Thus With a Kiss I Die

            A large portrait caught my eye, a man of impressive physique and weathered beauty. His shoulder-length blonde hair had been artfully highlighted, his dark eyebrows served as a frame for his alert green eyes, his unsmiling mouth, sculptured cheekbones and determined chin bespoke a man of authority and responsibility. I wandered toward it, trying to comprehend how it was possible for mere wood plank and paint to portray a face so alert his gaze seemed to be watching me. “Who is this?”

            “My father, Prince Escalus the Elder. Alberti painted him as Papà received the first rumbles of rebellion, and captured a mighty likeness of his sense of responsibility for the unrest and his ongoing schemes to turn the tide. After the uprising, much strife had changed his countenance. When he rescued me from the Acquasasso dungeons, he spoke more wisely and looked more haggard, a man who’d given all for his city and feared for the future of his family.”

            “When was he—?”

            “That very night he was drugged and stabbed in his bed, and I, to my eternal shame, have not been able to find his killer.”

            I knew the story, comprehended the prince’s tragedy, loss and sense of responsibility. As I looked up at the picture, my betrothed joined me, standing behind and to the right, and I looked between Prince Escalus, a man of shadow and scars, and the portrait. “You don’t look like your father at all. He’s very handsome.”

            Prince Escalus gave a bark.

            I’d heard that sound once before. I was fairly sure it was his form of laughter, and immediately I realized what I’d said. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant—”

            “I know what you meant. I resemble my paternal grandmother, a formidable woman who spreads terror before her like a farmer spreads manure.”

            I sputtered a laugh. “I have indeed heard such.”

            “Soon enough you can form your own opinion.”

            Without thinking, I snipped, “One more thing to look forward to.” At once I realized I had broken my vow to my mother and myself, and swept around to face him. “Not that I—”

            He was leaning down, leaning close, eyes closed, nostrils quivering.

            “What are you doing?” I demanded.

            His eyes popped open, and we stood face to face.

            “Were you smelling me?” How bizarre was that?

            He didn’t straighten up or back away. “In the past, I’ve noted your hair smells like a flower.”

            “A flower.”

            “A rose. A dark red rose. One with velvety petals.”

            “Dark red? You know what a color smells like?” Then, “In the past, you’ve smelled my hair?” I didn’t know how to respond. Outrage? Confusion? Laughter? I experienced them all.

            “I don’t know why dark red. Your hair’s so black it has blue highlights. I saw the whole glorious length of it, do you recall? In the moonlight?”

            “Yes. I recall.” Thank God my mother had made me promise to be all that was polite because the memory was so uncomfortable I’d have punched him in the pizzle right there. “When you made the list of my virtues and my undesirable characteristics, which side did ‘her hair smells like a dark red rose’ go on?”

            Because, gentle reader, by his own account, he’d done exactly that; made a detailed list of what qualities I had that would make me a good wife and what qualities I embodied that weighed against me. Not that I held that cold, logical approach against him…

            You’re right. In my family we looked not for riches or pulchritude; everlasting love ruled our lives.

            He said, “I like the scent of a dark red rose. It inspires me with…dark red passion.”

            An almost inscrutable answer except that now, as daylight fled and the autumn evening began its reign, I noted many things: although he was scarred by the tortures he’d endured at the hands of the House of Acquasasso and not (as I’ve said) a handsome man, his eyes were large and heavy-lidded, changeable as the sea, seductive in their intense focus…on me. I, who had felt nothing but a burning humiliation at the clever and public way he’d entrapped me, now recalled how he’d laid me across his lap, wrapped himself around me, kissed me until wit had flown and what took its place burned under my skin like cold, still silver heated to liquid lust.

            The lust had not, as I thought, dissipated in the cold light of day, but only awaited the dusk and the man to heat again, and course through my veins, my nerves, my mind.

            He grasped my left hand and looked into my palm. “Do you still have the betrothal kiss I placed therein?”

            I nodded, because that was, in fact, what he’d given me on the night of my humiliation and our betrothal. He’d spoken of his admiration for my courage and my loyalty to saving my family. He’d pressed a kiss on my skin and wrapped my fingers around it and bade me keep it close to my heart and, as Nurse had loudly and publicly noted, to my dismay I did find myself occasionally and unexpectedly holding my fist to my chest.

            Now the prince leaned in. His breath feathered across my skin, his gaze compelled my eyes to close and—

            Carried on the breeze, a voice called my name. “Rosaline…”

            I jerked my head around. I looked down the gallery, expecting to see the figure of a man.

            Nobody was there. No breeze ruffled the air.

            “What?” Prince Escalus's dagger sang as he drew it, and he looked, too. “What’s wrong?”

            “Didn’t you hear that?” I trod the carpet toward the far, dim end of the long walk. “Someone called me.”

