CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

My heart sank. I've heard the start of this conversation four times before. Although not for the past two years . . .

Yet my parents had once more dragged the subject into the house the way a cat drags in a half-dead rat. A half-dead rat that needed to be killed once and for all.

I made the proper response. "Madam Mother, I eagerly await your bidding."

"We have found you a husband." Seven children had rendered Juliet broader in the hips and rounder around the middle, but in fair Verona, her dark eyes epitomized love. Poets sang of them . . . and found themselves skewered on Romeo's sword.

The problem, as I see it, is that I have my mother's eyes.

Here we go again.I curtsied. "I gladly await your instruction, dear Keepers of my Heart."

With a flourish, Papà announced, "Duke Leir Stephano of the house of Creppa has asked for your hand."

My curtsy knee developed a hitch, and I almost collapsed. "Duke Stephano? Two weeks ago, he buried his third wife!"

"He's had bad luck, it is true," Papà allowed.

"Bad luck?" My voice rose. After all, I am a Montague. I have volume, and I know how to use it. "Titania lies barely cold in her tomb because she ate poisoned eels!"

"They weren't poisoned. She trusted the wrong fishmonger and ate unwisely." Mamma believed that, or pretended to. "I know she was your friend, but she suffered from the sin of gluttony. Anyway, I don't understand how anyone can eat eels. The texture!" She made a small retching sound.

"I always thought Titania was a bit of a she-wolf," Papà said thoughtfully. "She almost lived here for years."

I reminded him, "Her parents are—"

"I know her parents! Fabian and Gertrude of the house of Brambilia. A miserable match between miserable people devoted to making everyone around them miserable. Why do you think I put up with Titania even after she—" He stopped and stood as still as a hare in a snare.

"She what?" I sensed a story.

Mamma interceded. "She fell in love with my Romeo, which was not a surprise. He's handsome and kind, and he appealed to a girl of her unhappy background. But I had to speak with her and she . . . did not take it well."

I didn't like the sound of that. "How not well?"

"She didn't understand how to graciously take disappointment." Mamma clearly felt uncomfortable. "She threatened me."

"Th-threatened you? You?" I was stammering. "You're Juliet!"

"She slammed her fist on the table and spoke with unwomanly vigor, and while I didn't banish her from Casa Montague completely—she was very young and suffered neglect from her parents—I did limit her time with you children and while she visited, I kept her under observation."

"Luckily, she soon transferred her devotion to Duke Stephano and forgot about me." Papà gave a deep sigh of relief.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry, Papà." This whole discussion made me squirm. "Titania wasn't like me. The unhappiness of her home seemed to bring on moments of brooding and melancholy. And her obsession with such an evil man! I understand her loving Papà, all women do, but to move from him to Duke Stephano? A man renowned for indifference to his own family, who never loved anyone but himself all his life?"

"Poor little girl." Clearly, Mamma's tender heart ached for Titania. "To have died so barren of love."

"She had love. She gave love." I remembered so well. "To me, it seemed like Titania was infatuated with the duke forever. She was always talking about him and watching him. Following him in secret."

"Did you counsel her?" Papà asked.

I grimaced at him. "You know me, Papà. If I have an opinion, everyone has the right to hear it."

"Only if you think it will help." Mamma was kind.

Papà not so much. "It is one of your most annoying traits, Rosie. Especially when you're right."

"But her devotion to Duke Stephano didn't give him the right to poison her!" I thought of the innocent, laughing, devoted bride I'd seen at the wedding a year before. My voice rose. "As he did his first wife, mysteriously dead after a decade of marriage."

"That action of his surprised me. I believed he loved her, or as much as that wretched man can love." Mamma betrayed her real opinion of him without meaning to.

"Poisoned!" I charged on, louder than before. "Then another wife, also poisoned. Then Titania. All three younger than he. All wealthy. He squanders their dowries and marries again."

Papà's voice rose, too. "Don't bellow at me, young lady! The tales about his spending and his visits to the brothels and what happened to his mistress are no more than society tittle-tattle."

Mom flipped out her fan and used it to cool her face. "What happened to his mistress?"

"Nothing." Papà spoke too quickly.

"You assured me Duke Stephano was not what his reputation proclaimed." My mother was a Capulet and soft-spoken as befits a woman of her station. Our station. Whatever. Yet now steel hardened her tone.

"He may not be the ideal man, but . . . look at Rosie!" Papà held his cupped hand toward me. "She'll be twenty ere the summer ends. Twenty and a virgin!"

"This is your fault, Romeo." Mom seldom spoke sharply to him, except on this subject. "You insisted on naming her Rosaline after your first love. Rosaline, who swore to be chaste, and now we have a chaste daughter. Foreshadowing! What were you thinking?"

