Chapter 23
In the morning, at the palace, even before I’d shed my outer garments, I found Marcellus waiting for me, arms crossed over his chest. “Prince Escalus requires your presence.”
I had worked out that Cal might be dismayed that I’d confided our activities to Mamma, and once I’d realized it might embarrass him to have Mamma know of the cravings he had so carefully stoked in me, I did comprehend. I truly did.
Yet we had to get beyond that before I could do as I wished, so I nodded and hurried toward Cal’s office, Marcellus guarding my back as if I was a prisoner who would attempt to escape.
After I entered, he shut the door behind me with a resounding thud, leaving Cal and me alone together. Really, that was best.
Cal rose from his chair in a measured movement intended to intimidate and, without pause, picked up the conversation where we’d ended it. “You discussed our … interludes … with your mother?”
In a soothing tone I said, “My prince, husband of my heart, a girl-child has a special relationship with her mother.”
“You discussed what happened between us with your mother?” He was definitely stuck on that and growing more incensed.
“I didn’t discuss it. I briefly outlined what occurred before Friar Laurence caught us. I skipped the good parts.”
“Sweet Mary and Joseph, your father is going to slice me from gullet to—” Cal gestured from his throat to his coglioni.
“No, no. Part of the mother-daughter special relationship includes a promise of silence as holy as the confession box. She most certainly will not tell Papà.” I removed my hat and gloves and tossed my cloak over a chair.
“We’re already struggling to remind him that as host to our families, he has to be not the hothead but, until the wedding is over, the peace enforcer.
If he kills the groom, that will send us back to the bad old days before Romeo and Juliet, and we’ll be hip deep in thumb biting and duels.
” I walked toward him, hoping to shake him out of his alarm with a seductive smile and the sway of my hips. “Now. Listen!”
Apparently, I was losing my touch, for Cal seemed to be still trapped in a web of horror. “My mother-in-law knows I touched her daughter in … touched her with my … and you put your hands on my …”
“Really. I swear I didn’t give her any details of what led to Friar Laurence making you vow to keep your talented fingers to yourself.
” Whoops. I shouldn’t have said it like that.
“I mean, all the times I’ve been impatient with my parents for keeping us all awake half the night—” I snapped my mouth shut and stared at Cal, who looked as if he suffered from a gut ache.
To this quiet, grave, studiously self-contained man who found the Montagues’ everyday loud, tumultuous, emotional displays alien and unusual, what we could hear from the master bedchamber as an everyday occurrence would seem an uncontrollable spectacle better kept private.
I did actually agree, most fervently, especially in the early hours of the morning, when I was trying to sleep.
I also ruefully realized that some family matters needed to be introduced gradually to Cal for the comfort of all, and that me even mentioning what had happened between the two of us would seem like a betrayal.
I took a breath, put my hand on his, and looked into his eyes.
“I vow to you, I will never in any way again mention any of our physical moments to Mamma … unless it involves something that I …” I waved my other hand wildly.
“Cal, sometimes I’m simply going to need advice! ”
“You can ask me.” He said it like he meant it.
Which was sweet, but … “No. I can’t. You have the wrong equipment.” I knew no other way to explain.
He considered the view of my equipment, lingering on the tettes he so admired. “Very well. I believe I understand. But of all the world, do you have to ask Lady Juliet?” He was obviously inwardly writhing at the thought.
“She’s my mother. Who else would you have me ask?
She gave birth to me. She guided me through my girlhood across the thorny pasture into womanhood.
She’s tactful, and she doesn’t ever laugh, and when I think of the questions I’ve posed, I’m sure she’s wanted to, and her discretion never fails.
I promise you, my married sisters have asked her for wisdom, and they tell me that she always has been the kindest, most understanding, least judgmental of confidants!
” I didn’t know how else to reassure him.
He closed his eyes, as if the gut ache persisted.
“Cal, when you made your list, my family was on the plus side. Remember?”
He humphed.
“My mother can’t manage her household. I warn you when I move into the palace, I’ll be constantly consulting with my siblings as they struggle to master the art of hearth and home administration.
