CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The prince’s bodyguards, Dion, Marcellus and Holofernes, waited in the street, twirling their scarlet satyr masks while they waited for their master to finish disciplining his wayward betrothed. I wanted to say something scathing about terrorists who made it their business to frighten a woman, but the sight of the prince’s sedan chair made my aching legs wobble.
Blessed Mary, I didn’t have to walk.
Escalus bundled me in, shut the curtains around me. The chair rose and moved rather rockily through the silent city. What could I expect? These men weren’t experienced bearers and mayhap resented this added duty. Nevertheless, I stretched out my feet and closed my eyes, and a mere second later, Prince Escalus touched my shoulder. “Wake, Rosaline, you’re home.”
I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. He held my arm as I slid out of the chair and saw before me the great ivy-covered wall that protected Casa Montague’s garden and the Montagues themselves.
The prince moved to the narrow door, almost hidden in vining leaves, and using the key Papà had given him, opened it and ushered me inside.
I was going to make it. I was going to get away without explaining myself. “Good night, sweet prince.” I thought to soften him up with an endearment, grease the waterwheel, escape swiftly.
His midnight voice brought me to a halt. “How did Princess Isabella come to lose the ring?”
The code of the Big Sister: I would not tattle. “How do you think she lost it?”
The latch clicked firmly behind him. “That’s not an answer, Rosie, and your evasion tells me more than a straight reply.”
Once again it was him and me alone in a garden. I turned my back and walked briskly up the wandering path, through the hedges toward the house. Let it not be said I hadn’t learned my lesson. “Since you know Princess Isabella lost the ring, you must have some theory as to the circumstances.”
He kept pace with me, one step behind on the graveled walk. “I suppose she was doing something she should not.” He sounded jaded, like a man who had, after the deaths of their parents, raised his much younger sister and now realized his best efforts might be flawed.
I contemplated a reply that would not necessarily reassure but tell enough to satisfy him. “She was doing something daring, something she never would have before she met...me.” Best not to mention Katherina.
“You believe I’d be happier to remain in ignorance.”
“We are often happier in our ignorance than our knowledge.” Another evasive reply couched in terms the playwright Guglielmo would employ, but I hastened to add, “You did ask that we Montagues help Princess Isabella lead a less isolated, less regal, and more normal existence. I swear to you, no harm has been done. She’s safe and asleep right now”—she had better be —“in Casa Montague. I beg that you leave the matter be. No one was hurt. She is chastened and has vowed she’ll never do such a thing again. I trust her word. Don’t you?”
“Indeed, but I’m not happy that my newly betrothed, who I’ve waited so long to possess and who has already faced such terrible peril, should find herself going to the rescue.”
“It’s not what I would have chosen, but—”
“You lie!” His words lashed me with his certainty.
“My prince?”
He paced toward me. “Tonight...” He glanced toward the east, where the sun’s approach tinted the dark dreamtime sky. “Last evening, you were trapped, hoist on your own petard, manipulated in the way you’d blithely imagine only you can contrive.” He seemed to expect an answer.
“Aye.” A surly agreement to a man who’d engineered my crushing defeat.
“I know not whether fortune brought this boyish adventure to you or whether you—”
I went from surly to snappish. “Fortune. Good fortune, my prince. We’re both glad I was in the right place at the right time.”
He stepped in front of me. We stood in one of the many bowers created by trees and climbing roses and artfully placed seating. He could see my face, I knew, for I could see his and his always expertly concealed and possibly nonexistent emotions. “Excellent. I’d hate to think I’d misjudged your wisdom.”
“Or anything else about me, I trow.” For the man had told me, as if this was a sensible way to choose a wife, about the lists he’d used to catalogue my good and bad qualities. Was I more irked about the total lack of romance, which as a daughter of Romeo and Juliet I was bred to understand, or his accurate reading of my character traits? I didn’t know, nor right now did I care to face the truth...whatever it was. “Now, if you don’t mind, I should go in.”
He let me step by him. “Shall I tell you what you dare not confess even to yourself? Shall I tell you your darkest fear?”
I was exhausted. For what was left of this night, I wished for no more confrontation. I wanted my bed and enough time to sleep away the memory of this adventure. I took three steps, then irresistible curiosity brought me to a halt. I faced him. “What?” What? Huh? My darkest fear? What man ever thought of such a thing? “What do you know about my darkest fear?”
“More than you, I vow.”
“What is that?”
Again the midnight voice and a steady gaze. “What do you consider your darkest fear?”
“I’ve never...” I remembered last night. “Being laughed at. Isn’t that everybody’s darkest fear?”
“No.” He blatantly told me I was wrong about myself. “You fear a man who is your equal.”
This guy was peculiar. Which I had suspected, but he seemed so intent, so sure of himself. Sort of scary. “I don’t! Why would I fear that? According to current wisdom, all men are my superior.” As I spoke the words, irony coated my tongue.
