Still Star-Crossed (26 page)

She wheeled Hecate about, starting down the dusty road back to Verona. After a minute, she heard Benvolio’s soft curse behind her and the clop of Silvius’s hooves. He, at least, heeded her counsel.

The clouds grew gray above them as they rode.

Benvolio cast an apprehensive glance toward the sky. In the scant hours since they’d left the abbey, the sky had gone from a soft, dusty blue to angry gray, and the air had developed an ominous chill. Ahead of him, Rosaline’s hair whipped wildly in the wind as she leaned over Hecate’s charging neck.

He drew even with her. “Lady!” he shouted over the wind. “This sky bodes ill! ’Twill be a hard storm! We ought to find an inn for the night.”

She shook her head, urging Hecate even faster. “We must press on,” she called.

“Rosaline.” He reached out and grasped Hecate’s reins, pulling both horses to a walk. “We’re no good to Verona if we lose our way in a storm. We cannot return tonight.”

Rosaline’s chin was rising mulishly, an expression that Benvolio was beginning to learn boded ill for his chances of changing her mind. “I beg of thee,” he said quickly. “I am
already falsely believed responsible for one death. Do not make me truly responsible for thine.”

She rolled her eyes. “ ’Twould not be thy fault.”

“Thou told’st me when we left the abbey that thou didst trust me with thy life,” he retorted. “If thou shouldst perish on our way, ’twill prove that sour-faced abbess right.”

Before Rosaline could respond, they heard a clap of thunder, and, indeed, Hecate began to dance nervously. “Very well,” Rosaline called, soothing the trembling mare with strokes to the neck. “At the next village we shall stop for the night.”

“Agreed.”

They rode on, but their progress was soon slowed as the storm began in earnest. The wind whipped the rain into their faces, the trees swaying above them in the gale as the sky went black. Benvolio rode on Rosaline’s windward side, trying to shield her, but there was little he could do. The horses struggled, slipping and sliding as their hooves sank into the mud.

They were less than a league from the village, by his calculation, when his worst fears came to pass. Lightning struck a tree just a few hills away, and at the blinding flash and deafening crack, Silvius reared, shrieking. For several heart-pounding instants Benvolio struggled to calm the terrified animal. Just when he settled all four hooves back to the ground, Benvolio heard another scream. He looked around to find that Rosaline had not been so lucky. Hecate was bolting up the path, Rosaline clinging desperately to her reins.

She disappeared into the trees, but as he dug his heels into Silvius’s sides, he caught a flash of her crimson cloak far ahead. The narrow path twisted down the mountain above the bank of a river; yesterday it had been a sleepy trickle far below, but the rain had swollen it to a roar so powerful he could scarcely hear Silvius’s hooves strike the ground. His eyes strained through the gloom, but he could not catch another glimpse of her. And then he heard her cry out again. Leaning over his horse’s neck, he urged the steed faster, rounding the bend just in time to see Hecate rear. Lightning flashed, and for a moment he saw Rosaline frozen, clinging desperately to Hecate’s neck, before her horse lost its footing and horse and rider plunged over the side of the bank.

“No!”

Benvolio was barely aware that the hoarse cry he heard had been ripped from his own throat. He threw himself off Silvius’s back, racing to the broken, crumbling spot on the path where she’d vanished. “Rosaline!” he yelled. “Rosaline!” Falling to his knees, he strained his eyes for any sign of her. All he could see was a steep, muddy drop of a hundred feet to sharp rocks and white water below. No one could survive that fall.

She’d been swept away. She was dead.

It was as though Silvius had kicked him in the chest. Benvolio couldn’t breathe. Heedless of the rain and the wind, he curled to the ground, hands pressed to his forehead, eyes wide but unseeing.
She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead
.

And then lightning flashed again, and a streak of crimson caught his eye.

Crawling on his hands and knees to the edge of the cliff, he peered down over the edge. Yes! There it was, perhaps ten feet below the path. A small rocky outcropping jutted from the side of the cliff, and on it lay Rosaline’s crumpled form.

As he watched, she stirred and groaned. Heart in his throat, he called, “Rosaline!”

She struggled to sit up. “Benvolio?”

“Art thou hurt?”

“Not badly, I think.”

“Move not.” Running back to Silvius, he found a length of rope tied to his saddle. He tied one end to a tree and knotted a loop in the other end, then threw it to Rosaline.

She slipped her head and shoulders through the sling he’d fastened for her. “Hold fast,” he called down. She nodded, gripping it tightly. Benvolio went down on his belly, hauling up the rope. His chest burnt—his injury made this far more difficult than it ought to be. He felt his palms begin to slip. He gritted his teeth and pulled harder.

Just as he thought he could do no more, Rosaline’s hands appeared, pulling herself up. Benvolio reached a hand out and she grasped it. He hauled her over the edge, and then she was there, she was safe, and they collapsed to the muddy ground in a heap.

Benvolio sat up, pulling her to her knees. “Art thou well? Art thou sound?” His hands chased over her shoulders, her arms, her head, searching for injury.

Her hands grasped his wrists as she managed to give him a shaky smile. “I am unhurt.”

He cupped her face in his hands, leaning his forehead
against hers. His breath was coming in deep gasps; he could not seem to calm his racing heart. She was all right. She was alive. She was
alive
.

He kissed her.

