CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 28

One might say I stormed into the house and up the stairs. My bedroom door stood open; as soon as I entered, Nurse slammed it shut behind me. A single door slam was to be feared. A double—one on the balcony and one here—meant I was in real trouble.

We turned on each other.

Nurse was renowned not only for her good forward sight but also for the eyes in the back of her head. "Foolish girl, I saw the man in the shadows. Who was it?"

"The prince."

It took Nurse a moment to realize she didn't comprehend or maybe simply didn't believe. "What prince?"

"Prince Escalus. How many princes do we know?"

"I thought he departed with his sister?"

"They left. He came back." I waited while Nurse realized that, even before she could scold me, her script had changed.

She lifted one finger. "How did he—?"

"I don't know. He had earlier said he'd speak to my lord father about securing the estate against an intruder. He knows a way in, I think. I'll speak to Papà also."

"What did the prince want with you?" Nurse asked.

I'm not absolutely sure."To give me a weapon."

"A weapon?" Her voice rose.

I lifted my skirt and showed her the holster strapped to my ankle, the handle of the dagger protruding.

She stared at it. "That was good of him. Did you strap it on?"

She'd caught the gist of the matter. "He did."

She contemplated my ankle yet more. "The prince. Prince Escalus. Gave you a weapon. Which, I understand, he believes as I do that you're in danger. He returned to Casa Montague to gift it to you and he . . . attached it to your person himself?"

"Correct again."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Is there more you want to tell me? Should tell me as the nurse who vigilantly guards your virtue?"

I ran through the odd, princely visit in my mind. "Not specifically. He showed me how to use the blade, as you did when you gave me your gift."

"Exactly as I did?"

"No, not exactly. I think he was amusing himself at my expense, mayhap testing to see if I was so advanced in age I was desperate to give up my much discussed virginity—"

"He's such a cold fish, I would have never thought. But"—she shrugged—"I suppose he is a man."

"I flipped the dagger and caught it—"

"You caught it by the hilt?"

I showed her my hands. "I'm not bleeding, am I? Yes, I caught it by the hilt and slipped it into the holster, and he bowed and asked if I'd teach his sister to defend herself, and he told me my hair was lovely." I left out the part about him kissing my hand. Nurse already gaped like a flounder.

Nurse fired up her ire. "That's another thing—why is your hair down?"

I fired back. "Nurse, I went out to dream in the moonlight of my One True Love. This is my home, my garden. I've always felt safe here. Why shouldn't I go out with my hair down?"

"Why not indeed?" Nurse plucked something from my hair and showed me a fragment of cypress.

"I still do feel safe except . . ." I reached out my hand and she grasped it. "In one night and day, love and death, family and nobility, weapons and generosity, warnings and madness. The family swirls around me, loud and exuberant, and I'm the one who they come to when their lives explode like Chinese fireworks right before their eyes—"

"Chinese fireworks? Nonsense, fireworks are the invention of Verona!"

"Now I'm standing here holding a Roman candle; it's going off in my hand and I don't know where to throw it for fear of catching the world on fire." I spoke pleadingly, asking for comfort. "Nurse, you know I'm the sensible one!"

"Yes, of course, you are. Let me help you get ready for bed." Nurse went to the fire and filled two mugs of warm wine, handed one to me, and guided me to the chair and table where the small Venetian mirror reflected my puzzled face. She loosened my makeshift braid and brushed, pulling the boar's bristles through the long lengths in soothing strokes.

I sighed, sipped, and relaxed.

"Life has found you, Lady Rosie. You couldn't hide from it forever." Nurse had the nerve to sound amused.

"Hide?" I couldn't believe her. "I haven't been hiding! How can you say that? I've been here, living as all the others do except without suffering the turmoil created by—"

"Life." She took a sip of mulled night wine and went back to brushing.

I finished as I meant to start. "Turmoil created by themselves!"

"I've prayed that you'd find something to catch you up, carry you away, enthuse you enough to make you forget all your caution." I might as well have not been speaking for all the attention Nurse paid to me.

"If I go mad with some passion, who's going to care for the household? My sisters and brother? Anyway, who says I've gone mad with passion?"

Nurse laughed, choked on the wine, and coughed until her eyes watered. "Not me. I said nothing about passion."

"I haven't gone mad about Lysander. I'm very sensibly aware of how ridiculous it is to fall in love at first sight."

"Hmm, yes. So you are. And the prince?"

"The prince? What about the prince? He was out there—"

"Alone with you in the moonlight—"

"Because he wanted to give me a . . ."

She was laughing.

I knew it was ridiculous. I knew, yet I couldn't comprehend what was wrong, why, how . . . Nothing made sense!

I leaned over and unbuckled the scabbard from my ankle. "Oh, shut up."

Nurse brought my nightgown and helped me change. She took Prince Escalus's weapon and placed it on a table by the door, then placed her dagger and Lysander's in other locations around the room.

She feared for my safety.

I feared for my family's safety.

I gathered my robe and slipped my arms into it.

"What are you doing?" She knew, but she asked anyway.

"As much as I would like to, this can't be put off. I must go speak to my father."

"Do you want me to accompany you?"

How creepy to think Nurse felt compelled to offer when I'd never in my life felt unsafe in Casa Montague. "No, it's a delicate issue." For while I ran the household, Romeo was responsible for the security of the House of Montague, and I was, in essence, telling him he had failed.

She strapped the dagger she'd given me onto my arm, handed me a single candlestick, and I crept through the silent house.