Page 3 of Much Ado About Mistletoe
“Indeed you will not!” Baldissere stopped her. “You’ve had a long journey and you must rest.”
“The room won’t be ready,” Susanna answered.
Nurse hurried down the stairs. “It is ready! Do you imagine you can catch Lady Rosaline unprepared? The sheets are warmed and ready for you to nap.”
“Oh, but—” Susanna cast a reluctant glance around. “I just got here! I haven’t seen Cesario! Where is he, pray tell?”
Mamma tucked her hand into Susanna’s arm. “Cesario has found a new mission as errand-runner for Prince Escalus. He roams the city delivering messages and fetching supplies, and never have I seen him so happy!”
“Yay for Cesario,” Emilia said softly.
I hugged her skinny shoulders. She was eight, the youngest daughter, friendly and outgoing, and fiercely resentful of the freedom allowed to the younger Cesario for no more reason than he was a male-child. She would have loved to run beyond the confines of Casa Montague, view new places, visit with strangers who would soon be her friends. But the world was not always a welcoming place, and females, however competent, remained confined in their homes and protected by their fathersand then their husbands. She shrugged me off, not rudely, but to indicate I shouldn’t pity her.
I patted her instead.
Mamma said, “Come, Susanna, it’s time for my nap, too. I find producing a litter is more wearing than bringing one child into the world at a time.”
Susanna walked with Mamma. “I would hardly call two a litter!”
Nurse followed them with the babies tucked one under each arm.
Baldissere sat down, picked up a hammer, and went to work on the walnuts. “Lord Romeo sent a message telling us to come early for family time before the wedding.” He was a handsome, amiable man of thirty, from a wealthy merchant family, and since his marriage, he had gained weight around the middle and lost a little more hair on the crown of his head. He would have been an acceptable husband for me.
I, on the other hand, would not have made him happy. Susanna, who so easily accepted guidance and a man’s right to be in charge, was his perfect mate, and although he would never admit it, I knew he was grateful for my clear-sighted maneuverings. “Where is Lord Romeo?” he asked.
While the children chattered and Tommaso and I extracted more of thepresepefrom the cupboard, another loud knock sounded on the door.
Emilia jumped to her feet. “It’s Vittoria!”
Which made sense. If Papà had sent a message to Baldissere and Susanna to come early, he would have sent the same to Florence, to PierAntonio and Vittoria, too. We’d not seen Vittoria since her wedding two years ago, and our most vivacious sister had been sorely missed.
But Prince Escalus appeared in the entrance to the atrium followed by his three stalwart companions, Dion, Marcellus and Holofernes.
Emilia subsided. “Oh. It’s you.”
Everyone else rose to their feet. We girls curtsied and Baldissere bowed, and Katherina poked Emilia in the shoulder until she rose and curtsied, too, but not without a muttered, “Lessen this formality, I pray. He’s family, lest there be another stabbing.”
The kid had a way of cutting right to the bone.
Heh.
Baldissere winced—he had, after all, been one of my suitors although he’d been fortunate enough to survive without a scratch—and in a distracting flurry, I hurried toward the prince, who held an ornately painted ceramic pot containing a lily blooming white and gold. “Cal, how lovely. Thank you!”
Proving he could be as gauche as a seven-year-old, Prince Escalus moved the pot out of range of my questing hands. “Where is Lady Juliet? I wish to present it to her.”
I stopped. “Oh.”
His sister, Princess Isabella, brushed past him and patted my arm. “He didn’t sleep. He’s grouchy.” She sailed over to the table and into the midst of my younger sisters, and in no time was picking the nut meat out of the shells.
“I grew this plant in my conservatory so it would bloom at this time of year; the lily symbolizes the purity of the virgin birth.” Cal frowned. “How does bringing your mother a plant make me grouchy?”
“Not grouchy at all,” I assured him. “Rather, very well thought out. May I keep it for her?” I shouldn’t have assumed he’d brought it for me, and it was most seasonally appropriate for him to bring a grateful gift to the woman who had delivered me, his betrothed, into the world. Indeed, the painting on thepot (which was slightly out of round) presented the nativity and glowed with rich-colored robes, gilded halos and the shaggy brown beasts that populated the stable.
Although…a couple of the beasts looked like giant frogs. And the star was frankly lopsided.
Cal saw me examining the images. “One of our local artists has an apprentice who tried his hand at this. He did a fair task, I think, for someone learning his trade.”
I smiled at the pot and at the lily. “Yes. Very much so.” I handed the plant to Tommaso and instructed him to take it to Nurse to be placed close by Mamma and Susanna and the babies, to be seen as soon as they woke.
