Page 9 of Much Ado About Mistletoe
Driven to speak, I said, “Me? I must protest. I’m not fire!”
Neither of them paid me heed. Rather, she twisted my wrists to show me the sides. “One love. Forever.”
I peered at the lines, but I couldn’t see what was so obvious to her, and briefly I experienced a moment of sadness. I knew Cal and I would craft a good marriage, but without love, how hollow it would seem.
Cal asked the question he’d given up the coin to find out. “How many children will we have?”
I expected to hear promises of dozens of children, filling the palace with crawling diapered butts and dramatic monologues delivered in lisping childish voices, of poetic diatribes about a misplaced toy and lost front teeth. For fortune-tellers told you what you wanted to hear, right?
CHAPTER FIVE
But Maria hesitated. “The princess has suffered injury.”
I had, more than once. First, there was the murder of my betrothed, then Cal’s father’s ghost demanding I identify his assassin, then my violent encounter with the flagellant insurgents…
I put my hand to my belly. I’d been kicked hard enough to faint, to bleed…
“Yes,” she said. “That’s it.”
“Ah.” I risked a glance at Cal.
He stood immobile, stony-faced and still cool, as if this conversation existed apart from him.
I said, “My life has certainly been…interesting in unpredictable ways. But I don’t seekinteresting. I do not enjoy it.”
“People who do what’s right regardless of the challenges are by nature interesting. Doing what’s honorable and honest requires bravery. Look!” Maria tapped the mound of flesh on the outer edge of my palm, then the mound above my thumb. “Physical strength and mental strength to match. No matter your fears, no matter how reasonable they are, you march forward into the fray.”
Cal snorted. “She rushes. She runs. She sprints.”
“I do not!” I had caution. Sometimes it was necessary to overrule it.
Maria ignored me and spoke to Cal. “You admire her.”
“Yes.”
His one-word admission did much to ease my…
I didnotbelieve Maria could see the future. Why was I allowing her to disturb me? Because she was suggesting that I might not be fertile, and her words had brought an unacknowledged worry to the forefront of my thoughts. Since that kick and the ensuing trauma, my menses had changed. Inside me, something had happened. And not surprisingly, when Cal explained why he had chosen me as his bride, fertility topped off his list, right alongside my organizational skills and—ahem—my nicetettes. All stolid, if not solid, reasons for marriage.
You can imagine how I, the daughter of legendary romantics, Romeo and Juliet, reacted to being trapped in a marriage built on such mundane reasons. Yes, I do pride myself on my good sense. But if I can’t have glorious? If passion and poetry and the glorious romance I witnessed between my parents are beyond my reach?
Then I believed there was still happiness to be found in creating a happy family. I’m good with children. I like children. I know what you’re thinking; good thing, considering I have seven siblings. Also not news; a woman of my time is valued for her success in providing the next generation.
But for Prince Escalus? Whose already small family had been decimated by the Acquasasso revolt? For the man who led Verona? Children,sons, were his reason for marriage, and like him, I’d never had a doubt about my fertility.
Maria bent her dark, knowing, and now compassionate gaze on me. “Children will come. But not swiftly and not easily. All the proofs of love must be made. All the sacrifices of self must be performed.”
I thought about her words. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You will.” She glanced over my shoulder, and suddenly her attention focused elsewhere. She squeezed my hand hard. “There she is. There’s my little girl. How she’s grown!”
I whipped around and looked, too.
One skinny, surly-looking, short-for-her-age half-feral girl of ten years in an orphan’s uniform walked along holding a three-year-old boy’s hand. He also wore an orphan’s uniform, he had blond hair and dark lashes, and he chattered to Eva with a bright and cheerful manner that proclaimed how much he trusted her.
When Maria didn’t rush to greet her daughter, I asked, “Will you not speak to her?”
“No.” She pulled her dark shawl over her face. “Leaving her was the hardest thing I ever did. If she thought I came for her, if she begged and I weakened, someday she’d curse me and I’d curse myself. I simply wanted to see her, to know she was well. No, this is better.”
