Katherina whispered, “Rosie, are you witless?” She took the edges of the curtains and tied them together.
I sank back against the seat. “I am. That was unwise.”
I listened to see if that creature put up a cry against us.
Yet the bearers ran steadily on, the sounds of thedisciplinatifaded behind us, and Papà and Cal began to speak in normal tones.
The crisis was over, at least for this night, at least for us.
Surely, it was over for all, yet I . . . felt dirtied, and I feared.
CHAPTER26
The party covered the last way more slowly and stopped in front of our home, where the servants at once flung the door wide and greeted us with light and warmth and hushed, worried voices. When the bearers set the steps, my knees trembled unsteadily as I descended. As if sensing my need of support, Cal caught my gloved hand, then turned to do the same for Katherina. Papà helped Imogene and Nurse; then he and Nurse turned and helped Mamma down onto the street and held her while she swayed.
I hurried to her side. “Mamma, are you ill?”
She smiled faintly, eyes closed. “The motion of the sedan chair did not sit well with our young winemaker.”
“Madam, good Lord Romeo and I will help you inside and lay you down.” Nurse pointed a somehow peevish finger at me. “Get these children in the house and get you all to bed, and let me hear no more about plots to unmask a killer or ghosts who speak to you or any other matter, except your upcoming nuptials to”—she pointed a much politer finger at Cal—“this prince, who you must go out of your way to please and appease that he might not change his mind before joining his life with an incendiary!”
Imogene watched them go into the house, then glanced at Cal. “Rosie, I don’t think she helped your cause at all.” She followed.
Katherina said, “My prince, Nurse didn’t mean that. Rosie never sets anything on fire that doesn’t deserve to be on fire.” She winced, realizing she also hadn’t helped my cause, and skittered into the house.
Indecisive, I stood on the street. Should I curtsy and enter the door held by Tommaso? Or should I speak to Cal, who stood immobile, his feet firmly planted on the stones of Verona’s street, gazing at me as if he . . .
I don’t know how he was gazing at me. So far, we’d firmly established I didn’t understand him at all.
I only knew that what I did now mattered. If I was alone with Cal, I’d talk to him frankly about Elder’s desire to rest at last; Nonna Ursula, who sensed her son walked; and Cal’s own need to find Elder’s killer. I’d assure him that our betrothal, while reluctant on my part, hadn’t changed my loyalty to Verona’s podestà. I’d do nothing to harm his reign. I thought he knew that, believed in me, yet sometimes such reassurance needed to be given and to be accepted.
Only . . . people were watching: his bodyguards, the outrunners, the sedan bearers, the neighbors, hungry for gossip, who peered out of their windows. If I could, I’d ask him to return, to arrive through the postern gate in their back wall and, as he’d done before, visit me on the back terrace—although that posed a danger of a different sort.
I knew he would not; the silence in the city had mutated into a low, menacing mutter. Thedisciplinatiwere on the move, and as the podestà, Cal would take matters in hand.
I made my decision, bowed my head, began to sink into a curtsy . . . and he caught my fingers. He eased the glove from my hand, thrust the leather into my other hand to grasp. He leaned close, and in his dark, velvety, quiet, seductive tone, which invariably pulled my focus to him, only him, and painted his shadowy face with passion, he said, “If you only set on fire that which deserves to be on fire, then I am deserving, for I . . . burn.” Pressing a kiss in my palm, as he seemed wont to do, he flicked my cloak back to bare my gown and pressed my hand, and his kiss, on the skin above my heart.
His gestures grew ever more heady and I grew ever more uneasily aware of how, now and previously, he eased me toward. . . intimacy.
“Good night, sweet Rosaline. Sleep in safety and dream of . . . dark red roses.” He released me and turned away.
Great farewell. Almost poetry. I hated to stomp on it, but I really needed to tell him. “I’ll dream of your safety in this night.”
He turned back. “Why would I not be safe?”
“My podestà, I saw a man, one of the flagellants, whose eyes flamed with a demon’s fire. He would burn Verona to the ground, bring anarchy to the world, and as he climbed the piles of bodies, he’d call it God’s work.”
He focused on me, and in the light of the torches, his eyes flamed a bit, too. “When did you see this man, Rosie?”
“Tonight. I looked through the gap in the sedan’s curtains.”
Holofernes covered his eyes. Dion groaned.
All that lovely romance evaporated from Cal’s expression, and his voice exploded in exasperation. “Rosaline! Why?”
“So I could see him and warn you.”
He reached out as if to clasp my shoulders and shake me, but his hands stopped merely inches away and he trembled as if fighting his urges. “Because you’re curious as a cat and as likely to die from it!”
