Read Online O, Juliet by Robin Maxwell - Free Book Online

gathered my thoughts, for I knew there must be further explanation.
    “Oh, Lucrezia, I did not go seeking for this. It found me .” I went around to face her. She looked ill with worry.
    “You laid yourself open for this disaster,” she said, “refusing to be satisfied with the marriage your family arranged. Seeking private conversation with a stranger in a dark garden . . .”
    “I stumbled in the bassadanza . He took me out for air”—I was grasping for explanations—“but when we unmasked—”
    Lucrezia groaned.
    “When we unmasked, I discovered before me the most beautiful man, not only of face and form, but of mind. Oh, my friend, there was such . . . concordance between us. He seemed to know me, and I him.” I was lost in remembering that scented evening and spoke as if in a dream. “We met on the common ground of Vita Nuova and danced the sweetest dance there.”
    “Until you learned his name.”
    “He’d come that night to seek audience with Don Cosimo,” I said, trying to make sense of things.
    “And what could his business have possibly been? His house is deeply mistrusted by the Medici, and despised by yours.”
    “He came to make peace on his family’s behalf.”
    “He was sent by his father?”
    “I think he came of his own accord.”
    Lucrezia sighed heavily. I took both her hands in mine.
    “Please, please do not judge me harshly.”
    Her eyes flashed with hurt and anger. “Should I not judge you for using me without my knowledge today to help you meet your lover? You made me your fool.”
    “I’m sorry for that, truly I am! I’ve been wild with such longings since I met him. I have not slept except fitfully, and then I dream of him. And I dream in verse, words flowing into words, streams and rivers of them, and all with the theme of love. When I wake, I try to remember the poems, but they’re gone, disappeared. And all I have left are memories of the feel of his hand, the sound of his voice, the shape of his lips. I remember every word spoken in the garden. Every syllable. And when I am not lost in memory, I’m raging against the Fates for having placed before me the perfect man, the ideal lover—and he is my father’s greatest enemy!”
    Lucrezia regarded me with a steady eye. “Juliet, forgive me. I have been hard on you when, indeed, the Fates have dealt unfairly with your happiness and future.”
    I felt tears welling with her words of sympathy.
    “But you must think seriously about what you must do . . . and what you must not do. The more your father feels your rebelliousness, the harder he will make it for you.”
    Signora Munao called to us to come back to the blanket on the ground, now laid with our meal. Lucrezia waved her away.
    “But”—I was growing agitated—“I desire Romeo. I want him in my bed!”
    “Shhh!”
    Signora Munao was staring at the pair of us, wondering about the commotion.
    I tried to calm myself as I said, “Everyone knows that for a woman to conceive in the act of coition she, as well as the man, must be satisfied. Is that not true?”
    “Of course it’s true.”
    “I know that I will never be satisfied with Jacopo Strozzi. I can barely stand to have him touch my hand. So he will not give me children, and what is a marriage without children?”
    “Juliet,” she pleaded.
    “So why marry him at all?”
    “And what do you propose instead? Disown your family? Forget your blood? Run away with your lover? Live in poverty and disgrace?”
    “Do you think I am not haunted every moment by those thoughts?”
    Signora Munao was almost upon us, looking very cross.
    “Just promise me you will not see him again before you marry. Please, I am your true friend, and I know that what you most desperately wish for will only bring tragedy down on your house. Promise me.”
    “Signorinas,” our old chaperone snapped in an aggravated tone, “I am seeing a lack of decorum here. Raised voices. Flushed cheeks.” She addressed Lucrezia: “Your mother