CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

Two nights later, while my brother and still-living-at-home sisters gathered to sit on my bed and make comments about my betrothed, Nurse trussed me into my scarlet velvet gown like a Christmas goose on a rich man's platter.

"He has boils on his bottom!" Cesario, my father's heir, bounced on the bed and flung out insults with all the subtlety of the six-year-old he was.

"His nose hairs and boogers are the most luxuriant in Verona." Eleven-year-old Imogene had begun to mature beyond potty insults . . . but only but.

"Pimples in his ears!" Cesario shouted.

"Extend your arms," Nurse commanded me.

I did, and she pulled the pearl-encrusted silk sleeves up to my shoulders and laced them onto the gown's shoulders.

"His nose tells a lie." Thirteen-year-old Katherina had moved from childish insults to insults so tactful they could be uttered in public . . . a man's nose was supposed to be an indication of his masculine endowments, and Duke Leir Stephano's nose was an impressive edifice indeed.

"He smells his own farts!" Cesario said.

"You are truly our father's son," I told him.

Seven-year-old Emilia, the wittiest of us all, added her long-awaited, deadly insult, lisping with the loss of her two front teeth. "I can't quite remember his name. Is it Duke Leir Stephano? Or is it . . . Duke lo Sterco?"

The children cheered and bumped shoulders and slapped backs for, in the vulgar tongue, lo sterco means dung, droppings. . . shit.

As they celebrated, I said, as an older sister must, "You should not insult such a powerful and wealthy man." Yet I smiled at them, touched by their loving support.

Cesario stopped bouncing and flung himself at me. "Rosie, please don't marry him. Please, don't. Stay with us. We need you. We love you!"

My sisters joined him, hugging me while I embraced them with tears in my eyes, and Nurse squawked and admonished them to not undo her hours of labor. We were a family, no doubt of that. We looked like one another. We looked like our parents. We wore the same expressions, used the same gestures, smiled the same smiles, shouted with the same voice. How dear they were! How much I would hate to leave them for another house or, worse, for the next world.

Nurse shooed the children out, promising to take them to a hidden place in the ballroom where they could watch the festivities. Shutting the door behind them, she turned to me with her eyes round in her practical, square face—and burst into tears.

I hurried to her side and embraced her. "Dear Nurse, does my appearance displease you so much?" I was teasing; trying to get her to puff up in indignation that I had maligned her labor.

Instead, she sobbed. "I'll go with you to your evil husband's house as your maid. I'll defend you against all cruelty." She showed me the dagger she stored at all times in a scabbard up her sleeve. She claimed it was her dinner knife, yet no mere eating blade had ever been made of such fine steel or kept so oiled and honed.

I was touched and appalled at the same time. My nurse was of a great age, perhaps even as old as sixty years. She had been my mother's nurse as well as mine, and her caring heart should not be sacrificed in my cause. We had both etched enough lines on her dear face. "Good nurse," I said, "let us not talk about murder before marriage. I might yet escape Duke Stephano's perilous yoke."

She took my proffered handkerchief and blew her nose heartily. "I buried your mother and saw her resurrected. I fear I wouldn't be so lucky with you." She hurried to find me another elegant cloth of snowy linen.

"Tonight will be a glorious celebration of life. Let us eat and drink while we may. Promise me you'll get your share and enjoy the fruits of your labor." For my nurse was always my right hand during party planning.

"Once I get the little louts to bed," she promised, and produced the ornate, lacy white cuffs that would adorn the ends of my sleeves.

I extended my hands to her, one at a time. "You shouldn't speak of them so. They do adore you, and you know you couldn't leave them."

She laced with more vigor than was necessary. "I go where the need calls me, and when you marry the dread Stephano, you'll need me more than they do."

I rested my hand on Nurse's dark gray linen sleeve. "My mother will need you." I shook my arms to settle everything into place. "She's breeding again, you know."

"No. Has she told you?"

"No."

"But you know. How do you always know?" Nurse scrutinized me, her headdress firmly in place and the sash that framed her face a flattering shade of blue that tinted her winter-gray eyes.

"She glows." I cleared my throat of the emotion of the moment. "So no more about coming with me to my new home. With you and me both gone, and mother going into confinement, this place would fall into ruin."

"Yes. What awful timing she has!" Nurse leaked tears as again she straightened my skirt, tied my lace cuffs onto the ends of my sleeves, and tucked a wild curl of black hair beneath my pearl-encrusted cap. "You're even more beautiful than your mother."

"No, I'm not. I look too much like my father for that." I waggled my Satanic eyebrows at her.

"True. But why Duke Stephano has fixated on you, I do not understand."

I wasn't offended. "Nor do I. I've lived this long without any man wildly desiring me. Why him? Why now? Duke Stephano is not the type to move the earth for love or passion. He wants wealth. I can't give him that."

Nurse's eyes narrowed. "That's true, little madam. I wonder what drives the devil's apprentice to seek your hand."

