Page 22 of What Dreams May Come
“You believe I’d be happier to remainin ignorance.”
“We are often happier in our ignorance than our knowledge.” Another evasive reply couched in terms the playwright Guglielmo would employ, but I hastened to add, “You did ask that we Montagues help Princess Isabella lead a less isolated, less regal, and more normal existence. I swear to you, no harm has been done. She’s safe and asleep right now”—she had better be—“in Casa Montague. I beg that you leave the matter be. No one was hurt. She is chastened and has vowed she’ll never do such a thing again. I trust her word. Don’t you?”
“Indeed, but I’m not happy that my newly betrothed, who I’ve waited so long to possess and who has already faced such terrible peril, should find herself goingto the rescue.”
“It’s not what I would have chosen, but—”
“You lie!” His words lashed me withhis certainty.
“My prince?”
He paced toward me. “Tonight...” He glanced toward the east, where the sun’s approach tinted the dark dreamtime sky. “Last evening, you were trapped, hoist on your own petard, manipulated in the way you’d blithely imagine only you can contrive.” He seemed to expect an answer.
“Aye.” A surly agreement to a man who’d engineered my crushing defeat.
“I know not whether fortune brought this boyish adventure to you or whether you—”
I went from surly to snappish. “Fortune.Goodfortune, my prince. We’re both glad I was in the right place at the right time.”
He stepped in front of me. We stood in one of the many bowers created by trees and climbing roses and artfully placed seating. He could see my face,I knew, for I could see his and his always expertly concealed and possibly nonexistent emotions. “Excellent. I’d hate to think I’d misjudged your wisdom.”
“Or anything else about me, I trow.” For the man had told me, as if this was a sensible way to choose a wife, about the lists he’d used to catalogue my good and bad qualities. Was I more irked about the total lack of romance, which as a daughter of Romeo and Juliet I was bred to understand, or his accurate reading of my character traits? I didn’t know, nor right now did I care to face the truth...whatever it was. “Now, if you don’t mind, Ishould go in.”
He let me step by him. “Shall I tell you what you dare not confess even to yourself? Shall I tell you yourdarkest fear?”
I was exhausted. For what was left of this night, I wished for no more confrontation. I wanted my bed and enough time to sleep away the memory of this adventure. I took three steps, then irresistible curiosity brought me to a halt. I faced him. “What?”What? Huh? My darkest fear? What man ever thought of such a thing?“What do you know about mydarkest fear?”
“More than you, I vow.”
“What is that?”
Again the midnight voice and a steady gaze. “What do you consider yourdarkest fear?”
“I’ve never...” I remembered last night. “Being laughed at. Isn’t that everybody’sdarkest fear?”
“No.” He blatantly told me I was wrong aboutmyself.“You fear a man whois your equal.”
This guy was peculiar. Which I had suspected, but he seemed so intent, so sure of himself. Sort of scary. “I don’t! Why would I fear that? According to current wisdom, all men are my superior.” As I spoke the words, irony coated my tongue.
“Current wisdom.” He snapped his fingers in scorn. “You know what you are. You know what gifts you contain within your clever mind and beating heart.” Stepping close, he placed his palm on my chest between my breasts, and it seemed as if he fed a bolt of lightning into my body. “You fear boredom, marriage to a master who is not your equal in intelligence, wit, and spirit. A lord who traps you in a golden cage, believes you’re like other women, submissive, content to tend the house and please the man above allother things.”
I wanted to pull back, to demand he be like other men and never look below the surface. But that hand on my chest held me like a magnet, and when he flexed his fingers, I could scarcely breathe.
He whispered, “That’s not the life we’ll lead. We’ll have a daily truce, a nightly battle, until two bodies, minds, hearts become one and all the angels smile, for we are married and mated, loved and loving.”
I whispered in return, “You say things in the dark you would never sayin the light.”
“Yes.” Prince Escalus seemed to find nothing to marvel at there. He dropped his hand, and in a normal tone, he said, “We’ll not talk of this again. Prospero is banished, and the only proof this night ever happened is an odd legend of Verona’s wild masquerade.”
“I wear your ring.”
Most decidedly he said, “You’ll not remove the ring.”
“The ring is proof. People will see.” I did not add,clearly. I merely thought it loudly.
“We borrow Cupid’s wings and soar with them over the common bound, and people will see the diamond flashing above them and be dazzled.” Here he went with the poetry again. “The actual sequence of events will never occupy their minds.”
“Have youmetmy family?” My noisy, nosy, tactless family? “My prince, I cannot appear in the morning wearing a glorious betrothal ring when last night I didn’t have it. Every person in my family would take note, and under my mother’s interrogation, the secrecy of this night will be revealed.”
