Chapter 21

Dignity

Up there, in Adam's room, Juliet stood next to his bed, hands on her hips, her face flushed, her expression somewhere between anger and embarrassment. Adam sat propped up at the headboard with a pile of pillows, looking considerately healthier. Drowsy from medication, and still pale, but not the deadly white he had displayed earlier. The strain of pain had left his face—only to have been replaced by something akin to wounded dignity and hurt pride. Neither of them looked at the other, neither of them spoke a work. But somehow the walls still appeared to echo their raised voices from before, and the word "tact" seemed to billow through the room.

Adam rubbed his face with both hands and took his time to compose himself. How could it be that nearly every conversation he had with Juliet turned into a crosstalk at some point? And how could it be that this didn't even bother him in the slightest? Well, not under normal conditions, but these weren't normal conditions. He was tired and hurt and in much more pain than he let on, and all he wanted was peace and quiet. Surely she wouldn't neglect him that. He wearily shook his head, took a deep breath, and decided to make it easy for her. When he looked up at Juliet's face again, he managed to do it with a genuine smile.

"Juliet, I'm very grateful for what you did. If you hadn't come out here when you did…well, you just came in time to save my life and—"

"Well, since you saved my life," she interrupted with a small smile. "And my dignity too, from these criminals, I think we're even." She cocked her head and teased, "My strapping black knight in a shining ar— um, shining sheet."

"You never get tired of the alliterations, do you? Well, I guess I deserved this one, Mylady," he chuckled. "Come on now, let's call it a truce."

"I'm with you here. Let`s just not talk about all that anymore. We simply forget it, d'accore?"

Adam nodded his agreement, and Juliet smiled, relieved. Then her eyes fell on the forgotten teacup on the bedside table, and she picked it up and held it out to him.

"Now drink your tea before it gets cold. The doctor says you have to drink a lot."

"I'd rather have water. Can you pour me some?"

"Absolutely not. Water would only come up again. Drink the tea, Adam. It's much better for your stomach."

Adam sighed resignedly. "Then give me your tea, Lady Assam. You really love to act the dictator, don't you?"

"I don't terrorise you, Adam. I'm only concerned about your health."

Obediently Adam drank the already lukewarm concoction in tiny sips. No further arguments. When he was finished, Juliet took the cup and set it aside on his desk. She gave him another teasing smile. "Good boy!"

He grinned and shook his head at that and shifted into a more comfortable position, but winced and grimaced at the sudden pain his motions evoked in his right side. Juliet was at his side in an instant.

"Do you need more of the pain medication?" she asked.

"No, it's alright." It wasn't really, but she didn't have to know that. "I don't like this stuff very much anyway. It makes me have bad dreams."

"Is there anything else I could do to help you?" She sat down on his bedside.

"Just stay here and talk to me. Distraction seems to be the best medicine."

"Then I shall give you some of this fine medicine. I could read you some of Marlowe's sonnets, if you like."

She reached for the book of sonnets she had deposited on Adam's desk when entering the room and opened it.

"Ah, there are some marked. Let's see…My mistress' eyes…Oh, this is one of my favourites. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red—"

"This is Shakespeare what you're reading, Mylady, not Marlowe."

"Oh, Shakespeare, Marlowe—whatever you call him, Adam."

Adam held a hand out. "Not now, Juliet, don't start with that now. I'm too tired to dispute the true authorship at this moment."

She smiled amiably. "Just surrender, Adam, and I'll be quiet."

"Never! Now read on, Mylady. I'd like to hear some more about those less than coral lips."

Juliet sniggered. "No, I'd rather read another one. Something more suitable. Wait…here: What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one hath, every one, one shade, And you, but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit is poorly imitated after you—"

"Juliet!"

She sniggered again, then closed the book and laid it on the bedside table. "I'm not in the right mood for poetry anyway." She gave him a short awkward glance and then looked around the room until her eyes caught his bookshelf and she absent-mindedly read the titles on the spines.

She smoothed her skirt in an unconscious gesture. When she brushed over a piece of dried dirt on the fabric she looked down and realized, for the first time, how dirty her clothes were. There was dried mud and clotted blood all over her skirt front, on her sleeves and even on her chest.

"Dear god, I must be a sight!" She looked embarrassed, though Adam wasn't sure whether it was the state of her clothes or the fact that she even cared for this what made her feel uncomfortable.

"You are a very lovely sight, Juliet." It wasn't exactly true at the moment. Grime-covered clothes, exhausted faces and wildly sticking out strays of hair didn't raise a woman into the pantheon of beauty; but Adam knew she wasn't at her very best, and he thought he owed her a little praise anyway. Of course, Juliet saw right through his scheming.

"Don't be ridiculous! I look like a clodhopper's wife coming from peat digging," she snorted. "And I wasn't the prettiest flower in the garden to begin with. Only the tallest." She shook her head. "A bad combination if I ever saw one." Her tone was flat. As if she simply was stating a fact. She even gave one of her little lopsided smiles.

"Well, I don't know anything about the garden you are talking about, Juliet, or what kind of distorting mirror you look at in the morning, but to me, Mylady, you seem to be the prettiest English rose that ever blossomed."

She looked at him, estimating his tone. "You're mocking me," she finally said with a surprisingly satisfied smile.

Adam chuckled. "Maybe a bit…."

She tilted her head and lifted a teasing eyebrow. "Go ahead, Adam, mock me some more!"