At once I was alarmed. "You're not to snoop."

She pretended not to hear me. "Go to your parents and enter the ballroom with them."

"You could get yourself killed," I said more urgently.

"Make sure you stay close to their sides and never let Duke Stephano get you alone."

"Good nurse, I'll not let that beast near me, but you must also promise you'll not risk your neck in pursuit of some imaginary evil plan when all the man wants to do is despoil another virgin."

"You'd think he'd had his fill," she said in disgust.

"You would think. I understand the initiation is quite painful."

"Where there is love—" Nurse said, clearly thinking of my parents and their constant, loud, frenzied lovemaking.

"There won't be."

"No. But a man of skill is to be cherished."

I started to disparage Duke Stephano, but the memory of Titania's glowing face and whispered confession after her wedding night choked off my words. He had pleasured her, she said, again and again, and I had no reason to disbelieve her.

"Go on, now. You know you must check my lady's flower arrangements. Sometimes I believe she sees colors like a man."

Flawed, she meant. "I have wondered," I conceded.

Nurse glanced at the light outside my window. "Best to hurry. The guests will arrive soon."

I hurried.

The Montague house was constructed (as were many Veronese homes of the wealthy) with a fortified fa?ade on a cobbled city street. Families feuded, their fortunes rose and fell, their servants included armed mercenaries. Eleven years ago, and I well remember that uncertain time, the Acquasasso family had sought to overthrow Prince Escalus Leonardi the elder, the podestà of Verona, by stealth and deception. They failed, but only after he had sacrificed his life for his wife, who was with child, and his son and heir, Prince Escalus the younger.

The Acquasasso family was exiled. Their allies were much reduced in circumstances. Prince Escalus the younger had risen from the ashes, scarred, determined on revenge and then on enforcing peace on the city. He did so by whatever ruthless means necessary.

So the Montague home had its forbidding exterior defenses, but within hid a passion for beauty and luxury. Verona had grown on the banks of the Adige River and two other crossroads, and those routes brought the city wealth and opulence. Our spacious home was built around an open square of gravel paths and potted plants, leafy trees and places where a fire could be laid on a cool winter's evening. Mosaic tables and sumptuous lounges invited one to take a meal at one's leisure.

The three-story house itself was all long, open corridors and decorative columns, on the ground floor rooms for entertaining, the second floor for sleeping and family leisure, and the top floor for the kitchen and the servants' quarters

As you can tell by my adoring description, I loved my home and wished only to remain under its roof and tend to its needs until the house could pass to another Montague generation.

Now I hurried down the corridor toward the ballroom, and a realization seized me. My nurse, in her guile, had distracted me before I could extract her vow not to snoop into Duke Stephano's reasons for wanting this marriage. What's worse, I'd made her realize she couldn't come with me to my new home to help me survive the wicked duke. What risks would she take to secure my safety?

As I remembered the blade she carried, I turned the corner and ran into a man walking backward at a rapid clip.

Under the force of the impact, he staggered.

Being of lesser stature, I lost my feet and smacked hard on the marble floor. The impact forcibly expelled my breath. Although I gasped, I couldn't get it back. Damn the tight-laced bodice!

When I finally started breathing again, the man was on his knees beside me, gingerly patting my back, stammering apologies. "I apologize, fair lady. I was distracted. I was—"

I took a big breath in and at last could speak. "You were walking backward."

"I thought I heard someone sneaking behind me." He extended his hand to me.

I took it and he hauled me to my feet. I looked down one corridor, then down the other. "There seems to be no one."

"No, but I imagined . . ." This gentleman half turned away, the way Cesario did when he was guilty of something.

I looked down at myself and huffed in disgust. All Nurse's ministrations had been for naught. I was disheveled. My gown was wrinkled. My hair hung in waves around my face, and when I put my hands up, I discovered my beaded cap was eschew. As I tucked and pinned, I looked up to my assailant.

He was staring at my bosom, splendidly displayed by my neckline. Of course. A man will look if he can.

Then . . . oh, then, dear reader, he looked into my face. His green eyes grew dazed, then intent. In an instant, the heavens opened, the angels sang, and our two souls united for all time.

In some sarcastic corner of my brain, I noted that it didn't hurt that he was gorgeous. But I shushed that part and allowed the moment to sweep me up.

"My lady." He passed his hand over his eyes as if he couldn't comprehend my beauty or how to respond to it. "I am a clumsy beast to have so overturned a creature as bright and lovely as the silver stars in a black satin sky."

Keep talking.His voice was deep and warm, vibrant with sincerity, yet he had a little squeak as he said the last words that warmed my heart.

His straight dark blond hair was streaked with strawberry. His complexion was clear, his ears a little too large, his clothes were of the finest make and cloth, although someone should have told him not to wear that color of magenta on his cap. His lips were full and soft, made for kissing, and I realized this was the moment I hoped would never happen yet secretly dreamed of.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, I had fallen in love at first sight.