “Female Most Likely to Win the Verona City-State Know-It-All Contest.”

The problem, as I see it, is that a woman of intelligence is unappreciated and indeed frowned upon, and I’m not good at dissembling. I scowled as I tightened the knot on my robe. If I know the right thing to do, shouldn’t I say so?

Yes, yes, you’re right. You’re always right. It’s annoying how you’re always right! I should say so in such a mild and tactful way as to allow others to believe it’s their idea. Sometimes... Well, most of the time, I lose patience and say what I think. When I don’t say what I think, my facial expression seems to speak for itself. What can I say? I leave the acting to the professionals, i.e. the rest of my highly overwrought and dramatic family.

It was with that somewhat impatient thought that I walked barefoot and quietly onto my balcony. I told myself I did not wish to wake Nurse but also, I wanted the opportunity to observe and perhaps overhear Katherina and Isabella. Such stealth could considerably shorten the time it took for me to pry the source of their distress from them.

Fie! Fie! As soon as I laid eyes on them, I knew all.

Or not all, but I knew they’d been making mischief and somehow had been caught, for they stood with their heads together, dressed like well-born youths in tights, thigh-length tunics, and short capes. Like youths. Boys. Males.

Gentle reader, you will not be surprised to hear I gasped in thunderous dismay.

They turned as one and stared at me in a mirrored horror, their beautiful faces dark with strain.

Princess Isabella’s chin wobbled as if she wanted to bawl like a calf, and while Katherina’s long tresses were tucked beneath a brocade cap, Isabella’s hair was in a braid down her back and her cap was nowhere to be seen.

“What have you done?” I whispered.

As I said, not always tactful, for the already-fraught Katherina caught fire, leaped to the railing and whispered back, “Nothing you haven’t already done, Sister!” She projected so well, Nurse’s snoring abruptly stopped.

We froze.

Katherina and Isabella didn’t want to be caught in boys’ clothes. I didn’t want them to be caught in boys’ clothes because, as Katherina said, I had indeed done exactly that myself. What I’d failed to realize was that anyone in the family had discovered my folly, much less my seven-years-younger-than-me sister.

We waited, barely breathing, as Nurse muttered and groaned, and at last resumed her bed-frame-rattling snore.

We all breathed sighs of relief, and Isabella poked Katherina hard with her elbow. “Chiudi la bocca. Rosie might be able to help us!”

Nurse’s snoring paused again.

Again we froze. This time, when it resumed, I gestured to them to back up, grasped the plank that rested against the wall, placed it between our railings and, hitching up my nightgown and robe, climbed up and walked over.

“Fantastica! ” Isabella breathed as she backed into the empty bedroom behind her. Empty because Mamma had decided when Princess Isabella stayed the night, these two highly responsible adolescent girls should have privacy, so she allowed them to stay in a bedchamber reserved for guests. Or should I say—formerly highly responsible adolescent girls?

Katherina and I followed her into the room lit by a single candle and shut the doors behind us.

“I can do that, too,” Katherina bragged, and then in a disgruntled tone, “but Rosie keeps the board on her side.”

“If I didn’t keep it close, Imogene would do flips across it and Mamma would kill us all.” I turned on my little sister. “As opposed to Mamma killing only you, Katherina, who accompanied the princess of Verona on an adventure into the night streets!”

“I didn’t accompany her.” Katherina gritted her teeth, then admitted, “I led her. It was my idea.”