Page 16 of Thus with a Kiss I Die

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.”

CHAPTER9

“Your father always bragged you were an unusually clever girl.” Elder ladled on the sarcasm with a liberal hand.

“So I am.” I considered him. He did indeed look like the portrait . . . almost. He seemed more worn, so I supposed this apparition resembled his appearance at the moment of his death. While the center of his being looked solid, as my gaze moved to the edges, I realized his outline wavered as if blown by the breezes of eternity. I remarked conversationally, “I wonder what vapors are in the air to bring about a phantom’s appearance in my mind.”

“I might be an illusion caused by food or drink,” Elder offered.

“I’ve had nothing to eat or drink since my arrival at the palace. Maybe your appearance is caused by hunger?”

Elder sagged and sighed. “It’s a good thing you’re going to marry my boy. Not to offer refreshments before dragging his betrothed and her family along on a tour of his tedious—”

“Ha! Now I know you’re not real. You’re telling me what’s inmymind.”

“You don’t believe I’m real?” He seemed offended. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“I’m all of twenty years, and while I’ve heard much about them, I’ve never before witnessed one.”

“Until now.”

“I’m not seeing you. You might not know this, but I’m quite an accomplished herbalist and an apprentice apothecary—”

“Now who’s lying? Your father would never allow such a thing.”

“I work with Friar Laurence. Do you remember him? He who performed the secret marriage of my parents, and when Mamma’s father wished her to marry Lord Paris, he provided her with a potion that lent the appearance of death for two and forty hours.”

“Of course, I remember Friar Laurence.He’san accomplished apothecary.”

“He is.”

“Ladies are unfit for such work.”

I smiled with chilly disdain. “I’m unfit for many things, Elder, especially becoming the wife of Verona’s podestà. Yet here I am, being rushed to the altar by your son.” I took a clarifying breath. Why was I arguing with a phantasm? More to myself than him, I said, “In the prince’s garden of exotic plants, one has pollen that causes hallucinations.” I thought of Friar Laurence’s teachings. “Or perhaps I brushed against a leaf or flower that contains intoxicants.”

Yet for all my good sense, Elder didn’t disappear. “Quiz me. Ask me questions you don’t know, but I do.”

“How will I know if you answer true?”

That seemed to stump him.

“Ha!” Again I gloated at him.

He took it ill. “Like all women, you imagine victory in petty pleasures and tiny triumphs.”

Since Iwasenjoying my tiny triumph, I continued the conversation. “I hadn’t heard that the palace is haunted. Do you often lure guests up here?”

“No one else can see or hear me.”

Startled, I spoke unwisely. “The hell you say. Your son?”

“No. Do you think I wouldn’t have rather communicated with a sensible man than a foolish woman?”