            Prince Escalus looked around again, and gradually re-sheathed his dagger. “I heard nothing. Who called you?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Are you making sport of me, Lady Rosaline?” In a moment, the prince’s voice had changed from summer warm to winter chill.

            “I am not, sir!”

            “Is the man you heard Lysander, forever with you in your head and heart?”

            “No, I… No! I wouldn’t so dishonor your home by such pretense.”

            “For I tell you now, I’ll not have the ghost of that youth haunting my marriage bed.”

            With those words, my promise to my mother burnt to cinders. “In your marriage bed, sir, you’ll get, sir, what you’ve earned by your cold analysis and unworthy deception. Now on my own, sir, I’ll explore the palace further and trust that no man from within or without will summon me in any unprovoked manner.” By the time I was done with my magnificently indignant speech, I may have been shouting, for as I stormed away, Prince Escalus winced.

            Served him right, the arrogant, petulant, anticipated-by-him master of me.

            I walked—nay, I stalked—down the great walk to the far corner, aware all the time he watched with a judgmental gaze and wondering if he’d be foolish enough to try to stop me. I entertained myself with imagining his apology and my haughty rejection thereof. I turned the corner and gave rein to my increasing outrage with dire mutterings and a good, solid kick at one of the finely carved, heavy wood tables.

            To my horror, the tall vase thereon rattled and tipped, and I caught it barely in time. As I cradled it in my arms, I remembered my father’s admonitions, my mother’s lectures and the scar that had been my constant companion since the last time I’d lost my temper.

            Besides, my toe hurt from the impact.

            Meticulously I returned the vase to the table. Shouting imprecations at the prince and storming away was greatly satisfying, but I’d learned from other iterations the return usually involved some form of uncomfortable apology. And I was pretty sure it would have to come from me, because apparently the Lord God’s eleventh commandment was,

Men do not apologize, no matter how wrong they are.

            I really hated that one.

            “Lady Rosaline…” I heard the faint call again. But from where?

            I whirled to face…nothing. No one stood behind me. For as far as I could see, the great walk was empty. “Who’s there?”

            No reply.

            “You kids better stop teasing me.” For that was the only thing that made sense; Princess Isabella had led my siblings into a hidden passage—great Veronese houses were riddled with hidden passages—or they’d slipped from curtain to curtain in a nefarious intention to frighten me. Surely the palace servants, for all their skulking, wouldn’t play such a trick. No. That made no sense. It had to be the kids. At any moment, I’d hear a childish giggle and…

            “Lady Rosaline…”

            A door stood open that had previously been shut and the mysterious voice seemed to originate there.

            Why, you ask, would a sensible woman follow an eerie voice up a narrow, steep, dark staircase? Surely that was as ill-advised as going into the cellar in a thunderstorm to investigate a noise when a murderer is on the loose.

            The answer was simple; because the alternative was apologizing to the prince for my impetuous speech while at the same time practicing restraint so I don’t kindly point out what an ass he’d been and that he deserved every word.

            I climbed that stairway, climbed another stairway, climbed another, paused to gasp (my recovery was not yet complete and my layers of clothing heavy) and considered whether I was being a deluded fool.

            Probably.

            I almost turned back, but again I heard the voice call my name. Leaning down, I pulled the stiletto from the sheath on my ankle. I exited the last open door onto the stone balcony that surrounded the top of tallest palace tower, there to find myself alone.

            I did not doubt that I’d conjured the man’s voice out of my own longing to be out of this marriage trap in which I found myself—but you’d think that the prince was right; if I was going to hallucinate, it would be Lysander’s voice I’d hear.

            Sheathing the stiletto at my ankle, I straightened to study the view.

            All of Verona lay beneath me in the bathed in twilight; the hills, the Roman arena and the expansive piazzas. I leaned my elbows on the rail and watched the shadows of the sun-kissed clouds slip across Verona’s red stone streets, sprawling markets, golden buildings with their rosy roofs, and wander along the showy crescents of Adige River. I stared, enraptured, as the occasional torch moved through the streets and the glow of firelight and candles spilled from the public houses. It was beautiful, my city, and I loved it with all my heart, yet right now, if I could follow those clouds and those shadows, and travel the countryside and escape even for a few moments these city walls, how swiftly I’d leave this all behind!

            “Lady Rosaline.”

            The voice, much amplified, spoke near me, and I jumped so hard I bit my tongue. I whirled to face—a man emerging from the stone wall. I mean, like, materializing through cold, hard rock.

            I’d seen this man recently.

            Prince Escalus the Elder. The man in the portrait. The man with the golden hair and the striking green eyes. The father of Prince Escalus the Younger and Princess Isabella, who for lo these many years had been moldering in the grave.

            “Wait.” I pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re dead.”