Chapter 14
Before I left, I was determined to manage one situation that desperately needed to be handled.
Projecting my voice so all three old women could hear me, I said, “While Old Maria took care of Princess Ursula excellently well, so much so she was famed throughout the palace and even into Verona’s streets, for her to also care for Lady Pulissena is too much for a single maid. ”
I’d tried to couch the suggestion in a way that wouldn’t offend Old Maria, but she snapped, “I can care for two vecchie signore.”
“Indeed, but even the least of the servants at Casa Montague are allowed an afternoon to visit friends, shop at Verona’s Christmas market, and visit the graves of their loved ones.”
Old Maria grunted an agreement.
“In all the time I’ve known you, Maria, you’ve never left Princess Ursula’s side except to make her a poultice or find a wrap to spread over her knees.
Would you have it said that the prince is stingy with his budget?
Would you have the whispers start that he cares little for his grandmother and her friend and the loyal maid who cares for them? ”
Cal faded into the background, as he should, for this household matter was a womanly concern, and I was the woman who had already taken charge of the kitchen, to the delight of all, and I meant to continue as I’d started.
After all, one of the reasons Cal had decided I would do as a wife was because of my competent household management.
Dear reader, doesn’t that make your heart beat fast at the unbridled romance?
“My own maid, curse her, was a slattern from Venice who refused to leave the city and join me in my return to Verona. She believed the Leonardis would refuse me sanctuary.” Clearly, Lady Pulissena was ashamed by her lack of attendant.
“A mistake on her part,” I said, for Prince Escalus had received Lady Pulissena very well indeed, ignoring her past as one of the key players who’d led the rebellion to overthrow the Leonardis and keeping her under his roof as a companion to Nonna Ursula.
Nonna said, “What Lady Rosaline says is true, Maria. You serve me night and day without care to yourself. You haven’t put flowers on your daughter’s grave in far too long.”
Tears sprang to Old Maria’s eyes. That she had any tears in her bony body amazed me, and certainly I had no idea she’d had a daughter.
I leaped to take advantage of this opening.
“I have a solution. My own ward, Evella, who I retained after the St. Lucy’s Day fire at the orphanage, is but ten years old, yet she learns quickly.
Let her apprentice under Old Maria and learn what she must know to take care of noble ladies, and take on those tasks that require a strong body and swift feet. ”
Nonna Ursula closed her eyes as if in thankfulness, and Lady Pulissena clapped her hands in approval.
I waited upon Old Maria’s decision, for if she was inclined to be stubborn, I knew from her previous actions she’d sabotage the child, and while Evella showed a remarkable capacity and maturity, I wouldn’t knowingly subject her to harm.
Old Maria chewed as if she held something in her mouth—reluctance, perhaps—then nodded. “Bring her. I’ll see if she’s as clever and strong as you say, and if she can be trained.”
“You are ever wise.” I knew how to flatter as well as anyone in my family, and once I explained the matter to Evella, she’d handle Old Maria with even greater skill, for she was all the things I’d said.
I rose and kissed Nonna Ursula’s cheek and was surprised and flattered when Lady Pulissena offered her cheek, as well.
“I return home now, but from there I’ll continue the preparations for the wedding.
” Cal offered his arm, and I placed my fingertips on it.
Probably Friar Laurence wouldn’t frown on that little bit of contact …
unless he realized that Cal’s arm flexed, as if my touch burned him.
“Rosie, you shoulder the burden of responsibility easily,” Lady Pulissena observed.
“I planned my sisters’ weddings. This is undeniably larger and more complex, since many of the activities occur in the palace and I’m based in Casa Montague, but other than that, this is much the same.”
“The same?” Lady Pulissena lifted one saggy eyebrow.
“The poisonings did add an element of difficulty,” I acknowledged.
“I suspect Lady Pulissena is referring to the fact you’re the bride,” Cal said gently.
I looked at him in surprise. “I don’t know why that would …”
The man was performing his princely loom-over-me maneuver, crowding me without moving, and for no reason, I had trouble catching my breath.
In his eyes, always so dark and enigmatic, I saw the future he had brought upon us, with passion overflowing, lifting us, carrying us to somewhere warm and scented, where we would …
I put my free hand over my ribs, as if to help my lungs do a job they had done successfully all my life.
“With the installation of little Evella to help, Pulissena, Maria, and I can supervise some of the wedding plans, and that will allow Rosie to feel less like a wife and more like the bride.” Nonna Ursula smiled at me.
Lady Pulissena smiled at me.
Even Old Maria smiled at me, a wicked, smirking half-toothed grin.
“I’m fine. I can handle”—Cal took my arm and led me toward the door, through the outer chamber—“everything …” I stood in the grand gallery, speaking to no one except Cal.
Who had been handled? Had Cal again handled me?
Cal asked, “What is your real goal in bringing Evella in as an apprentice to Old Maria?”
