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I wrenched my head around. I looked down the gallery, expecting to see the figure of a man.

Nobody was there. No breeze ruffled the air.

“What?” Prince Escalus’s dagger sang as he drew it, and he searched, too. “What’s wrong?”

“Didn’t you hear that?” I trod the carpet toward the far, dim end of the long walk. “Someone called me.”

Prince Escalus looked around again, and gradually re-sheathed his dagger. “I heard nothing. Who called you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you making sport of me, Lady Rosaline?” In a moment, the prince’s voice had changed from summer warm to winter chill.

“I am not, sir!”

“Is the man you heard Lysander, forever with you in your head and heart?”

“No, I . . . No! I wouldn’t so dishonor your home by such pretense.”

“For I tell you now, I’ll not have the ghost of that youth haunting my marriage bed.”

With those words, my promise to my mother burned to cinders.

“In your marriage bed, sir, you’ll get, sir, what you’ve earned by your cold analysis and unworthy deception.

Now, on my own, sir, I’ll explore the palace further and trust that no man from within or without will summon me in any unprovoked manner.

” By the time I was done with my magnificently indignant speech, I may have been shouting, for as I stormed away, Prince Escalus winced.

Served him right, the arrogant, petulant, anticipated-by-him master of me.

I walked—nay, I stalked—down the great walk to the far corner, aware the whole time he watched with a judgmental gaze.

I wondered if he’d be foolish enough to try to stop me.

I entertained myself with imagining his apology and my haughty rejection thereof.

I turned the corner and gave rein to my increasing outrage with dire mutterings and a good, solid kick at one of the finely carved, heavy wooden tables.

To my horror, the tall vase thereon rattled and tipped, and I caught it barely in time. As I cradled it in my arms, I remembered my father’s admonitions, my mother’s lectures, and the scar that had been my constant companion since the last time I’d lost my temper.

Besides, my toe hurt from the impact.

Meticulously I returned the vase to the table.

Shouting imprecations at the prince and storming away was greatly satisfying, but I’d learned from other iterations the return usually involved some form of uncomfortable apology.

And I was pretty sure it would have to come from me, because apparently the Lord God’s Eleventh Commandment was:

I really hated that one.

“Lady Rosaline . . .” I heard the faint call again. But from where?

I whirled to face . . . nothing. No one stood behind me. For as far as I could see, the great walk was empty. “Who’s there?”

No reply.

“You kids better stop teasing me.” For that was the only thing that made sense; Princess Isabella had led my siblings into a hidden passage—great Veronese houses were riddled with hidden passages—or they’d slipped from curtain to curtain in a nefarious intention to frighten me.

Surely, the palace servants, for all their skulking, wouldn’t play such a trick.

No. That made no sense. It had to be the kids.

At any moment, I’d hear a childish giggle and . . .

“Lady Rosaline . . .”

A door stood open that had previously been shut and the mysterious voice seemed to originate there.

Why, you ask, would a sensible woman follow an eerie voice up a narrow, steep, dark staircase? Surely, that was as ill-advised as going into the cellar in a thunderstorm to investigate a noise when a murderer is on the loose.

The answer was simple—because the alternative was apologizing to the prince for my impetuous speech, while at the same time practicing restraint so I don’t kindly point out what an ass he’d been and that he deserved every word.

I climbed that stairway, climbed another stairway, climbed another, paused to gasp (my recovery was not yet complete and my layers of clothing heavy) and considered whether I was being a deluded fool.

Probably.

I almost turned back, but again I heard the voice call my name. Leaning down, I pulled the stiletto from the sheath on my ankle. I exited the last open door onto the stone balcony that surrounded the top of the tallest palace tower, there to find myself alone.

I did not doubt that I’d conjured the man’s voice out of my own longing to be out of this marriage trap in which I found myself—but you’d think that the prince was right. If I was going to hallucinate, it would be Lysander’s voice I’d hear.

Sheathing the stiletto at my ankle, I straightened to study the view.

All of Verona lay beneath me bathed in twilight: the hills, the Roman arena, and the expansive piazzas.

I leaned my elbows on the rail and watched the shadows of the sun-kissed clouds slip across Verona’s red stone streets, sprawling markets, golden buildings with their rosy roofs, and wander along the showy crescents of the Adige River.

I stared, enraptured, as the occasional torch moved through the streets and the glow of firelight and candles spilled from the public houses.

It was beautiful, my city, and I loved it with all my heart; yet right now, if I could follow those clouds and those shadows, and travel the countryside and escape even for a few moments these city walls, how swiftly I’d leave this all behind!

“Lady Rosaline.”

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.”