Page 8 of Much Ado About Mistletoe
“Before I can read, I must always have the silver, but no charge for this reading.”
I tried to hand it back to Cal, but he shook his head.
Maria’s voice dropped a knowing octave. “He wants to know your fortune, for his luck and life is linked with yours. Keep the coin, Princess, and show me your palms.”
I dropped the coin into the bag on my belt and extended my hands, palms up.
She cupped them in hers. “Square palms. Strong, spatulate fingers. Salt of the earth, a solid person others can depend on. You live to serve others, and at the same time, you’re determined to guide your own destiny.”
That was true enough. Not that I’d been particularly successful recently.
“In your determination, you see only what you wish, and fail to see what’s obvious to others.”
Wrong!
Yet Cal made that noise in his throat, the one he used to disguise amusement.
I turned to glare at him, but Maria’s deep, omniscient voice continued, “And yet…look at this thumb, the way it crooks out! Whimsy, intuition and imagination.”
“Buried deep.” Whimsy, intuition and imagination didnotfit my self-image.
“To be revealed by the right man,” Cal answered as if I spoke tohim, as if I challengedhim.
I whipped my head around to glare. Of course, his demeanor remained cool, untouched by my fiery temper. I should never have allowed him to pay the fee. “Why do I have different lines on my hands?” I wasn’t challenging her, exactly, but this art of the palms made no sense to me.
“The left hand is the hand you were born with—your talents, your character. The right hand shows how you use those traits. I look at them both, for to read you, I must know you, but the right hand shows what you make of your life. That’s the hand I look at to see your future.”
I didn’t shout,Nonsense!…but I thought it loudly.
For she chuckled. “Princess, look here.” She tapped a cluster of lines that crisscrossed on the fleshy pad beneath my fourth finger. “A star is always a sign of good fortune, or wealth, or talent well used. But to have one here—you know that this finger leads a direct blood vein to your heart. Thevena amoris.”
Latin for “vein of love,” and how interesting this illiterate wanderer spoke any Latin at all. Proof one should never make assumptions. Although the assumption I made now was obvious. “My mother, Lady Juliet Montague, has that star.”
Maria inclined her head.
“I’ll be blessed with a great love like hers?” Of course. The foretelling of a great love was required.
“Not at all like hers. In your hand, there’s passion—so important to you! And love. But also, a kind of madness, or forgetfulness.” Her black lashes fluttered, and her eyes rolled back in her head.
Which was darned spooky, may I say!
Her voice seemed dragged from a mysterious place hidden within her. “A desperate nightmare of seeking.”
“What?”She startled me. This wasn’t the way a fortune-teller pleased her clients!
She seemed to snap back to the present, and she traced across my palm from wrist to forefinger. “Look at this line! You’ll live long and be blessed with good health.”
That was more what I expected.
Her eyelids fluttered eerily again. “The wild places sing siren songs in your heart, and I see you running, your arms outspread, to embrace the wind.”
Now how did she know what I always did when I visited the Montague family estate?
“You will have adventures,” she said. “How interesting. A lady of Verona who has adventures.”
Cal sighed heavily.
She peered up at him. “When you began this, you knew the fire you sought to contain in your hands.”