He felt her breath catch as his mouth slanted over hers, desperate and possessive. His hands threaded through her hair as hers fisted in his tunic. There was no decision in his mind to pull her closer, no thought except the need to
feel
that she still lived. He crushed her against him, every inch of them pressed together from shoulders to hips to knees as his mouth explored hers.

A crash of thunder broke them apart on a gasp. Her fingertips brushed her swollen lips as she stared at him, wide-eyed. Benvolio swallowed. He had no idea what to say.

He released her and stood. “We’d best away,” he said. “We must find shelter.”

Rosaline ducked her head and nodded, getting to her feet as well and trying to little avail to clean some of the mud from her gown and hair. “Hecate is gone,” she said in a shaking voice. “She was swept away. I am sorry—”

He brushed away her apology gruffly. “Let us begone. Silvius can carry us both.” He helped her onto Silvius’s back before mounting in front of her. Rosaline wrapped her arms around him from behind, and Silvius set off down the path once more.

Luckily, they had not strayed far from the main road. Even there, though, conditions were treacherous, as fallen branches dotted their path. Keeping them safe took all Benvolio’s
attention, for which he was grateful. He did not care to examine what in the world he had just done.

Although, with Rosaline’s arms about his waist and her warm weight against his back, it was hard not to dwell on it.

After an hour or so he spotted a village ahead. He urged weary Silvius on until they reached it. There was an inn, thank heaven, by all appearances clean and well-appointed. He drew Silvius to a halt outside. From Rosaline’s steady breaths at his neck, he knew she was asleep. He squeezed her hand.

“Rosaline,” he said. “Wake.”

“Mmm,” a weary voice came over his shoulder. “Are we home?”

“No, lady. Verona is still many leagues off. Shall we pass the night here?”

Her warmth left his back; he tried not to miss it. “We cannot press on? No, I suppose not. Very well.”

They rented two rooms for what remained of the night. The innkeeper was irritated at being woken, but Benvolio mollified him with a generous tip.

After seeing Rosaline safely to her room, Benvolio collapsed on his bed, asleep almost instantly.

Benvolio!
She woke up with a gasp.

Rosaline sat stark upright in bed, heart pounding. Before she slept she’d been too weary to give much consideration to
the night’s events. Now that she’d had a few hours’ rest, it weighed so heavily upon her mind that it had woken her up.

He had kissed her.
Kissed
her. And no gentlemanly kiss upon the hand, either. This was a lover’s kiss. What was she to do?

Perhaps he had not meant anything by it. Some men, she knew, would take such casual advantage of a lady alone. In some ways, it would be easier to dismiss it as but his momentary whim. But Benvolio was more honorable than that. And the tenderness she’d seen in his eyes spoke of something more than a fleeting fancy.

Rosaline swung her feet onto the floor, wincing at the aches throughout her body. Her fall had left her more bruised than she’d realized. Gingerly she felt the back of her skull; there was a throbbing lump there where her head had struck the rocks.

A knock at the door proved to be the chambermaid with an offering to draw her a bath, which she gratefully accepted. Once the large basin had been filled with steaming buckets of water, she sank into it with a grateful sigh, scrubbing away the mud and fear and confusion of the night before.

If he had merely stolen a kiss, all would be well. But no, God forgive her, Rosaline had returned the kiss, touch for touch, breath for breath. She sank down beneath the water, mortified by her own remembered wantonness. She had rejected Romeo because she’d loathed the idea of involving herself in their families’ feud—and then last night found her so entangled with another Montague it had been difficult to say where Capulet ended and Montague began.

She could almost see cousin Juliet’s shade laughing at her.

What did he wish from her? More to the point, what did she wish from him? If there was one thing Rosaline thought she knew, it was that she would never love any man but Escalus. Shame shot through her as his face rose in her mind. God, she was all but betrothed to him!

Was she, though?

The last time she had seen Escalus, he had declared his love. He had looked at her with all the tenderness she had ever longed to see from him. He had left her with the knowledge that he would almost certainly ask for her hand the next morning.

And she had fled in the night with another man.

She’d had her reasons, to be sure. But it was high time she faced the truth: A part of her had been glad to escape before Escalus asked for her hand, because she was not certain what her answer should be.

That part of her seemed to grow stronger every time Benvolio’s rakish grin kindled a shy warmth in her belly.

What did it matter? He was still a Montague. Even if Escalus had never wooed her, any union between herself and Benvolio could only end in grief. One storm-swept, fear-fueled kiss did not change that, nor did it change what she felt for Escalus. Sternly ordering herself to stop fretting, she turned her attention to scrubbing herself pink.

After a good bath and dragging a comb through her wet hair, she felt a bit more like her old self. The chambermaid had cleaned her muddy clothes, and she dressed and went across the hall to Benvolio’s room.

“Come in,” he called at her knock, and Rosaline opened the door to find him bare to the waist, wet-haired, dressing after his own bath.

Rosaline gasped, clapping a hand over her eyes. At the sound, Benvolio whipped around. “Rosaline!”

“Pray pardon me—”

“No, no, the fault is mine, I thought you were the groom—”

Rosaline turned, fumbling toward the door without opening her eyes. She knocked something from his dresser and it landed on the floor with a crash. Trying to retrieve it, she smacked her head on the dresser.

“Peace, lady.” Benvolio’s hand was at her shoulder. “Thou may’st safely ope thine eyes.”

She did and found him now fully clothed, retrieving his belt from the floor, looking bemused at her sudden clumsiness. One kiss seemed to have turned her into an idiot.