Chapter 35
I put my hands on his shoulders and looked deeply into his eyes. “Cal …” But before I could suggest such an amazing concept—that we, too, might be legendary lovers, I mean—I heard the voices call.
“Rosie …”
“Nooo,” I moaned.
“Shhh,” Cal whispered. “That’s Isabella. She hates being cold. She’ll give up soon.”
“Rosie …”
“That’s Katherina,” I told him. “She hates it, too. What do you suppose they want? Other than to ruin another opportunity for us to—”
Cal put his hand over my lips.
“Rosie.” That was skinny little Emilia, gravel crunching beneath her soles as she ran past on the path. “Come in. We have a surprise for you!”
“I have a surprise for you, too,” Cal murmured. “If they’d leave us alone, I’d give it to you.”
I put my head under the furs and giggled. While I was under there, I parted his camicia and kissed his chest. And lingered.
“Lady Rosaline!” Nurse bellowed.
That easily penetrated under the covers, and I pulled my head out and glared at Cal. Like it was his fault.
“Is everyone in the family out here?” He sounded confused.
“I’d like to remind you one of the reasons you put on your Will Rosie Be an Appropriate Wife?
list as a plus is that I have a large family.
” We were now sounding less like legendary lovers and more like an irritated couple.
At least, I was irritated, and if the intense pressure of his body against mine was any indicator, he should be livid.
But while Cal was relishing his newfound role as a romantic lead worthy of the Montagues and Capulets, he was eternally unflappable. “Casa Montague has a huge garden, and if we remain very quiet, our chances of being undetected are—”
“Rosie, cara grandchild, come to Nonna Montague.”
It was my grandmother, and she was a few feet away across the hedge.
Her voice quavered as she called, “Rosie, I know you’re alone out here, thinking your virginal thoughts and wondering if the marriage night will be so dull with Prince Escalus as your groom that you’ll have to pinch yourself to stay awake.”
I thumped my forehead on Cal’s chest. “No. No, no, no, no.”
“But it’s too cold out here for you. That great horse’s ass, your Great-uncle Magno, has not returned.”
That sounded so funny coming out of that small, sweet, fragile woman, Cal snorted.
Nonna Montague paused. “We have a wonderful evening of entertainment planned for you. A play! Won’t that be fun? Do come in, cara.” I could hear her teeth chattering.
At that point, I had no choice. As that fragile, indomitable weapon that was my grandmother knew very well.
Cal knew it, too, because he threw off the covers and helped me to my feet. I shoved on my shoes while he wrapped me in my cloak and handed me my gloves. “Excuse yourself and lace your bodice as soon as you get inside,” he murmured.
I pulled on my hat, nodded, and started down the steps, then returned and cupped his chin.
His manly chin, square and smoothly shaved, that virile part of him that framed his full lower lip …
Hey. I told you I was bad at this poetry stuff, and now, as I gathered all my nerve to repeat what he’d said, I was abysmal.
Apparently, I hesitated a little too long, for he asked gently, “Rosaline, what?”
“I captured your heart?” He did say that, right? Gentle reader, you heard him?
But he shook his head and corrected me. “I said … you infamously captured my heart.”
“You did.” I nodded. “I did?”
“Si.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
He smiled, really smiled, so sweetly. “Oh, I know.”
I was about to throw my arms around him in a frenzy of thwarted passion when Nonna Montague wailed, “Rosie, cara, it’s so cold out here. Don’t we want to go in?”
Cal put his hands on my shoulders and gently moved me away, turned me, and gave me a gentle push toward the walk.
I clattered down the stairs, exited through the narrow gap in the hedges, and met Nonna Montague, who, for all her frail appearance, gave every appearance of intending to charge into the pergola.
Before she could say a word, I said, “A play? How delightful. In the atrium, I presume?”
“Yes. Nonno and I have seats right by the largest brazier. Tonight I shall smell like smoke!” She pinched my cheek. “But it’s worth it to see you glowing with such happiness, cara.”
I wanted to sourly tell her it wasn’t happiness I was glowing with, but some things I couldn’t say to Nonna Montague.
She was not, after all, the wicked and sharp-tongued Nonna Ursula, but a dear, sweet, frail tyrant who was bundled up in a hat and cloak, draped in blankets, which dragged in the gravel, and still her little nose was red and her teeth chattered.
I took her gloved hand, placed it on my arm, and led her down the paths toward the atrium. “Will that be enough to keep you warm?”
“Nonno will put his arm around me. He may be an old fool, he may be losing his sense of smell, but he’s smart enough to adore me.” She glowed when she talked about him.
“He’s lost his sense of smell?” That dismayed me no end, for he was the first to explain to the child Rosaline how to discern the different scents in the wine: the fruits, the flowers, the spices, the exotic woods, and leather and smoke. …
“I know. I forget sometimes and ask him, which I fear makes him more acutely aware, but age diminishes all.” Pitifully, she said, “All that’s left of my poor bubbies are two raisins!”
I laugh-snorted.
In naughty triumph, Nonna concluded, “Nonno tells me raisins are his favorites.”
We entered the atrium grinning, and there I could see why the family had so willingly pushed me out the door. In the time I’d been gone, our beloved footmen had illuminated the area with burning torches and set up the stage. …
Come now, gentle reader. You can’t be surprised that we, the family of Romeo and Juliet, own a stage, which we can assemble at a moment’s notice?
And the benches and folding chairs …
Yes, we had folding chairs in Renaissance Italy. In fact, they had them in ancient Egypt. Look it up.
And the reason why Imogene and Cesario hadn’t been in the garden, looking for me, was that they had been forming a backstage by arranging the curtains our dear maids had tacked onto the balcony’s overhang.
I handed Nonna Montague over to a footman, who would escort her to the front row, where Nonno Montague waited with an empty seat beside him.
Beside them were Nonna Ursula and Lady Pulissena, and Mamma and Papà, and every elderly cousin with hearing issues.
Evella sat squeezed into a seat, ready to take orders.
My married sisters, Susanna and Vittoria, sat together, grinning widely.
Susanna’s husband was nowhere in sight, so I assumed he was a stagehand or a player.
Montagues and Capulets and random guests, like Fiametta and her female companion, Chandrika, Lysander, Friar Laurence, and Friar Camillo, rapidly filled the rest of the seats.
All held their goblets, steaming with warm spiced wine, and a bread trencher or a pewter plate loaded with cicchetti, and clearly, from the revel atmosphere, everyone expected to be entertained.
I excused myself and fled up to the girls’ dormitory, where I found Nurse waiting alone.
She took one look at me and, damn the woman, knew all.
Muttering darkly about flighty, passionate girls in her care who should know better than to visit the cold gardens in search of a dark lord, she removed my cloak and laced my bodice so tightly I had trouble catching a breath.
I didn’t dare complain. Nor, after Cal’s comments, did I dare tell her the truth, for she, even more than my father, would be a veritable town crier, shouting the news about our marriage.
I dodged behind the screen to use the chamber pot, then again donned the cloak and pulled blankets off my bed, because in my brief moment in the atrium, I’d seen my seat.
Our heaviest wooden chair, the one Cal used during his princely announcements, had been elevated and set off to the side at an angle to the stage and decorated with lace and velvet.
A wooden crown dangled from one arm. I had no doubt I was destined to be part of the spectacle.
As in, I would be satirized. I suppose I should have expected it.
Normally, I was the one who directed our plays, mocking one and all.
Now, on the grand occasion of my marriage, it was payback time.