Page 18 of Thus with a Kiss I Die
Elder was interested. He questioned me. I told him of the events in the garden, how Prince Escalus deliberately tricked me into kissing him rather than Lysander, how we were caught and now must be wed.Andhow when I explained to Lysander that I was misled, he had taken it amiss that I’d failed to discern the switch. “I’d never kissed either of them before, so how would I know the difference?”
After Elder got done laughing—FYI, laughing from a ghost sounds like an off-key madrigal—the judgmental old fart said, “Sounds like my son did the right thing by agreeing to marry you.”
“You mean, like afavor? Prince Escalus is doing me afavor? Did you hear the part aboutdeliberately? Hedeliberatelytricked me, because when he made a list of my wifely attributes and my decayed faults, I came out on the plus side.”
“He was ever a logical boy.” Elder approved.
I charged on. “He decided he wanted to marry me and rather than deal with messy emotions and actually being pleasant to me, or even proposing the match to my father like a civilized male, he publicly humiliated me. All Verona has heard the tittle-tattle and is laughing at me, and I haven’t dared to set foot out of Casa Montague since the scandal, at least not in daylight except to come here, and that in a covered sedan chair guarded by the prince’s bodyguards, and by the way, as I was carried through the streets, I could hear sniggering.” By the time I finished, I was bellowing. I knew I was bellowing, but I assured myself that it didn’t count as breaking my promise to my mother because Elder didn’t really exist.
Interestingly, Elder’s expression now grew serious. “I believed my son had a good brain for strategy, but Cal made a stupid mistake there.”
“Who’s Cal?”
“Escalus. His mother used to call him Callie, so I shortened it to Cal.”
Callie.Heh. I filed that away in my mind for future use. “I’m curious. What stupid mistake is that? Until this moment, you were his champion.”
“The greatest love shrivels at the sound of laughter. If he wishes for an amiable marriage, he should never have exposed you to scandal and mockery.”
“There’s nothing to shrivel. There’s no love between us.”
“Nor can there be until he makes amends. I’ll speak to him.”
“You said he couldn’t hear you.”
“I can still speak.” Elder’s voice held such a tone of royal command, I didn’t understand why he couldn’t make himself known to whomever he wished.
Probably because he was merely a phantom of my mind, the result of a plant exhalation. Maybe I was, in truth, unconscious somewhere—my recent fever had forced me to live through amazing and terrifying nightmares and memories, and I knew that was possible.
I asked, “What difference does it make? I vowed never to wed unless I loved and he loved, and the union between us would be as amorous and devoted as has been shown to me in my own home.”
“We can’t all be Romeo and Juliet.” Elder sounded prosaic.
“To be truly together, body and soul—it can be done.” I believed that, although few others seemed to. “All else is distant politeness, infidelity, indifference, and, all too often, loathing.”
“I thought youth was a time of idealism and romance.”
“I have a mind, sir, and my logic is the match of any man’s. All that a woman of good sense has to do is look around at the misery created by two ill-joined people to want to avoid that state.”
“With an attitude like that, I don’t think you should marry my son!”
“We are agreed on one thing, then. The only one who should have compromised me is Lysander!” I kicked the stone post and winced at the twinge to my already bruised toe. “Now I have to get married to . . . to . . . to the prince of Verona!” For the first time, the enormity of what now faced me—social leadership, political maneuvering, being a wife and chattel to a man I didn’t love—struck me and I burst into tears.
CHAPTER10
“Oh, blast,” I heard Elder mutter. “I don’t like crying women.”
“Then go away!” I sank down on the floor, pulled my knees up to my chin, and rocked and wept. Loudly. Freely. Whenever I opened my eyes, I could see his feet uncomfortably shifting back and forth. I closed my eyes and wept some more. I don’t cry often, so when I do, I make a good job of it.
At last, Elder sat beside me and said, “I’d hug you, but you wouldn’t enjoy the sensation.”
I shook my head. “Don’t hug me. Don’t comfort me. Go away. I don’t want anybody to see me like this.”
“I don’t have a body, so I’m not strictly anybody.Anyway, I can’t go away. I need you.”
That made my breath catch and my tears slow. “Of course. The former podestà isn’t merely a ghost who appears randomly to me. You want something.” At this moment, I loathed all men, living and dead.
“Ineedsomething,” Elder corrected.
