Chapter 27
On my return to Casa Montague, and as they had before, Cal and his three trusted friends and bodyguards, Marcellus, Dion, and Holofernes, carried the unmarked sedan chair through Verona’s nighttime streets and to the small, discreet back gate that led through the thick stone wall and past the tall and mighty hedges.
Only we knew what had happened in the crypt at the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore, and Cal’s men could be counted upon to maintain their silence.
Although when Holofernes set the step and offered me his hand to help me down, and Cal firmly moved him out of the way, all three of the guys grinned like the jackasses they were.
As childishly as they acted, they might all also be virgins, and so I intended to inform them in my snippiest tone.
Instead Cal hustled me into the garden, and Marcellus shut the gate after us, and the lock turned, and frankly, I expected to be swept into Cal’s arms and to find myself prone on a bench, but he placed his hand at the base of my spine and moved me briskly toward the house.
I dragged my feet. “Wait!”
“Shhh.”
“But Cal, we can’t … in the house! It’s packed full of relatives that never leave, and if you want this to be a secret for more than five seconds, we can’t simply sashay in and say, ‘We’re headed up to do the horizontal bassa danza.
’” I added the clincher. “My father would kill you before we had a chance to explain!”
Cal stopped beside the walnut tree that grew to reach up toward the infamous balcony that led to my bedroom, then removed his leather gloves and tucked them in his belt. He gave me a hug and an affectionate slap to my well-padded behind and started climbing.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed at him. “Cal, that’s romantic, but not necessary. We aren’t my parents. Despite what Friar Laurence thinks, we’re sensible enough to take the easy way to joy, make love outdoors and so save our energy for—”
He had vanished into the darkness, and only when a dark form moved across the cold, bright stars did I know he had reached my bedchamber. Or not really my chamber, simply my bed. “It’s too cold …” His voice drifted down on a puff of the north wind.
I shivered and pulled my cloak tighter about my shoulders. He was right. Making love out here might be romantic, but only if we counted my parents’ suicide attempts as romantic.
In their case, it was Papà who found his new bride seemingly dead, so he monologued before drinking a dose of poison. Which meant Mamma found him likewise seemingly dead, so she monologued before she stabbed herself with a knife and missed her heart because the point landed on her gold necklace. …
I’m not being mean … I don’t think. … I can understand that Mamma’s hand was shaking, what with being newly married and, for all intents and purposes, dead for two and forty hours, and being traumatized with Papà draped all over her and still warm …
on account of him not being really, sincerely dead, because he had bought the poison at some Padua bargain-poison warehouse, which saved his life but contributed to one huge mess in the Capulet tomb when he vomited it all up, and that got Mamma going, maybe because vomiting is contagious but also probably because she was pregnant with me. …
Those details of the story, which I know far too well, always made me shudder. No, Cal was right. Romance needs the proper surroundings, and in our case, that includes a mass of down blankets piled on top of our naked, overheated, passionately entwined bodies.
Whew. The mental picture sent me slipping in the rear door, tiptoeing past our great ballroom, where yet another incredulous and still cordial “Can you believe Rosie is getting married at last?” Montague-Capulet family celebration was taking place.
I counted carefully while going up the stairs and avoided the squeaky fifth step, then hurried into my bedchamber, where I found Cal waiting.
He’d lit the candles, and I could see a new bruise across his cheek (probably he had hit a branch in the dark).
His palms were stained brown (walnut tree bark), and a light brown dried leaf clung in his black hair.
Yet he was grinning, actually “broad white teeth showing” grinning, like a swashbuckler who had scaled the castle walls for his lady.
I ran to embrace him, then pulled back from the cold that clung to his clothing. I pushed him toward the small brazier, which gave off enough heat to shimmer the air around it.
He used the water in the basin first, plunging his hands in and using soap. Then he held his hands out to the heat and rumbled with exuberance, “I can’t believe we’ve managed to get this far without being caught.”
I beamed at him. With his scars and the dark aura that clung to him, Cal was not a handsome man, but right now, he was cute.
He added, “Or without a dead body falling on us.”
I helped him shed his cape and discarded mine on the floor beside us.
“Or Friar Laurence popping up, with some holy admonitions about how we’re supposed to find no pleasure in the act but do it only for the opportunity to create progeny …
” One might say my parents managed pleasure and progeny at the same time, and so far, no hellfire had broken forth from the bedroom.
A whole lot of rapturous moans and screams, but absolutely no hellfire.
“We’re going to have to keep it down,” I warned Cal. “Sounds carry in this house.”
He cackled, which made me smile more, and he picked up our capes and placed them on hooks by the door. “I can manage that.”
Insinuating I couldn’t.
I could have indignantly ruffled up, but how would I know? Simply because my parents had kept me awake and irritated me through countless hours of lovemaking didn’t mean I could predict my own reaction.
For reasons unknown to me, I blushed. Being married, being allowed to taste the fruit of Eden without fear of interruption or the constant drive to reach for passion as quickly as possible, felt like starting from scratch.
With a stranger. Who was eyeing me as if I were unformed clay he would mold into his creation.
“There.” He offered me his hands. “Warmer.”
I stared at them. Broad palms. Long, strong fingers. If the tales were true, when he shed his clothes, I would be, yes, most impressed. …
He grasped my hands and held them in his, and with great care, he removed my leather gloves bit by bit.
I was mesmerized as he revealed my own fingers, then cupped them in his and lifted them to his lips.
He kissed the palms, then the fingertips, then turned them and kissed the backs.
… “See?” he said. “I’m warmer, and now you are, too. ”
Why yes. Yes, I was. Also breathless and unsure how he’d managed to make such a simple task into a seduction.
He kissed me. He kissed me like he liked kissing me. Not like it was a preliminary to the main event, but a moment of pleasure to be savored and embellished.
I’m not going to say anything trite, like “My knees gave way.”
But my knees gave way. Cal held me up; I sagged in his arms and allowed him to feast on my lips. Somehow, I found his tongue and sucked on it, which made him yank me almost off my feet.
My own successful attempt at seduction banished my shyness.
Lust roared back as if it had been merely coy.
I wrestled with my skirts, trying to put my legs around him, but that was impossible—the material of petticoats and overskirt weighed enough to keep me grounded—so as one, we separated and began the torturous process of removing our clothes, which, may I remind you, gentle reader, didn’t include zippers and buttons but a lot of lacing and more lacing and beading and …
My God, just fling my skirts up and let’s do the deed!
You know what happened now.
Not that. I wish.
The front door slammed back hard enough for the crash to penetrate my bedchamber. Shrieks rose from the atrium, and at this mutual partially unclothed moment, Cal and I listened, paused, and stared at each other in consternation.
Because the shrieking sounded like a man in the throes of some gripping terror, and the rising tide of babble sounded like an escalating crisis.
I tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack.
Terror. Check.
Crisis. Check.
Great-uncle Magno loudly and in a voice an octave above normal, “Poison! Again! Poison! Someone wants me dead. Someone’s trying to assassinate me!”
In a tone of absolute reason and gentility, Cal said, “I’m going to kill him myself.”