"I know. I know." Papà had heard it all before.

I gave him the eye.

He picked up his cue. "Rosaline the elder was not my true love, merely a foolish young man's distraction. I have had only one true love, my Juliet."

I nodded at him. Better.

Of course, he couldn't let it stand at that. "Although Rosaline didn't stay chaste, so I guess she got over me fast enough." Obviously a point of irritation for him.

Mamma said, "She wed at one-and-twenty. A withered old—"

"She might as well have been dead." I mean, obviously. In a little more than a year I'll be twenty-one, and I feel just fine, thank you.

My bitter observation pulled their attention back to me. My never-ending fault was my inability to keep my mouth shut. I made a run at distracting them. "Papà, why did you name me for your girlfriend, anyway?"

His face got all soft and sentimental. "You were so tiny and soft, you smelled good most of the time, except when you didn't, and even then I could tell you were going to be as beautiful as your mother. Your big brown eyes . . . and those lashes! All I could think was of all the men who would want to—" He bumped his fists together. "So I named you after Chaste Rosaline. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Darling Juliet, even you agreed!"

She ladled blame right back at him. "I was so infatuated with my young husband, I would have agreed to anything."

Papà got his that's amore look in his eyes. "Are you still so infatuated? What light is light, if Juliet be not by . . ."

Oh no. Here we go again.I scoffed. "Poetry! How it bores me. What's the theme? What's the plot? Get to the point!"

"Daughter, poetry is the soul of nature put to words!" Papà chided.

"Oh, Romeo, Romeo." Mamma put her hand on his. "We speak not of our love. We speak of marriage; Rosaline's long-awaited marriage, which we will celebrate in hope and belief."

"Rosaline, you always befuddle us," Papà complained. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were doing it on purpose."

"Why?" I muttered. "Distracting you does no good."

"Two of your younger sisters are already married." Papà was back in full shout. "How is this possible?"

It's possible because my parents had proposed the previous marriages and I'd thrown my beautiful, romantic, accomplished younger sisters into the suitors' paths and I'd been jilted. I'd danced at the weddings, smugly thinking I'd outsmarted them all, and now—this?

I stared daggers of hurt and anger at him. "Papà, how much did you offer him to marry me?"

"Nothing. You're going to him with no dowry. When he proposed the union, I told him I had too many daughters to make a big settlement on my aged, elderly daughter." He grinned conspiratorially at me. "In such circumstances, it makes sense to spit on the merchandise."

I might have been amused, as he wished, but this whole mad series of events made no sense. "Then why does he want me?" I saw my father's eyes shift to the side, and I understood. At least, I thought I did. "Oh. He wants me. He lusts for me."

"Rosie. Daughter." Papà lovingly cupped my face. "You know I love you."

"Yes." I did know it. He was a good father who wanted to do for me what was best. The trouble was . . . what was best for every other woman was not best for me, and he couldn't see it.

He brushed his thumb over my cheek. "You're beautiful. Your skin, unmarked by smallpox, the curve of your cheek and your rosy lips . . . when I look at you, I see your mother, the sun and the moon and stars shining all in one."

Papà thinks I'm beautiful because I resemble my mother, and that's the problem with my parents. I convince myself that they're the biggest frauds in the lore of romance, then Papà spouts a love sonnet to Juliet's beauty, and Mamma smiles at him as shyly as a maiden, and the love glows between them like a fire to warm my heart.

Damn it.It would be so much easier for me to be a sour old maid if they were frauds. As it is, I cherish a secret hope that I, too . . . But no, they're the only couple I have ever seen blessed with a wild, true, unwavering and eternal love. For the rest of the world, it's a chimera.

"Rosie has your eyebrows, Romeo." My madame mother sounded amused. "Satan's eyebrows."

Men wrote sonnets about my mother. Unsuspecting women gawked at my father. He was one of those guys with the bread, sauce, and cheese stacked in a toothsome order: the hair, the face, the body made the ladies drool. All that saved him from blinding beauty were those eyebrows, and I had inherited those. My eyebrows extended in a slant from my inner eye toward my hairline with almost no curve, and I was the only child to have inherited them. I refused to distress myself about what the meaning of that might be . . .

Mamma continued. "Beloved Romeo, your eyebrows are what first drew me to you. I thought you would be good at sinning."

Papà looked at her and smiled that cocky grin. "Did I fulfill your desires?"

"Later you'll have to prove yourself once more." She beckoned with her words.

In a minor explosion of exasperation, I said, "Would you two knock it off? I'm your daughter and I'm standing right here!"