But in passionate matters, Mamma is the expert on …
well.” I waved my hands vaguely up and down his body and then mine.
He watched, and the discomfort on his face eased.
If he’d been my father, I would have known his gut ache had been erased by a bottom burp. Since that wasn’t the case, I snapped, “What are you looking pleased about?”
“You said I have talented fingers.”
“When? Oh. Yes. A few minutes ago. I didn’t think you noticed.
” I’d hoped he hadn’t noticed. In fact, he did have talented fingers, but too many honeyed words could make a man forget to honor his vows, and Cal fought so hard to be the somber, disciplined prince that I walked a fine line between soothing and arousing.
“My mother pointed out the flaw in Friar Laurence’s restriction.
He made you swear not to touch me in any lustful way until after our marriage ceremony, and he made me swear not to touch you in any lustful—”
Cal interrupted. “I know, but how …?”
“He didn’t forbid me from touching … me.”
I have great respect for Cal’s mind. He’s intelligent, devious, and determined, as I discovered, to the detriment of my impossible romantic dreams. But clearly, never had it occurred to him to suggest that his virgin betrothed might take matters in her own hands.
So to speak.
“No,” Cal said. “That’s not … no.”
“What?” Not the response I had expected. Delight, yes. Amazement. But … no?
“I forbid it. A marriage should begin as it means to go on. The man is in charge. He’s dominant. He touches. The female receives and learns and is pleasured.”
Society is a weird thing. It’s a sea we swim in, all of us together, but the rules for the starfish are different from the rules for the octopus, and the coral remains in place while the sardines travel in packs, with some unknown leader that guides them to safety or disaster.
As humans, we’re in our own sea world, and we travel together, but the males are different from the females, and the sharks are different from the anemones and—What the hell was Cal talking about?
“You want to lead? Exclusively?”
“Yes. That is right and proper.”
“I should be submissive.”
He started to agree; then his breath hitched, as if he had realized that this was a trap. “Given the chance, I believe you could be domineering.”
“I could?”
“Which is inappropriate in a wife.”
“It is? I’d like to point out that if I sit on you and ride you—”
He put his finger on my lips … and stroked them, as if he couldn’t resist.
I did not bite, although it was a near thing. “You’re not supposed to touch me,” I reminded him.
He snatched his hand away, and when the door opened and Marcellus spoke, Cal turned on him like a youth who’d been interrupted during his first seduction.
Marcellus seemed impervious to Cal’s irritation. “My lord and lady, in your honor, Lord Magno summons you to a tasting of his most marvelous wines.”
I studied Marcellus in astonishment. “He has wines?” As far as I knew, as the second son, Magno didn’t have a cracked chalice to piss in or a hearth to toss it into.
“So he claims. Small barrels marked f-l-a-m-m.” Marcellus didn’t offer an opinion as to where or how Magno had confiscated wines and labeled them as his.
Puzzled, Cal asked, “FLAMM?”
“Clearly, Ampelographer Lord Magno Montague, but F …?” I laughed. “Of course. Famed.”
“I believe that’s correct,” Marcellus said. “He says he has curated only the best wines and bestows on them his brand of distinction.”
“I wonder whose wines they are. I know he’s set himself up as an arbiter of taste. Has he gone on to encouraging vintners to pay him for publicizing their wines with his label?” I’m a woman, and thus I can multitask, so I was interested in this new development.
Cal, a man, had a mind that could occupy only one thought at a time. Or maybe it wasn’t his mind that controlled him now, for he caught my hands and turned me to face him, and while staring into my eyes, he said, “Marcellus, inform Magno that we’re content to remain in private and un-inebriated.”
“Yes, my prince.” Marcellus bowed, and if ever a man had displayed amused knowledge, he did now, and after a scathing glance from Cal, he vanished, leaving a fog of glee behind him.
Probably it was that that changed Cal’s mind. Or maybe it was nothing more than the promise of pleasure and a release of amorous tension. Not that we both couldn’t do that for ourselves, but self-service trailed a distance behind the discovery of a far country.
“So be it,” he said. “Life too often interrupts us at the crucial moment, so please explain again your mother’s unholy scheme.”
“Let me show you.”