CHAPTER ELEVEN
Count Prospero was not amused. Snatching my strongbox from under my arm, he grabbed my wrist in his brutish fingers and hauled me across the ballroom toward the back of the house. No one paid attention to us. Most people crowded toward the great doors; a few ran toward the back, taking the servants’ exit or crawling out the windows. Throughout the crowd I could hear Madame Culatello’s ladies shouting suggestions like, “The guards are demons!” and “We’re sacrifices to Count Prospero’s dark forces!”
I had no trouble believing that the guests credited the shouts, since even now I wondered if Count Prospero would drag me down to the depths of his house and all the way to hell.
As he veered toward his office, I heard the sounds that meant the great doors had at last been opened wide. I could hear Verona’s streets, the shrieking of Count Prospero’s guests, the muffled roars of his guards as guests trampled them, savaged them, tossed them aside like the refuse they were.
Count Prospero flung me inside the bare room. He kicked the solid wood door closed, muting the sounds.
In the silence and the light of the single candle, I watched with terrified fascination as Count Prospero placed the strongbox on the desk and opened it—to reveal the rat that gave it weight feasting on a wealth of shriveled raisins, and worth...nothing.
Bad choice.
I, like a fool, laughed.
Also a bad choice.
Prospero slowly looked up, the candles shone full on his mask.
For the first time I realized his eyes were glacial blue or icy green, hypnotic in their power, and I backed away.
“You imagine this is funny?” The words slipped softly from his unseen lips.
To my ears, it sounded as if a snake had gained the ability to speak. “It is.” I lifted my chin and pretended I didn’t feel the chill that exuded from him. “That’s the third strongbox. As promised, at the bottom there were gold coins. Three, to be exact, and undoubtedly covered with rat shit.”
He swept the box off his desk, scattering the raisins, the gold, and the fat glorious rat who landed with a thump and indignantly waddled after his food. “Who carries the box with the ransom? Or is that a woman’s lie?”
“I don’t lie.” I may spin the truth, but I don’t lie and I don’t feel the need to explain that to this insulting cur. “Berengaria carries the gold. She has kept possession of that strongbox the whole time. You remember Berengaria. She jumped onto the dais next to you, frightened you”—how I relished those words!—“gave you the terms, and when you agreed, offered you her strongbox. If you’d taken it, you’d have won the wager and one hundred gold coins would be yours, and the precious ring.” I didn’t like the way Count Prospero’s head bobbed on his neck, as if rage had seized him by the throat. Yet what could I do but forge ahead? “You lost the wager.” I pointed at his hand. “Give me that ring.”
Now he laughed. “Did you really think that if I failed, I’d give you the ring?”
What I really thought was that I wanted not to be here, confronting Count Prospero by myself. “A wager is a gentlemen’s agreement. You must do as you vowed.”
“You’re a woman.” The way he said it, with such contempt, as if I was one of the lesser creatures created by God.
“I am.”
“Your cohorts are women. You dare to dress like men. You do that because you know a woman is nothing more than a cow made to bear a man’s son and provide it milk. A woman’s skin is the parchment on which a man writes a wager that commands respect. A woman’s wager is nothing but a bleating of a sheep.”
Furious red dots darted in my vision. “You bray like a crossbred ass unable to produce offspring!” I leaped toward him. “I should remember, you’re no gentleman. You are no lord. You’re low-born, a knave, a bully, a charlatan, a buffoon, a maggot that crawls to eat the entrails of the dead. You destroy everything and produce nothing.”
Like a striking asp, he grabbed my wrist in a bruising grip and lifted it high above my head. “You. Did you think I don’t recognize you? She told me you were coming. She demanded payment for your identity. I know what I hold, and you’re worth every coin, Lady Rosaline of the House of Montague.”
She? She told him?
He continued, “I’ve heard the rumors that fly about the city. You’re his. Prince Escalus. He owns you. If he wishes to wed you, he’ll pay dearly for you. Whatever I demand, he’ll give me for your person in the hopes he’ll have you yet unsullied and virginal.”
Zoinks! Way to answer that question. No wonder Madame Culatello had disappeared after helping me in the window. No wonder she had conveniently collapsed after the tussle with Count Prospero.
She had sold me out.
Also. When you’re the daughter of Romeo and Juliet and your father is wicked fast with a blade, and he teaches you on the sly (because your mother doesn’t quite approve) to defend yourself because he wants his daughters never to be afraid or vulnerable...
This guy was a lot taller than me. He was strong, and he had me dangling by my arm. My shoulder joint screamed with pain. I was, according to his benighted belief, helpless.
My father spoke in my head. Pull the dagger from your sleeve and stab Count Prospero in the heart.
Well, sure, but with his long arms, he held me out like disreputable vermin. Additionally, the whole day and evening and night had been one damned thing after another and this betrayal by Madame Culatello, who I trusted, infuriated me beyond good sense.
And...I sigh as I explain what I would rather not. But I have thrust a blade into one beating heart, and reluctantly I discovered what warriors know. To stand face-to-face with someone and stab them required nerve and skill and a willingness to recall, over and over, how death clouds the victim’s eyes and vanquishes the eternal spirit. With that recollection, my own life fades into a nightmare where my guiltless spirit is stained forever, and I seek absolution from my confessor, and while it’s given, I still can never forget.
So yes, if there’s another way, I’ll try it, and now rather than reaching for my blade, I used one long leg and a well-aimed foot to kick Count Prospero’s thigh close to his man parts.
No doubt you’re saying, Rosie, you missed your main objective.
True, but it really didn’t matter. Men are men (embroider that on a pillow) and instinctively, he collapsed to protect his hairy hangers. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I slammed my knee up—which is a lot easier in tights than a skirt—and snapped his broad, manly chin backward. His mask tilted sideways, robbing him of his demonic appearance and making him look more like a jester. His breath whooshed out of his lungs, and the sound of his teeth clanking together gave me such intense satisfaction I dared one final clout to his ear and a grab at the ring.
To no avail. He stumbled sideways, and only by extreme self-discipline did I recover my good sense and do as my sister and Princess Isabella had done—I counted my legs, and when I got to two, I ran.
Opening the door, I dashed down the corridor.
Behind me, I heard Count Prospero’s roar of fury.
I glanced back and to my horror saw the treacherous villain standing beside the door, his glittering scarlet mask in place, watching as I fled. Our eyes met. Terror and certainty leaped inside me.
He knew something I did not.
He did not fear that I would escape.
Turning, he walked back into the office and with an ominous thump, shut the door.
In a panic, I sprinted into the increasingly turbulent remains of the masquerade. An abundance of screams meant all Madame Culatello’s girls had released their rodents into the crowd. The stampede toward the door threatened to crush me and only a firm hand on my arm and a yank behind the curtain saved me from landing on my face. I turned to my rescuer, hoping to see Venera or Gordiana or Berengaria or Quartiglia or Fennina—and instead I saw the tall man in black velvet wearing a leering red satyr mask.