Papà dropped his hands to his side, undoubtedly to keep them off his beloved Juliet, and returned to the topic at hand. "Duke Stephano is a powerful man."

A world of pain existed in his words, and I understood at last. "Powerful and dishonorable. A man to be feared by more than merely his wives. You dared not refuse him."

"No."

"Am I to plan my own funeral as well as my own betrothal ball?" A world of bitterness existed in my words.

"Not your funeral. There is hope. We must keep faith." Yet Mamma's chin trembled.

"Why?" I might be resigned, but I was still angry.

"Daughter, you pretend to us, but you can't hide the truth. We know you're"—Papà spoke as if it pained him to say the word—"intelligent."

I looked at my mother. She nodded at me sadly. "You understand mathematics."

"I'm sorry, Mamma." This was a huge point of contention. "I need mathematics if I'm to run the household."

"It's true, lodestar of my heart. She does." Papà nodded at Mamma. "Friar Laurence tells me she's unusually talented, even more than our son."

Mamma fanned herself more rapidly.

Papà turned to me. "Your mother and I discussed this match. Looked at it from every angle. We have no choice. We must accept the offer. Duke Stephano insinuated that if we refuse, misfortune would befall me. Us. My family. The things he said made me fear . . . I can't protect all of you forever. But we know"—urgently he took my hand—"we know we can depend on you to handle this. Somehow."

"Handle this. The betrothal ball?"

"That too."

"Of course. When is it?"

"Two nights hence."

Through gritted teeth, I said, "I've given you an exaggerated view of my own efficiency."

"Duke Stephano insists the match happen immediately."

"I'll help," Mamma said brightly. "You know I love organizing a ball!"

She did love it. She was bad at it, but she loved it. "Yes, Madame Mother, I depend on you to arrange the flowers. Perhaps we could have white lilies."

"Lilies? No, those are not for a betrothal ball. They're for a—"

Funeral. The word dangled in the air.

Papà cleared his throat and got the conversation back on track. "I meant that we depend on you to handle the . . . the unpleasant details relating to Duke Stephano."

What did he think I could do? Kill the man? "Because no one else can."

Papà looked down, ashamed of himself. "Yes."

I didn't like to see him ashamed for doing what he must. I'm eminently practical and, in fact, do understand. We're the Montagues. We are important people in Verona. Wealthy. Owners of extensive vineyards and makers of Verona's finest wines. But we're so fertile—not merely Romeo and Juliet, but my aunts and uncles and their husbands and wives and their children—that the wealth is spread thin. Even he, Romeo Montague, the most romantic, least prudent man in Verona, had to make a judgment based on good sense and for the good of the rest of his children. I suggested, "Maybe after Duke Stephano has his way with me, you could challenge him, duel him, kill him."

"Daughter, he doesn't play by the rules. He would never provide me with a fair fight." Papà brightened. "I could assassinate him."

"You could. But it's his way to plunge a knife into a man's back, not yours."

"But for you—"

That imminently practical part of me replied, "Thank you, Papà, but I'm afraid that would trigger another feud and we'd be back at the beginning of your and Mamma's affair, and this time someone might actually die in the tomb—and it might be me. There would be no happy family then."

Mamma gave a sob.

Papà looked wretched. Then, because he's a guy, and unhappy, crying women make him uncomfortable, he lifted his leg and farted.

"Romeo!" Mamma pulled out her handkerchief and waved it before her face.

"Papà! Really?" I hurried to open the window yet wider.

Loftily he said, "Friar Laurence says a healthy person passes gas ten times a day." And he farted again.

"How many people are you, Papà?" I sailed from the room, leaving him sputtering and Mamma giggling into her handkerchief. Which was as I intended; like my worthy father, I didn't like to see my mother cry.

But once in my room, I dismissed my deeply concerned nurse, who like everyone else in the household had overheard all, and went out on my balcony.

At the back of Casa Montague, our garden formed a wilderness of climbing roses and tall trees, polished stone benches, and a wide swing. Old and young alike enjoyed the garden, and I took particular delight in ensuring it remained a place of sweet scents and joyful pursuits. A tall granite wall protected the boundaries of our property and when, as did happen, a thief or scoundrel sought to invade our peace, the thick hawthorn hedge provided an excellent barrier.

Now I stared into the bright sunny garden with its meandering paths, its black poplars, the long columns of green pointed cypress, and the mighty walnut tree outside my window. I needed to instruct the gardener that the roses should be sprayed for aphids—a mild solution of soap should do—and the tall, thorny hawthorn hedge around the outer wall trimmed. With a sigh, I leaned my elbows on the stone railing.

But before the gardening, I needed to organize my own betrothal ball to the cruel and lustful Duke Leir Stephano.