Chapter 16
I said loftily, “The tree is a place where secrets are told and kept.”
Imogene and Fiametta exchanged glances.
I caved. “Per favore, tell me.”
Fiametta said, “I’d arrived in Verona and approved our rooms in the inn.”
“Our rooms?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Are we at last going to meet your stepdaughter? What’s her name?”
“Chandrika. And yes, if you wish to meet her, I shall escort her to your festivities.”
“I’d like that very much. Is she lovely?”
“Beautiful and exotic, clever and trustworthy.” Clearly, Fiametta treasured her. “My husband’s daughter from his first marriage, and when he realized his time on earth had expired, he made me promise to care for her.”
“Will you arrange her marriage?” Imogene asked.
“She desires not to leave me and our home on the lake, and I respect her wishes. She also wished to see Verona and weigh it against her exotic home, and so she shall from the safety of our rooms. She’s resting while I pay my first visit to my darling Romeo and Juliet.
” Fiametta adored my parents as I did, but now her face grew stern.
“I was here when the palace bearers carried your papà in on a stretcher while your mamma ran ahead to prepare their room.”
Imogene ceased looking mischievous and simply looked scared. “He could barely speak, Rosie, and his face was a terrible shade of … I don’t know. Green?”
Reaching across, I hugged her. “Mia sorella, Friar Laurence says that with the blessings of the Virgin, he’ll recover, and all of Verona holds him in their hearts.” Honesty compelled me to add, “Except for the ones he’s stabbed.”
Imogene giggled then, as if she was surprised, giggled again, and rubbed at her eyes. “He hasn’t stabbed anyone lately.”
“Sign of old age,” Fiametta said. “He’s mellowed.”
Papà was thirty-six.
“Imogene tells me you’re still working with Friar Laurence.”
Imogene and Fiametta shared a nod.
“Not as often as I would like.” In fact, I realized now it had been weeks since I’d been to Friar Laurence’s apothecary shop, and I missed the fragrance of the herbs, the scraping of the mortar and pestle, the drone of his voice explaining how to grind and mix and apply.
Fiametta stood and paced, long strides across the room. “I believe Friar Laurence is a man of measured thought who seeks knowledge without prejudice.”
“So he does.” With qualifications, of course. The edicts of the Church could not be compromised.
“I’ve been translating the great Arab medical texts and using them to experiment with herbs. I have information to share that he would appreciate.” Fiametta spoke decisively, as if she knew that without a doubt.
“Yes!” I sat forward eagerly. “How marvelous of you. I can’t wait to hear what you’ve learned!”
“You’ll go with me now to his apothecary shop?” Fiametta asked.
My face fell. “I can’t. I wish I could, for it’s been too long since I’ve been there.
” Fiametta and Imogene exchanged A Look of Mutual Knowledge, but I had too much on my mind to wonder at the significance of that.
“I have planning to do for the party here at Casa Montague, and I must talk to Mamma about … important matters.” Of the heart. “How did you get these learned texts?”
“My husband, God rest his wealthy soul, collected classical Greek, Roman, and Arab texts and hired me to translate them.”
“He hired you?” I doubted that.
Fiametta smirked. “Not exactly me. If he’d realized I was a female, he would have never allowed me close, but I—”
“Dressed like a lad.” With our family being the drama addicts that we are, I wasn’t even guessing.
“Really?” Imogene looked intrigued. “I never thought—”
“No!” I pointed my finger at her again. “No! I just pulled Princess Isabella and Katherina’s natiche out of trouble. I don’t have time to—”
Dear reader, you’re right. Big blunder telling Imogene, and indicative of my own battered emotions.
“Isabella and Katherina dressed like lads?” Imogene, who had so recently seemed to have matured into a woman, regressed right before my eyes. “What did they do?”
“I told you. They got in trouble. So much trouble. Horrible trouble. They almost came to ruin, and I almost came to ruin. Please, Imogene, I beg you …” I clasped my hands together. “Not now!”
Fiametta patted Imogene’s hands. “We’ll talk later.”
Imogene folded her hands together and leaned back in her chair. “Yes, Fiametta.”
Fiametta had always seemed like my favorite older sister.
Now she’d supplanted me as Imogene’s favorite older sister?
Somehow, this didn’t seem fair. What did Fiametta have that I didn’t have?
Sure, a certain dashing boldness, enough wealth to allow her to be independent, a keen and subtle mind, but I had all that!
Most of that! In my own venerable opinion!
I could still see the wheels and cogs turning in Imogene’s brain, so I addressed the issue.
