CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

The appropriate action for Duke Stephano's grieving betrothed would have been to go into our chapel to say the prayers that Prince Escalus had commanded. I had experience with death; in this world of infection, plague, and woe, exposure to its effects was impossible to avoid.

Yet I had fallen on the corpse, a horrible remembrance that made me want to wipe my hands again and again on my gown. I'd seen that expression of terror—or was it disbelief?—contorting the duke's face.

No, I would not go pray in the chapel so others could witness my piety. No one believed my earlier grief, and while I would say prayers for the repose of that man's twisted soul, my piety was not for show.

With a shiver, I hurried past the chapel door and saw, ahead of me, Mamma waiting with a fleece to throw around my shoulders. At that sight of her concerned, sweet, motherly face, I realized that while I might not grieve for Duke Stephano, I was frightened and unnerved. "Mamma!" I burst into tears and rushed into her arms.

She wrapped me around in the fleece and helped me up the stairs, and as we walked I heard Gertrude cynically announce, "A touching demonstration to convince us of her innocence."

In my room, Nurse waited with a posset and fond words, and I buried my face into a linen towel and sobbed. The stress of the last few days had taken its toll.

When I lifted my head, my mother had disappeared. The door remained open, Nurse stood on the threshold, and I could hear a voice I knew as well as my own—but I had heard that tone only a few times in my life, and each time had been a moment of consternation.

For my gentle mother, Juliet Montague, had descended the stairs, faced off with Gertrude, and told her to count her legs, and when she got to two, she should run away and never again look back at the Montague palazzo because if she did . . . she would no longer have two legs to count.

Nurse listened with a smile on her face. "That's my girl. Your mother, femmina, is a force of nature, and no one ever threatens her little chicks."

Juliet's little chicks. That was me and my siblings.

My tears dried, and I nodded at Nurse. Yes, my mother was fearsome. When Mamma came back upstairs, she accepted a cup of broth while I changed into my most plain nightgown. I'd had enough of glamour for one night.

Mamma and I sat together and talked, not about the night and the murder, but about her stunning flower decorations and how the staff was defusing the ongoing crisis by serving wine and laden plates to the men of clearly superior intelligence who remained to seek out the killer. When we were done laughing about that, through the open window we heard the men dispersing. Nurse hung over the balcony rail and listened, then returned to impart the news that Prince Escalus's testimony had created a bulwark around me that no man dared assault.

"This is the news I've waited to hear." Mamma rose with a stagger of exhaustion, kissed me on the forehead, and retired to the master suite. Nurse accompanied her, her arm around her waist while I watched and thought about who my mother was and how much she meant to me.

I was tired, but not sleepy. Too much had occurred in the past few hours, and I mentally answered accusations and conducted conversations and wondered who had in fact killed Duke Stephano, whether the killer was in our household, and if so, who was in danger under our own roof.

Then . . . oh, then, dear reader, came the moment the fates had foretold for me.

"Rosie . . ." The sound was no more than a kiss of air on a warm summer night. "Rosie . . ."