O, Juliet Read Online Free PDF

entire procession, those strong hands cinched my waist and gracefully propelled me out of harm’s and humiliation’s way.
    The dance went on without us, and in moments I’d been guided from the ballroom floor down the stairs to the vestibule and into the palazzo’s scented garden.
    It was torch and moonlit, deserted but for my wolfman and me.
    I was strangely light-headed and clearheaded all at once.
    “Will you unmask?” he said in a low, husky tone. The way my body felt, he might have uttered, “Will you undress?” I wondered if he knew I ached to see the face that matched that voice.
    “Will you?” I whispered.
    “For my dancing lady?” he teased. “Anything she pleases.”
    “Then on the count of three,” I said, sounding, I thought, like a mathematics tutor, and, closing my eyes, nodded thrice.
    The cool night air tingled my damp cheeks as the mask came off. A vein thumped in my neck. Slowly I raised my eyelids.
    He was right before me, having moved closer, this audacious young man, he who took liberties with Dante Alighieri.
    Oh, he was beautiful! The hair that flowed to his shoulders was chestnut and thick with waves. The dark windows of his wide-set eyes dared me to enter at my own risk. His cheekbones were broad but finely chiseled, and the nose was straight and perfectly shaped—more Circassian than Italian, I thought.
    Then I smiled, thinking, I am no stranger to that mouth. Instantly I quashed the thought.
    Too late.
    “Why do you smile that way?” he asked.
    I stood speechless, as I did not wish to lie to him. Yet the truth was deeply mortifying. He was a stranger! One whose impudence had made me stumble in the promenade.
    “What? Suddenly mute?” he prodded. “Inside, you chastised me. Now you refuse to speak.”
    “I do not refuse,” I finally said. “I simply wish to choose my words more carefully.”
    “You needn’t be careful with me,” he said with unexpected gentleness. “I lived with sisters. I’m used to teasing them.” Then he went silent, his head tilting slightly, examining my face. He was quiet for a long while.
    “Now you’re the mute,” I accused.
    He laughed, and the sound of it fluttered my heart. So sweet was it, I silently determined, that I must make this young man laugh again and again. Those eyes refused to release me from their locked grip. I wished desperately that my mother’s handkerchief was not stuffed in my bodice.
    The full lips moved and he said softly, “ ‘I found her so full of natural dignity and admirable bearing she did not seem the daughter of an ordinary man, but rather a god.’ ”
    I was awed at his grasp of our favorite poet, indeed, my favorite of his books— Vita Nuova —and I wished with all desperation to reply in kind, though without revealing my soul too deeply.
    “Good sir,” I finally said, “ ‘ you speak without the trusted counsel of reason .’ ”
    He was delighted at my choice of quotes.
    “Now it is you who is guilty of changing Dante’s words,” he said, “and, moreover, changing his meaning.”
    “Not so!” I cried. “I simply chose a phrase, a part of a phrase. One that follows your own in chapter two.”
    “And what is the rest of that phrase?” he probed, taking half a step closer. We were in dangerous proximity now.
    I could hardly breathe. I closed my eyes to recall the words as they stood on the page. “ ‘And though her image,’ ” I recited, “ ‘which remained constantly with me, was Love’s assurance of holding me, it was of such pure quality that never did it permit to be ruled by Love without the trusted counsel of reason.’ ” I opened my eyes, mortified that I had been the first to speak of that most poignant of emotions.
    “You see, you did change the meaning,” he insisted. “Dante was saying that in his love for Beatrice he was always blessed by reason.” His face fixed itself in a noncommittal expression. “Though when it comes to the love I feel, I might not be so