Chapter 6
I entered Nonna Ursula’s sitting room to find Cal headed out. “Does something require your attention?” I asked.
“You.” He took my hand and herded me back into the bedchamber.
“Nurse required comforting. She’s unhappy at being away from the action,” I explained.
“Nurse is an extraordinarily intelligent woman,” he answered.
“Horse sense,” I agreed.
“About more than Lady Capulet,” he said.
I stopped and looked at him. What did he mean by that?
Then I heard the city bells ringing. To Princess Isabella, I said, “If you are going to help Katherina to take the girls to Verona’s Christmas market, you must go now!”
“Yes!” Princess Isabella’s face lit up. “I’ll go at once. Rosie, you’ve arranged such wonderful activities to keep the youngsters busy! Your games are indeed pleasant.”
“I thank you for your kind offer to care for them,” I answered. “You and Katherina have much lessened my worries about the babes.”
Cal watched as his sister fluttered her hand at me and took to her heels, obviously much looking forward to this next adventure.
To Cal, I said, “Your sister is good with children. She has a natural ability to supervise them and make them enjoy her restrictions, and that is a rare gift.”
Old Maria rose from her place by the fire and, with much worried clucking, provided cups of warm broth mixed with gruel to the weary elderly ladies.
Yet to me Nonna Ursula looked more alert, almost energized, and Lady Pulissena smiled like a cat who had enjoyed a particularly tasty and forbidden anchovy stolen from a royal platter.
I supposed after the kerfuffle they’d started with their séance, they were allowed.
Cal threaded his fingers through mine a little too tightly and, with great charm, bowed to Nonna Ursula and Lady Pulissena.
“You’re settled? If you need anything, call at once, and your wishes shall be fulfilled.
Rosie and I”—lifting my hand to his lips, he pressed a kiss on it and looked fervently into my eyes—”will snatch a moment to ourselves before the blades are once more brandished. ”
He might be able to fool the ladies, but not me. This man, who prided himself on his cool intelligence, blazed with fury.
I tried to convince myself he was angry at his grandmother and was taking it out on me, but that was not Cal’s way. He was definitely angry at me … although I wasn’t sure why.
No time to wonder. He headed for the door, pulling me behind him like a minnow caught in a net. I caught the whisper of words behind me. …
“That lucky girl has made a madman of my grandson. God bless her!”
Lady Pulissena cackled. “I remember those days. Skirts up! Cocks out!”
I’m kidding. Not really a whisper. Not a whisper at all.
Both of the women were so unconcernedly deaf, they constantly shouted out their every thought.
Those thoughts made me tug back at Cal’s dominance.
After all, I had not maintained my much-discussed purity to the excessive age of twenty without some reluctance to allow a man, albeit my betrothed, to ravish me.
Being a man, taller, stronger, and used to battle, he paid no attention to my struggles but pulled me into Nonna Ursula’s sitting room and, with a swift glance around, dragged me, heels braced, behind the tall, heavy wooden cabinet where she stored her …
I don’t know what she stored, but the point is, it hid us from the door that entered off the corridor and from the door to Nonna’s bedroom. At a glance, no one would see us, and that, my dear, is exactly what Prince Escalus intended.
He pushed me into the corner between the cabinet and the wall. He took my face between both his broad hands. I thought he would speak, chide me for whatever it was I’d done to anger him.
But no. He kissed me.
Let me assure you he had kissed me before. Even with my limited experience, I judge that he’s good at it. When he put his mouth on mine, tilted his head, used his lips—my dears, such soft, insistent, carefully applied lips—and his tongue like an enticement to sin, I wanted to sin.
Are all men so skillful?
I don’t know. I’ve kissed only Cal. Mostly by accident! That first time, I thought I was kissing Lysander, and do not give me trouble for not being able to tell the difference, because it was dark and it was supposed to be Lysander and even my lips were virginal and …
Oh, shut up.
Anyway, I can’t imagine that most men display the skill Cal has mastered, else the wives in Verona would be more bedazzled and less dissatisfied.
As it is, I sank beneath the weight of his compelling mouth into a veritable mythical sea, where currents carried me into a garden of brilliant-colored fronds, which waved and caressed my tettes, my waist, and …
I truly suck at poetic musings, and anyway, coherence had fled and left nothing in my mind but the throb of red blood behind my tightly closed eyes.
Abruptly, I surfaced. Somehow, and don’t ask me how, Cal had managed to get an arm around me and to use the other hand to pull my skirts up to my waist.
Let us be clear. This was no small feat.
My velvet skirt was heavy, my petticoats were many, and they were the only protection a woman had against a marauding man, for excepting during her moon time, no respectable woman wore anything resembling a man’s garment on her legs, thighs, and bottom.
Beneath the skirt and petticoats, I was bare.
