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C al grasped my wrist.

I grasped his.

Friar Camillo pulled.

Cal pulled.

“Good lads!” Elder almost danced with the need to act. He dared not act, I knew, so he served as the unseen and unheard coach.

I freed my other arm.

As all my weight transferred to the men, they grunted with the strain.

Yet I rose. Gradually I rose.

My bodice rose with me, but a little ahead, so I knew my camicia showed in the gap between my skirt and bodice.

The pressure against my belly informed me all too clearly I still suffered from Baal’s kick, and the pressure and pain made it difficult for me to catch my breath.

Threads strained and popped, adding an urgency to the maneuver.

“Steady, lads.” Elder kept his voice strong and encouraging. “Steady. She’s almost there.”

I strained up, up to the top rail, touched it with my fingertips.

“You’ve almost got it!” Elder told me.

I inched my hand across the stone.

Friar Camillo shouted, “The seams are going!”

“Grip her under that arm.” Cal sounded as strong and encouraging as his father.

“No, wait!” I could almost reach the rail’s far edge.

But I was too late.

The bodice ripped.

My gaze met Cal’s.

For the merest moment, he alone held me.

My shoulder joint wrenched and popped.

His too—for a spasm of pain crossed his face.

Friar Camillo released the material and grabbed my armpit.

I was supported.

All of us shook hard under the strain.

“Cazzo!” Elder shouted. “They did it!”

Premature celebration did not please me, but I couldn’t waste my breath with reproaches. Instead I grasped the top rail’s far edge.

For the first time since my daring grasp of Cal’s hand, I was able to relieve the men of some weight.

For the first time, I thought I might survive.

The line of my eyes cleared the rail. I got my elbow up.

The men put their feet on the ground. Our weight no longer teetered over the rail.

Below I heard shouts of “Huzzah! Huzzah!”

I hoped they weren’t cheering the view up my gown.

Cal wrapped his fingers around my skirt’s belt and steadied me.

Friar Camillo used both his hands to support me now.

The men, gasping with the effort, pulled me over the rail.

I flopped like a dead fish on the floor.

Elder shouted, “Rosie! Too much ankle. Too much! Fix your skirt!”

I glared at him. “Focus!”

“Nice ankles, good calves, and a pleasant glimpse of thigh,” he advised.

Fine. Even under duress, I had to behave the part of a lady. Staggering to my feet, I shook out my skirts.

Barnadine’s corpse rested on the floor, stained with seeping red and dried black blood. As with Baal, this thing was no longer a carrier of a soul, but a side of meat, carrion for flies and hell’s demons who would feed on his spirit.

I was glad. I’d spent too much time fighting with words and deeds this being who broke his vows and embraced treachery most vile and heartless.

Yet I knew his villainy was not without reason, and I sorrowed for Barnadine, who had failed to protect his sister; for Elder, who’d been seduced by the unexpected appearance of a pretty face; and for Friar Camillo, the innocent who knelt beside his uncle, closed his eyes, prayed for his soul, and cried sad tears.

I must have looked wobbly, for Cal leaped to support me. “I’m okay,” I whispered. “How did you know to come?”

I thought he’d say he heard the shouts from below.

But instead: “I heard a summons,” Cal said.

And from Elder: “I shouted loudly enough that at last he heard me.”

I glanced between them to see if Cal heard his father now.

Yet Cal was blank and Elder patently disappointed.

As soon as Cal took his hands away, I collapsed, my knees so weak with residual terror the iron within had rusted to weak reddish powder. He picked me up, carried me to the wall, and propped me up. “Are you injured? Can you stand?”

I leaned against the wall, let the rough cut of the stone hold me.

“I’m not injured. Not badly.” Amazing how the thought of crashing onto a tile roof four stories below gave perspective to a sore gut, a wrenched shoulder, and a myriad of bruises.

“Are you injured? Your shoulder? When I fell and you caught me, I saw—”

He put his hand over my mouth and looked at me, his brown eyes wide with some strong emotion. Relief? Exhaustion? The realization I was more trouble than I was worth? I couldn’t read him.

He shook his head, paced away. Walked back, cupped my face, looked into my eyes.

Shook his head. Paced away. Walked back, and when I tried to speak, he kissed me.

He put his mouth on mine and kissed me until the sour stench of fear was vanquished in the rich scent of promised pleasure, until residual terror had been replaced with passion’s sweet flavor, until pain had been absorbed by the clamor of my body and the knowledge of death had been exchanged for exhilaration rushing through my veins.

Never mind that joints ached and bruises bloomed across my skin; I lifted my arms and slid them around Cal’s shoulders and clung, for he was my guardian angel and my wildly raging tempest.

When he lifted his head, he held me as if he would absorb me into his being. Body pressed to body, all the length of us, until it seemed clothing had vanished, and muscles, bones, minds combined. Never had I experienced a more all-consuming joining. . . and need.

“Rosie,” he murmured. “Lady Rosaline.”

My eyes fluttered open.

“I fought to save you.”

“You did save me.”

“That is my only comfort, for my mind knows all too well I’m the reason you were in danger. If not for the betrothal I forced upon you, you wouldn’t have suffered this ordeal, and stared Death in its cold eyes.”

“That’s true, but—”

Before I could point out I’d stared Death in its cold eyes in the spring, and Cal had had nothing to do with that, he interrupted. “I want you. You know that. But I can never again risk your life to have you. I release you from this marriage, which you would endure so reluctantly.”

I shook my head. After those sublime moments—the kiss, the fusion of our bodies—his words scrambled in my head. What did he mean ?

“I go at once to tell your family and all Verona that I relinquish you . . . for your own safety . . . and with much sorrow on my part. I’ll let it be known to all that I give my blessing to your future betrothal to .

. . a worthy gentleman.” Cal leaned his forehead against mine.

His breath caressed my cheeks as he chuckled.

“I can’t say the name. Not now. Not after this .

. . closeness with you. But I do gladly release you, and someday, perhaps on my deathbed, I’ll not regret the loss of you, dear Rosaline, dear shining spirit whom I adore. ”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Cal . . .”

“I know. I have to let go.” His arms tightened. “Give me one more minute. Just one more minute.”

I breathed him in. My heart beat with his. Let me go? How was that possible? “Cal, you don’t mean—”

As if my halting speech acted as the trigger he needed, he released me, tearing our flesh apart and leaving nothing behind but cold and pain and loneliness.