Chapter 25
With only a few long steps, I was at Isabella’s side. Taking her by the arm, I smiled toothily into Magno’s aging yet still handsome face. “Excuse me, Great-uncle Magno, I must consult with the princess about a wedding matter.”
As I marched her away, Princess Isabella dragged her feet. “Rosie, I can explain.”
“Explain what?” She knew what she’d done. “I told you to avoid Magno, because he imagines himself to be handsome and dashing, and he’ll ‘want to show you something in the garden,’ and you’ll discover how unpleasant a man’s groping can be.”
“How do you know?” She flung the question at me, as if expecting that I’d have no answer.
I wish that was true. “Do you think he draws the line at accosting women not related to him by blood? No, my dear princess. When I was thirteen, I discovered what an abhorrent man Great-uncle Magno is.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
“Did you observe the scars on his hands?”
“Yes.” She sounded cautiously hopeful. “He said he got them fighting robbers who were attacking a young noblewoman about my age.” She observed my disdain. “He speaks not the truth?”
“He got them when I was your age. He backed me behind the drapes, groped me, pinched me, and when I screamed bloody murder, Papà ripped back the drapes, and the only thing that kept Magno alive was me, protesting we couldn’t kill my great-uncle without starting up the whole damned Capulet-Montague feud again.
But I have to tell you, Papà’s sword trembled in his grasp, and after he agreed, he turned on Magno and slashed his hands so my darling great-uncle would remember never to touch one of the Montague daughters again.
” I took Princess Isabella’s shoulders in my hands and looked into her eyes. “You are not a Montague daughter.”
“Lord Magno seems charming!” Princess Isabella protested. “And … and not licentious.”
As Friar Laurence hurried past, I caught him by the arm. “Brother, tell us honestly, what do you think of Magno?”
Friar Laurence said, “He’s a testa di cazzo,” and walked on.
Princess Isabella gasped in shock. “Oh!”
Most adults didn’t use language like that in front of a gently bred female, especially not someone as young and royal as Isabella, and for a Franciscan monk to have used such a vulgar term …
that told all, and I didn’t hesitate to follow up my advantage.
“My darling sister-to-be, please, I must remind you of what you do know but don’t truly comprehend.
You’re a princess, a prize to be possessed for what you might bring a man in power and wealth.
If my great-uncle or any other man could compromise you, he—”
“Ew! Lord Magno? He’s old!”
“Yes.” Now she grasped the situation. “Even older than my father. Almost as old as my grandfather. He is no longer in his first blush of youth, or even the second or the third—and he knows it. He’s the kind of man you might be forced to marry if you were poor and desperate.
But you’re not. So he could take you, or pretend to take you, and when Cal had no choice but to allow him to wed you, Magno would gloat at his cleverness, and other men of low morals would congratulate him, and—”
“Ew!” Isabella shrank back from me as if I were the one threatening her. “This is disgusting!”
I was relentless. “Worst of all, Magno would consider himself a prize to you. He’d imagine he impressed you with his knowledge, his swift ways in the bed suite, his stultifying conversations, his oppressive opinions.”
Isabella flung herself into my arms. “I don’t want to be a princess,” she wailed.
I patted her on the back and thought, I know.
What ho and forsooth! I do know. Yet this conversation wasn’t about me, although I had my place in it, which was to scare Princess Isabella into premature wisdom.
I urged, “Think hard about what you want from a man. Who you want as a lover. If you want to wait to wed until you’re older—I believe Cal, who loves you so dearly, would allow you a few years—take the time to view the world of men and women, marriage and affairs, love and children, through eyes filled with sensible knowledge. ”
She nodded, her head against my shoulder.
She drew in a whimpering breath. “I can do that.” She pushed herself back from me and showed her young and noble strength with a lift of her chin.
“I do know what I want, and I’ll not be married against my will.
Going forward, I take you as my classical example. ”
I watched her march away, shoulders square, spine straight, and managed to hold myself back from urging her to seek another model. After all, I’d done pretty well long past the time when I should have been wedded and bedded.
I wasn’t surprised when a man slipped his arm around my waist, and that man was, of course, Cal. “She’s so trusting. Think you she’ll maintain her prudence in the face of all she must overcome?”
“Isabella is a worthy princess of Verona.” I placed my palm flat on his chest and looked into his midnight eyes.
“For it’s not truly me who she chooses as her model, although she declares it so, but her most admirable elder brother.
” In that, I told the truth. Isabella had lost her parents too early to remember them.