“Fiametta caught my imagination when I was your age, too, Imogene, when I heard whispers that she’d run away from her father’s house and visited strange lands and was newly returned with a wealthy foreign husband and a stepdaughter.
Lady Capulet did not approve and intended to have nothing to do with her, but Mamma extended a welcome, and so she’s been a blessed part of our lives since. ”
Imogene’s eyes shone with admiration. “I want to do that. Go have adventures in foreign lands.”
“I wanted to, too, but I could not,” I told her. “Adventure sounds enticing, but I’d have to leave my family and my beautiful Verona, and long before Lysander or Cal, Verona held my heart.”
Fiametta added an act to her play that I had never imagined.
“The reason I ran away was because my father was a cold man who cared nothing for his wife and children. He gambled away his fortune, and me, to one of his friends”—her mouth curved in mockery at the word—“and I wasn’t about to be the leman of that lecherous, toothless old dice roller. ”
I hadn’t known why Fiametta had disappeared; the reasons were horrifying and riveting.
But she had escaped and built her own life, had married wisely and soon become a widow of wealth and independence, and she refused to cave to the pressure to remarry.
She was my role model and had been for as long as I remembered.
Yet the horror on Imogene’s face made me take her hand and say, “Papà will never sell you, darling sister. He’s kind and fond, and he loves you very much.”
“He sold you!” Imogene said.
“What? When?” I was frankly confused.
“To Duke Stephano!”
“Ah. Well.” I squirmed as I tried to explain all the reasons for the betrothal to the man who got stabbed in our garden.
The betrothal before Cal. “For a lot of reasons, Papà didn’t have a choice.
Duke Stephano was not a good man, and he made it impossible for Papà to refuse him.
I would have handled Duke Stephano, you know that, one way or the other. ”
“You haven’t handled the prince!” Imogene was nothing if not blunt.
Fiametta didn’t even try to stifle her laughter at my expense.
What was I supposed to say to that?
I’m working on it?
No, he handled me?
Exasperation would get me nowhere with Imogene, so I used my patient tone. “You and I discussed this immediately after that night when … he … we …”
She crossed her arms over her skinny chest. “That night he despoiled you.”
“He did not despoil me. Not ever. I’m still pure as the snows of Monte Bianco.”
“Is it true, Rosie? I’m sorry!” Fiametta sounded truly sympathetic.
When had I lost control of this conversation? Had I ever had control of this conversation? I continued doggedly, “Luckily, Duke Stephano was stabbed, which dealt with the problem he presented, and as events unfolded—”
“Events like Cal’s father almost getting you killed.” Imogene was indignant on my behalf.
“Cal?” Fiametta looked between me and Imogene. “Prince Escalus? His father?” She sat close to Imogene and looked worriedly into her face. “Lambkin, he’s dead and has been lo these nine years.”
“I know that!” Imogene said. “Rosie could see him.”
Fiametta looked at me.
I inclined my head.
“I’ve got to come into the city more often.” Fiametta cupped her chin in her palm. “Then what? How did Prince Escalus the elder almost get Rosie killed?”
“He wanted me to find his assassin, and … I did. Afterward, Cal nobly freed me from our betrothal, but how could I take that offer when he’d saved my life?
” Imogene opened her mouth to tell me, but I spoke before she could.
“Papà and Mamma taught us, all of us, to behave honorably. What would you have done, Imogene?”
She collapsed back in the chair in a sulky tangle of long, skinny limbs.
“That’s what I thought. I committed to Cal, and now everything is as it should be in regards to him and me.”
“What about in regards to Lysander and you?” Clearly, Fiametta had been filled in by gossip or my too-confiding little sister.
“We’re adjusting. I am too sensible to mourn what might have been.
” I meant it. Most of the time. With Cal I had mad passion, if not sweet romance.
“I’ve pulled up my big-girl camicia, and I’ll live with what is.
Can we get back on the baggage wagon now and talk about Lady Capulet?
I knew she wed too young, and the marriage was miserable, but I never wondered why she was a bride of such immature years.
Does she have a story similar to yours? Is that why our grandmother is a woman without warmth and compassion? ”
“Indeed. Our father sold Orseta to Lord Capulet to secure her place in a wealthy home and to give her into another’s keeping, for as she grew, he begrudged her every bite, every stick of wood, and every piece of clothing.”
“Did she eat so much?” I asked because Lady Capulet was stick thin and had been for as long as I remembered.
Fiametta laughed bitterly. “Of course not. Nor did she dress in the finest of silks and laces. Why Lord Capulet fixed on her, I don’t know, but I have wondered if he heard my father had been approached by a scurrilous man and thought to honorably rescue her.”