“How can you say that?” I protested, genuinely upset. “I don’t believe you actually mean it! If you were Romeo, you would not want Juliet to… test-drive Paris!”
He laughed out loud. “Come on! You were the one who told me I was Paris! Rich, handsome, and evil. Of course I want Juliet to test-drive me.” He looked over and grinned, enjoying my scowl. “What kind of Paris would I be if I didn’t?”
I pulled at my skirt once more. “And when exactly did you plan on that to happen?”
“How about,” said Alessandro, gearing down, “right now?”
I had been too absorbed in our conversation to pay attention to the drive, but now I saw that we had long since turned off the highway and were crawling along a deserted gravel road flanked by scruffy cedars. It ended blindly at the foot of a tall hill, but instead of turning around, Alessandro pulled into an empty parking lot and stopped the car.
“Is this where Eva Maria lives?” I croaked, unable to spot a house anywhere near.
“No,” he replied, getting out of the car and grabbing a bottle and two glasses from the trunk, “this is Rocca di Tentennano. Or… what’s left of it.”
WE WALKED ALL THE way up the hill until we were at the very base of the ruined fortress. I knew from Maestro Ambrogio’s description that the building had been colossal in its day; he had called it “a forbidding crag with a giant nest of fearsome predators, those man-eating birds of old.” It was not hard to imagine what it had once looked like, for part of the massive tower was still standing, and even in its decay it seemed to loom over us, reminding us of the power that once had been.
“Impressive,” I said, touching the wall. The brick felt warm under my hand-much different, I was sure, than it would have felt to Romeo and Friar Lorenzo on that fateful winter evening in 1340. In fact, the contrast between the past and the present was never more striking than here. Back in the Middle Ages, this hilltop had been buzzing with human activity; now it was so quiet you could hear the happy hum of the tiniest insects. Yet around us in the grass lay the odd piece of freshly crumbled brick, as if somehow the ancient building-left for dead many, many years ago-was still quietly heaving, like the chest of a sleeping giant.
“They used to call it ‘the island,’” explained Alessandro, strolling on. “L’Isola. It is usually windy here, but not today. We are lucky.”
I followed him along a small, rocky path, and only now did I notice the spectacular view of Val d’Orcia dressed in the bold palette of summer. Bright yellow fields and green vineyards stretched all around us, and here and there was a patch of blue or red, where flowers had taken over a verdant meadow. Tall cypresses lined the roads that snaked through the landscape, and at the end of every road sat a farmhouse. It was the kind of view that made me wish I had not dropped out of art class in eleventh grade, just because Janice had threatened to sign up.
“No hiding from the Salimbenis,” I observed, holding up a hand against the sun. “They sure knew how to pick their spots.”
“It has great strategic importance,” nodded Alessandro. “From here, you can rule the world.”
“Or at least some of it.”
He shrugged. “The part worth ruling.”
Walking ahead of me, Alessandro looked surprisingly at home in this semi-state of nature with the glasses and a bottle of Prosecco, apparently in no hurry to pop the cork. When he finally stopped, it was in a little hollow grown over with grass and wild spices, and as he turned to face me-smiling with boyish pride-I felt my throat tighten.
“Let me guess,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself although there was barely a breeze, “this is where you bring all your dates? Mind you, it didn’t work too well for Nino.”
He actually looked hurt. “No! I haven’t-my uncle took me up here when I was a boy.” He made a sweeping gesture at the shrubs and scattered boulders. “We had a sword fight right here… me and my cousin, Malèna. She-” Perhaps realizing that his big secret might begin to unravel from the wrong end if he went on, he stopped abruptly and said instead, “Ever since, I always wanted to come back.”
“Took you a long time,” I pointed out, only too aware that it was my nerves speaking, not me, and that I was doing neither of us a favor by being so skittish. “But… I’m not complaining. It’s beautiful here. A perfect place for a celebration.” When he still didn’t speak, I pulled off my shoes and walked forward a few steps, barefoot. “So, what are we celebrating?”
Frowning, Alessandro turned to look at the view, and I could see him wrestling with the words he knew he had to say. When he finally turned to face me, all the playful mischief I had come to know so well had disappeared from his face and, instead, he looked at me with tortured apprehension. “I thought,” he said slowly, “it was time to celebrate a new beginning.”
“A new beginning for who?”
Now at last, he put the bottle and glasses down in the tall grass and walked over to where I stood. “Giulietta,” he said, his voice low, “I didn’t take you up here to play Nino. Or Paris. I took you up here because this is where it ended.” He reached out and touched my face with reverence, like an archaeologist who finally finds that precious artifact he has spent his whole life digging for. “And I thought it would be a good place to start over.” Not quite able to interpret my expression, he added, anxiously, “I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”-he smiled wistfully-“you would recognize me.”
Although I already knew what he was trying to tell me, his solemnity and the tension of the moment struck me unexpectedly, right in the heart, and I could not have been more shocked had I arrived at Rocca di Tentennano-and heard his confession-knowing absolutely nothing.
“Giulietta-” He tried to catch my eye, but I didn’t let him. I had been desperate for this conversation ever since discovering who he really was, and now that it was finally happening, I wanted him to say the words over and over. But at the same time, I had been running an emotional gauntlet for the last couple of days, and although, obviously, he couldn’t know the details, I needed him to feel my pain.
“You lied to me.”
Instead of backing up, he came closer. “I never lied to you about Romeo. I told you he was not the man you thought.”
“And you told me to stay away from him,” I went on. “You said I would be better off with Paris.”
He smiled at my accusatory frown. “You were the one who told me I was Paris-”
“And you let me believe it!”
“Yes, I did.” He touched my chin gently, as if wondering why I would not allow myself to smile. “Because it was what you wanted me to be. You wanted me to be the enemy. That was the only way you could relate to me.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but realized he was right.
“All this time,” Alessandro went on, aware that he was winning me over, “I was waiting for my moment. And I thought-after yesterday, at Fontebranda, I thought you would be happy.” His thumb paused at the corner of my mouth. “I thought you… liked me.”
In the silence that followed, his eyes confirmed everything he had said and begged me to reply. But rather than speaking right away I reached up to put a hand on his chest, and when I felt his warm heartbeat against my palm, an irrational, ecstatic joy bubbled up inside me from a place I had never known was there, to find its way to the surface at last. “I do.”
How long our kiss lasted, I will never know. It was one of those moments that no scientist can ever reduce to numbers, try as she might. But when the world eventually came whirling back, from somewhere pleasantly far away, everything was brighter, more worthwhile, than ever before. It was as if the entire cosmos had undergone some exorbitant renovation since the last time I looked… or maybe I had just never looked properly before.