“Oh. Um.” I collected my thoughts. “As I said, to help Old Maria with the ladies. Evella can do that.”
“She can do that standing on one hand.” Cal had known Evella, the half-Romani child, even before I had acquired her as a child of potential. “Why are you bringing her into the palace?”
I confided, “She can act as my eyes and ears when I’m not here. Our poisoner, whoever he or she is, will be unlikely to take note of a child.”
He laughed, husky and low. “You eternally enchant me with the vivid soul that lights you from within and your intelligent anticipation of future events. Do not, I beg you, ever challenge Nonna Ursula as a seer. No one will dare burn her, but for what you deem is right, you would storm the barricades.” Gently, he placed his palm over my belly. “And have.”
I knew to what he referred.
No, not a pregnancy. I really am a virgin, and while I have seen a ghost, no angel of the Lord has appeared to me.
In fact, by placing his hand on my belly, Cal expressed quite the opposite.
A worry, for not long ago a rabble of prayerful zealots had marched into Verona.
Hidden among them were anarchists, who fomented rebellion and, in a bloody uprising, sought to destroy Verona and all government, art, and civilization.
I had been caught by the mob. The rebel leader himself had attacked me and, when I placed a knife blade in his thigh, had kicked me so hard in the gut that I …
Well, I was badly injured, I bled when I should not, and all the easy rhythms that marked a woman’s courses changed for me.
A visiting Romani had read my palm, and she had foretold that children would come, but not swiftly and not easily.
Cal, whose coin had bought her services, had seemed unconcerned.
I had no belief in fortune telling, yet sometimes in the depths of a long winter’s night, for reasons relating not at all to the foretelling and having everything to do with that mob and that kick, I worried and wondered if my body would ever be the same.
I pressed my hand on top of his. “Although changes have occurred, I have no pain, and I feel well.” Gentle reader, you must understand I wasn’t comfortable speaking of my reproductive organs with any man, much less one whom I wanted to think of me as a lady of wit, beauty, grace, all those feminine virtues, which were so different from the reality of …
you know. The monthly visits that commenced at adolescence and, when they finished, proved to be the only compensation for age.
“As to the other matter, my prince, I’m not foolish. ”
A shrieking filled the space of the grand gallery as a herd of Montague and Capulet cousins, all boys four to fourteen, stampeded from one end of the palace to another in the pursuit of who knew what. Food, games, battle, wild beasties, or the ghost of the old prince or lost treasure?
Cal pressed me into a cubicle and protected me from any stray young hoodlums.
Which worked well until one lad skidded to a stop. “Rosie!” Cesario hopped onto a chair to shout at me. “I told them Old Cook would give them yesterday’s bread and all of last year’s raisins. I hope she will, because the little kids are starving!” After jumping down, he ran after the mob.
“The little kids are starving?” Cal wore that wide-eyed, horrified expression that a large family engendered in a solitary man. “They’re eating me out of house and home!”
I had my own point to make. “What does he mean, little kids? Cesario is no man!”
The shrieking faded in the distance … but not for long. …
“What were we …?” I remembered. Oh. Right.
We had been speaking of my sensibility. “Cal, my ambitions were always to remain in the home I love, to organize the household and care for the children that my siblings will inevitably produce. Your suit enlarged my plans, yet I recognize that in my role as your wife, I’ll remain a simple woman performing a woman’s duties. I seek no more than that.”
Cal viewed me with that still, thoughtful princely demeanor that he wore so well. “Rosaline …”
He’d called me Rosaline, which I suspected meant he was going to say something profound.
“I do not know the labyrinth that is your mind, although I look forward to a future where we understand each other without words, as do all great lovers.” He viewed me as if he sought to express his thoughts with suitable diplomacy.
“Yet I do know that when pressed to describe you, simple is the last word I would use.” I wanted to reply with some suitable “simple womanly” reassurance, but he lifted one finger to halt my response.
“I do wish and, if I must, I do command you not to speak to me the banal phrases women use to reassure a man. Whether or not I like or approve, I want your thoughts, your dreams, your being to be shared in truth. Let there be no pretense between us.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond. He had discerned that I sought to soothe and reassure him with stock phrases, and he wanted no part of that. Doubtfully, I asked, “Do you think that will work? That’s not what I’ve been taught that men want in a wife.”
“What I want in a wife is a woman who is unique, one whom I can trust to walk beside me, relieve my burdens and share her burdens with me, who tells me her opinion even when she knows I won’t like it.”
Now I was more than doubtful. From my earliest memories, I had viewed my parents’ acclaimed marriage. It didn’t function that way, and I was frankly skeptical. “I’ve never heard of that working since the moment God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden.”
“Let me put it another way.” Which I recognized as code for, You’re not going to like this. “Do you want me to tell you only what you want to hear?”
“No!” Kneejerk reaction. As he’d planned. “I want you to feel as if you can confide in me.”
“Then we’ll try it my way.”