A Tale of Two Centuries

The sound of laughter guides our path to the dining room. When we enter, Cat is looking at Jenna, the future stepmother she once despised, with a radiant smile. The shell she sometimes erects to protect herself from the outside world is gone.

Launching into my self-assigned role, I turn to Lucas and am gratified to see the soft look in his eyes again. The one I felt across the chaotic cafeteria, and the one that got my begrudging admission that perhaps there could be another for Cat.

Lucas’s heart, check.

Then Cat turns and sees us, and her smile falters—not in an angry or upset-that-Lucas-came way but in a sad, regretful way. The taut muscles in her neck work as she swallows heavily, as if she is repressing the words left unspoken between them, and she shifts her attention to Angela. “Hey, Ang. Good to see you.”

The shy girl from the threshold blossoms under my cousin’s attention, and her rounded shoulders straighten. She skips over to Cat and throws her arms around her—and judging by Cat’s wide eyes, the action is a surprise for her as well.

“You, too,” Angela says, pulling back. “As much as Lucas talks about you, I thought I’d see you over the break. Guess Christmas got a little crazy, huh?”

A touch of pink glows under the bronze of Lucas’s skin, and I rub my mouth to hide my grin. As for my cousin, she appears both pleased and guilty over Angela’s inadvertent slip. Lucas clears his throat, and his sister scrunches her forehead, seeming confused over the sudden tension in the room.

“I have some great ideas for your party, Angela,” Jenna says, her voice pitched a bit higher that before. She pulls out a chair and ushers the future birthday girl to sit in it, and the rest of us follow in turn, taking seats around the large oak table. Patting the girl’s hand, Jenna smiles and says, “I think the first thing we should do tonight is pick out a theme.”

Lucas takes a seat next to his sister and grabbing a scrapbook in front of him, begins flipping the pages. “Are all sweet sixteens costume parties?”

“No, but that’s a great question. Cat’s was because she wanted a Renaissance-styled gala, so the theme dictated costumes,” Jenna explains. “But oftentimes a theme just gives us a direction for decorations, vendors to choose from, and occasionally, the suggested style of dress.”

Lucas nods respectfully, then turns a page and grins. He elbows his sister and whispers to her under his breath. Angela’s face lights up as she laughs and whispers back, and I have to add another check to my Lucas-as- suitor list.

Cares for sister, check.

The last on my list, watching for sparks between him and Cat, will not be easy, for not only is Cat determined to hide any interest she has for him, but she also has her future stepmother in the room.

As if the very thought of mothers conjures her, the doorbell rings again. Lucas stands. “That’s my mom. I’ll go let her in.”

Jenna nods from her place on the other side of Angela and pulls the girl into a conversation about a picture in one of the books. Cat watches Lucas leave, then catches me watching her and looks down at her book.

When Mrs. Cappelli joins us in the crowded dining room, I am pleased to see she is nothing like Lorenzo’s mother. That woman was an evil hag who was even worse than Cat’s archrival Antonia was. This Mrs. Cappelli kisses Jenna on both cheeks and ruffles her daughter’s hair before taking the seat Lucas holds out for her—the one he previously sat in, allowing him to walk around the table to the only other empty seat…the one beside Cat.

Very crafty.

And I can add another check: displays respect for elders.

As Lucas takes his seat, my cousin gives a valiant effort…but she cannot hide the hint of a pleased smile, the subtle shift in her posture to bring her closer, nor the discreet way her eyes keep drifting toward him.

Seeing them together, side by side, is a bit jarring, to be honest. But the visual does help me understand better why my cousin is fighting her feelings so hard. Having him here seems a little too easy, a shade too convenient, even for fate. But there is no denying the palpable attraction between them.

Lucas turns a page, and a dimple flashes in his cheek. “See, this is what I love about America,” he says in a teasing voice that has Cat laughing before he even delivers the humorous line to his joke. “You pay all this money for a huge event and tell people to arrive in their underwear.”

Her eyes widen, and she pulls the book he is looking at toward her. “That’s not underwear, you Italian weirdo. They’re in bathing suits. See, it’s a beach theme.”

Lucas shrugs. “You say potato, I say potahto.”

Cat laughs again, failing to realize the rest of the table is watching their interaction with various degrees of pleased smiles.

“Yeah, you would say potahto,” she says, shaking her head. “Now say vitamin.”

“Vit-amin.”

The different pronunciation, delivered in the exaggerated notes of his accent, sends my often serious, sometimes crazy, but rarely silly cousin into a series of infectious giggles. And the triumphant look on Lucas’s handsome face for causing Cat’s happiness answers any question I had about potential sparks.

Cat lifts the back of her hand to her forehead and pretends to swoon, seeming to forget, even if for just a moment, all the reasons she should not let herself like him.

“What is it about a guy with an accent?” she asks playfully, and I add another mark to my list.

Sparks, big check.

Chapter Eleven

I ring the Michaels’s doorbell and turn to wave at Jenna, fighting the yawn building in my chest. After watching the tension between Cat and Lucas all night, though she blatantly denied it later, I laid in the soft cloud my cousin calls a bed for hours, memorizing my teenspeak list and thinking of Austin—and the conflicting version of him I met onstage.

This morning I pulled out Cat’s copy of Romeo and Juliet and discovered that in Act One, Scene Five, the titular couple kisses. And although I was shocked, my stomach muscles tightened at the thought of what would have happened had Ms. Kent given Austin and me that scene to perform.

Would he have tried to kiss me?

Would I have let him?

Would I have enjoyed it?

I still don’t know the answers, but the thoughts led me to ask Cat for help in obtaining Austin’s address—so we could work on our American government assignment, not so he could kiss me. Of course Cat suggested I call him on the telephone instead, but that is not how we do things in my time. Granted, maidens do not usually visit unchaperoned and uninvited, either, but at least face-to-face communication would put me on some semblance of an equal footing.

So here I am, dressed in the “frumpy frock” from Cat’s closet (an outfit Austin is sure to mock) arms laden with books from the Crawford library, ringing the Michaels’s doorbell for the third time, and hoping that at least someone is at home.

Perchance I did not quite think this plan through.

Thankfully, just as I am about to give up and run back to the safety of Jenna’s vehicle, the door opens.

Austin’s sister Jamie greets me, her surprise evident in the tilt of her head, the wrinkles in her nose, and the lack of invitation to step inside.

“Juliet?”

I grin and bob my head. “Alessandra, actually.”

“What are you doing here? Not that I’m not stoked to see you or anything,” she quickly adds. Jamie glances