She’d known me and my family only a few months.
It was Cal who was her compass, her brother, and her parent, and by example, he’d taught her to be gracious and restrained.
Cal bent his head toward me. “You honor me with your praise, for if you speak the truth, that would be all I ask from life, that my sister and my wife love and support each other.”
Whew. We were both saying all the right and proper things, but what we were actually discussing was Cal’s mouth coming toward mine, my lips parting to accept his penetration—
The weight of Friar Laurence’s meaty fingers landed on Cal’s shoulder and my shoulder at the same time.
I hadn’t heard his footsteps, and I jumped so hard I cleared the floor.
After Friar Laurence had silently reminded us of his place as our confessor, he paced, and in his “I’m a holy man” tone of voice, he said, “I’ve performed my prayers and begged the dear Lord for guidance. It is clear the devil is nipping at your heels.”
From the corner of his mouth, Cal said, “Not at our heels.”
Here’s the thing: Prince Somber and Staid is absolutely, um, somber and staid.
Then he touches me, and I forget that he’s somber and staid, because it’s like Nonna Ursula and Lady Pulissena said.
Skirts up. Cocks out! Then, and this is the really important part, he says something witty, and I want to guffaw, and I think, Who is this man?
I don’t know him. I don’t understand him.
I don’t know why he wants me or why he chose me.
That’s a lie. I do know why he chose me. That damned list that inventoried my virtues vs. my deficits.
Virtues: Nice tettes, likely fertility.
Deficits: Temperamental and loud.
Plus, he’d admired my bravery in defense of those I loved.
The part I liked about him was how much he trusted me to handle myself and every situation.
Mostly, I don’t understand him, but I do understand that when he makes me laugh, something loosens in my mind, and I feel a kinship … not kinship like family, but a meeting of like minds.
Fortunately, at Cal’s quip, I hung on to my sobriety, with merely a widening of my eyes to betray my amusement.
Unfortunately, Friar Laurence had excellent hearing.
He stopped pacing, stared forbiddingly at both of us, pointed his judgmental finger between the two of us.
“I didn’t want to do this. Once is an aberration.
Twice is a habit. Three times …” He clicked his tongue in horror.
“But this must be done lest you fall into sin. Tonight, when the Compline bells ring …”
The Compline bells … That would be at day’s end.
“Meet me at the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore.”
The crypt at the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore … At that place and in that time, my parents were married in secret by guess who?
“And I will perform the ceremony, for by your leaves, you shall not stay alone till the Holy Church incorporates two in one.”
I blinked at Friar Laurence for a long, befuddled moment.
I’d heard that phrase before, from Mamma when she was giving me the breakfast table version of her forbidden marriage to Papà.
It took a few moments, but when I had assembled my few unclogged-by-passion brain cells, I asked, “Are you saying you’re going to marry Cal and me?
Tonight? At the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore? ”
“Do you not wish to be married?” Friar Laurence sounded frankly surly.
“I’d hoped not to have to perform the ceremony, because of your good sense, Rosaline, and your calm demeanor, Prince Escalus, but alas.
The demons of sin, of passion and desire, have corrupted your otherwise unflappable beings.
Thus in secret and in a repeat of that almost disastrous act Romeo and Juliet performed—and barely survived! —married you shall be.”
I expected Cal to speak, to say what to me was the obvious flaw in this plan: that we had a public marriage to perform in front of all Verona, and surely the sacrament that was marriage should not be lightly performed again and again over the same couple.
Yet Cal remained silent, and when I looked at him, I saw why. He stared at me as if I was the bread of life, risen to perfection and ready to be baked. …
Sorry. Occasionally, I forget, try to be poetic, and our old dog who eats cabbage soup has nothing on me.
Anyway, Cal’s fists curled and uncurled, as if he could scarcely keep his hands to himself, a blue heat burned in the depths of his dark eyes, and he obviously intended to be the hot, hot oven that baked my dough from the inside out.
Heh.
Besides, Friar Laurence wouldn’t commit a great sin on purpose. If a double wedding would send us to hell, that would go double for the officiant, and I know that the good friar would never risk his own soul for mine or for Cal’s.
Who was I to even question the scheme? If Friar Laurence was to be believed, I also had lost all reason.
I was possessed by sin, passion, and desire, and soon, in the late-night hours in my room at Casa Montague, I would run my fingers over Cal’s bare skin and welcome him into my body, and the first of marriage’s glorious mysteries would be revealed to me.
Gentle reader, you are correct.
About damned time.