His temerity shocked me. Shocked me, I tell you!
I knew he wanted me—he’d dishonorably done a great deal to gain access to my body for the purpose of honorable matrimony.
Furthermore, I knew he was perturbed about something.
He’d dragged me away from Nonna and Lady Pulissena for reasons they had proclaimed to be physical, even passionate. How was it Lady Pulissena said it?
Skirts up. Cocks out.
Yet for all that, how had he unbalanced me so that I hadn’t noted his ignoble advances?
I tried to yank myself away.
He trapped me in the corner and crowded me more firmly.
“No. Cal.” I struggled to push my skirt down.
His arm tightened around me. He looked into my face, and his dark eyes contained a deep glow that threatened and beckoned. “Do you remember how I kissed you?”
“Just now? Yes, of course. You—”
He didn’t wait; apparently, it was a rhetorical question. “I used my lips to coax you to open your lips, and then I slid my tongue inside to taste you.” His hand moved from its clutch on my skirt to stir the hair over my fica.
The last person to touch me there was … well, me. Somehow my own touch didn’t make my breath catch with excitement, probably because I knew what I would do next. With Cal, I hadn’t a clue.
“When I take you—”
“On our wedding night, when we make love.” I was quite firm about the timing and the choice of words, and I didn’t look away from his face, because I felt it important to establish early my position as his wifely equal.
As if he was going to acknowledge such a thing. “When I take you, I’ll kiss you here”—another brush against the hair below—“and use my lips as I just did against your mouth …”
Suddenly, I couldn’t look away. By some force of heated will, he had trapped my gaze and compelled me to see him, listen to his words, and react with … with more … attention. …
Dear God. He was still talking, telling me what he intended to do.
“I’ll use my tongue on you, suck on you until you roll your hips and beg me with language spoken in broken syllables, with motions you learn as I teach you to abandon innocence and seek carnal pleasure.
You’ll whimper. You’ll beg. You’ll scream.
And still I’ll taste you. I’ve waited a long time to feast on you, cara mia, and feast I will, until you’re damp and swollen, tugging at me.
I’ll breathe your scent, feel as your heat rises, choose the moment, and—” He slid his thumb between and against and flicked at me.
I stopped breathing. I flung my head back.
I was still here, now, pressed against the cabinet, the passionate weight of this man holding me in place, yet …
I no longer existed in this world. Climax jolted me until I became one with the Maniae, goddesses of madness, in a frenzy of need, which Cal both satisfied and stoked.
I made the noises he had predicted. Anyone could hear me.
He smiled. He watched. He took his own satisfaction from my every moan and cry. And when I was suspended, ready to drink again from the fevered cup …
He withdrew his hand, let my skirts descend, and observed as I slid down, knees weakened, my spine pressed against the cabinet, until my bottom rested on the floor.
When I took my first full breath, he squatted before me, not touching, but looming, as he was wont to do. His hand cupped my chin, lifted it until I had to look at him again. Rage had given way to stern determination. “No regrets, Rosie. I chose you. You chose me. We move forward together.”
Oh. Ohhh. He’d seen Lysander’s glancing touch, my startled turn of the head, the brief meeting of the eyes. And recalling all the things I’d said to Nurse, I realized he might have overheard my protestations. “Cal, nothing—”
“Happened or is going to happen. I know. When I considered whether you would be an adequate wife for the prince of Verona, one of the virtues I listed was that once you gave your loyalty, you would never betray it or me. Nevertheless, I find myself irked by the mere idea that in your heart, you long for another.”
“Cal, you a moment ago proved how much my heart’s longing colors my reality.
When you speak, I listen with all devotion.
When you gaze, I view through your eyes.
I put all of myself at your disposal, to be your wife and helpmate.
I’m not untrue in thought or deed.” I listened to my declaration, and my mouth quivered into a smile.
“I’m your faithful bitch dog, waiting slavishly for your next command. ”
That was too much for him. He burst into laughter and pressed his hand, not on his aching ribs, but on his codpiece, supporting himself as if …
I understood the mechanics of physical love—I am, after all, the daughter of Romeo and Juliet, and in a household built around an atrium, as Casa Montague was, sound travels.
I felt swollen, as Cal must feel, and laughter perhaps created a discomfort that he must cup to dispel.
Without a thought but curiosity, I reached out and pressed my hand over his.
His laughter stopped mid-breath.
The man was a Leonardi. Their family crest was a lion. Now I saw the great, savage cat in his face, and I thought I would be consumed.
Gentle reader, let me assure you I was willing.
We leaned toward each other—
And someone slammed his fat ham hand on the front of the cabinet.
The hollow space sounded like a drum. The wood shook.
Cal and I stared at each other in shock.
Cal put his knees to the floor, crept to the corner, and looked around and up. “Friar Laurence,” he said. “What a surprise.”