CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 30

Should I worry about my father confronting Lysander and Prince Escalus? I didn't think so; both of the younger men would hesitate to try to harm famed swordsman Romeo of the house of Montague, and for more reason than simply fear for their lives.

Nurse sat outside my room in a rocking chair, a candle beside her, her sewing in her lap. She looked up when I walked toward her. "I always thought when your parents had a son, he would be the cause of much labor. But Imogene can tear a gown faster than I can mend them."

I smiled. Imogene adored her pretty gowns and adored hard play. The two weren't compatible. "What did she do now?"

"She found out the walnut tree was healthy, took a celebratory climb, jumped from one branch to another, caught her sash and hung like ripe fruit until Gardener got a ladder and freed her." She sighed. "Did you get Lord Romeo straightened around?"

"I believe it was mutual." I came and sat at her feet. "Will there ever come a time when I'll have wisdom?"

She laughed and lifted my chin. "Have you merely now realized you have none?"

"This past day, the knowledge has been growing on me. Stop cackling and answer the question."

"Wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from unwise decisions, so—when you're wise in one area, you'll be tested in another."

"I was afraid you were going to say something enigmatic like that."

She started to stand.

I caught her skirt and yanked her back down. "On the way back, I was contemplating today, as one does, and I found it interesting that you never confessed what you'd discovered about Duke Stephano and his murderous tendencies."

She twitched her skirt out of my grasp. "You commanded me not to investigate."

"Yes, because for all that you're a nosy, imperious, scheming old woman, I love you." I pressed her hand. "I know better than to think you listened."

She huffed, but only a little. "I love you, too, so no, I didn't listen. I spoke to Duke Stephano's servants and his brother—all assured me he had poisoned his wives, one by one."

"Duh."

"Yet no one, not even Friar Laurence, knows who sold him the poisons."

"But surely through the years—"

"Never. Not once."

"Someone else bought them for him." Nurse had already said that no one knew—and in the case of Duke Stephano, everyone would be glad to smear him. "Or . . . or he took them from the gardener or housekeeping by stealth."

"Perhaps."

"Yet it seems a man so arrogantly proud of his poisoning habit wouldn't stoop to stealth."

"I thought that, too."

We two sat, me on the floor, her in the chair, and stared at each other.

At last she hefted herself to her feet and offered me her hand. "I've thunk myself blind coming up with possibilities, but none that fit his character or all the circumstances. If you figure it out in your clever little mind, enlighten me. It seems if we picked up the right piece of the puzzle and put it in place, we could at once see the whole picture. As it is, with one stabbing and one poisoning, we've got no answers, a murderer or two on the loose, and like it or not, all eyes are fixed on you."