“Current wisdom.” He snapped his fingers in scorn. “You know what you are. You know what gifts you contain within your clever mind and beating heart.” Stepping close, he placed his palm on my chest between my breasts, and it seemed as if he fed a bolt of lightning into my body. “You fear boredom, marriage to a master who is not your equal in intelligence, wit, and spirit. A lord who traps you in a golden cage, believes you’re like other women, submissive, content to tend the house and please the man above all other things.”
I wanted to pull back, to demand he be like other men and never look below the surface. But that hand on my chest held me like a magnet, and when he flexed his fingers, I could scarcely breathe.
He whispered, “That’s not the life we’ll lead. We’ll have a daily truce, a nightly battle, until two bodies, minds, hearts become one and all the angels smile, for we are married and mated, loved and loving.”
I whispered in return, “You say things in the dark you would never say in the light.”
“Yes.” Prince Escalus seemed to find nothing to marvel at there. He dropped his hand, and in a normal tone, he said, “We’ll not talk of this again. Prospero is banished, and the only proof this night ever happened is an odd legend of Verona’s wild masquerade.”
“I wear your ring.”
Most decidedly he said, “You’ll not remove the ring.”
“The ring is proof. People will see.” I did not add, clearly. I merely thought it loudly.
“We borrow Cupid’s wings and soar with them over the common bound, and people will see the diamond flashing above them and be dazzled.” Here he went with the poetry again. “The actual sequence of events will never occupy their minds.”
“Have you met my family?” My noisy, nosy, tactless family? “My prince, I cannot appear in the morning wearing a glorious betrothal ring when last night I didn’t have it. Every person in my family would take note, and under my mother’s interrogation, the secrecy of this night will be revealed.”
He wanted to object, so I hurriedly added, “My mother, Lady Juliet, is a gracious lady who reveres you as the prince of Verona. That said, with our betrothal you’ve become family, and the defenses that protected you from any deserved reprimand have tumbled. I don’t wish to explain to either of my parents what more happened between us tonight.” I pinned him with a stern gaze. “Do you?” Say no, please say no.
“I have become family,” he said in a wondering tone.
Not what I expected him to dwell on, but... “Aye.”
“Your mother would...scold me?”
“Most assuredly, and my father would rudely handle your royal person.”
Escalus seemed almost charmed. Yes, because on his “Reasons to wed Lady Rosaline” list, he had included his liking for my family. Although on the “Reasons not to wed Lady Rosaline” list, he had included his dislike of our collective shouting. Which made no sense in light of my warning about Mamma’s scolding.
I never claimed to understand men as a whole. It’s a whole different gender.
I explained, “Tonight I’ll wear the ring so I may show our sisters it’s been retrieved, and to let them know...well.” I didn’t need Escalus to know about the inappropriate sonnet that had originally sent the girls out into the night, and of the correction that needed to be made. “Afterward, I’ll send it to you via trusted messenger.”
“You’ll wear it until morning. That is my wish. Then I’ll send my bodyguards to Casa Montague and you’ll slip the ring to them.” He corrected me decisively. “I’ll have it sized to fit your finger more comfortably.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t realize he’d noticed my discomfort.
“You’ll wear my ring until morning. Do you so vow?”
He had a bee in his beret about this one. “I do.” That was a little too close to a wedding vow for comfort, and I saw by the faint twitch of his lip he appreciated the significance.
“Later, in an appropriate and public ceremony, I’ll again place my ring on your hand for all to view.”
I ran my finger over the largest stone. “I promise, when it’s time, I’ll wear this ring as a sign of your possession.”
He rumbled a little, maybe a laugh? “You still don’t understand. I haven’t possessed you yet, Rosie.” His hand slid around my waist, he pulled me into his body and leaned over me, until I felt his breath on my lips. “When I do, I’ll mark you with more than diamonds. I’ll mark you with pleasure and with passion. I will have you, Rosie, and everything in you. I vow that to you and to the heavens.”
Prince Escalus did intense very well, and the way he put the words together sounded less like a promise and more like a threat. I waited for an agonized moment of anticipation for his kiss.
He released, stepped back, and in a return to his normal tone of voice, he said, “Now go give my sister and your sister a good fright, then let them know they’ve been saved by your cleverness, and any further indiscretions on their part will be met with justice swift and terrible.”
So anticlimactic. So annoying. I touched my lips with the tip of my tongue. I swear they felt swollen...and I swear I heard his breath catch. “Yes, my prince.”
If he noticed my snippy tone, he gave no indication.
With one finger, he touched my cheek. “For you, sleep will knit the existence you believe unraveled, and when you wake tomorrow all will be as it was, and this like a dream, yet a vision of a heady future.” With that, he was gone, disappearing into the depths of the garden like some dark and prophetic guardian angel.