When Dwayne and Fidel finally chugged up to the pier on the Enfield, Poole put them to collecting statements; Dwayne and Camille with the Montforts, Fidel and himself with the Cliffords. It didn't take long. Apart from a lot of sullen muttering amongst themselves about the possibility of no more feuding, no one had much to say, beyond agreeing to disperse. In the wrap-up, Poole performed one last bit of officiousness: he gave Alfric back into his father's charge and Elaine back to her mother.

"Why?" Camille demanded as they trudged back to the Defender.

"Did you want us to adopt them, Camille?" he snarked at her grumpily. "We can't take them into custody. Running away is not an arrestable offence. In fact, Alfie is old enough to leave home now, if all he wants is peace and quiet. Although I wouldn't advise him to set up here." He spared a glance at the low, squalid brick and cement structure of the Seawall Inn as they passed it. "I understand the wifi is horrible. In any case, they're underage."

"Age has no meaning in love!" Camille protested. "You are ten years older than I am and we –"

"It's not that they're too young," Poole interrupted hurriedly. "They're too immature. You heard them; they don't want each other so much as they want the bickering to end. It wouldn't surprise me if they split up well before Elaine's birthday and got all soppy about two other young idiots."

"Never!" Camille cried hotly.

They had reached the Defender by now and Poole led the way around the bonnet to the driver's side, so the bulk of it was between them and the slowly dispersing crowd. "This is what modern people don't understand about Shakespeare," he continued, one hand on the door handle. "The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was not that 'young love' was thwarted." The air commas he could have made with both hands free were evident in his voice. "It's that those two adolescents together were too ineffectual to ever make a marriage work. Will's audiences would have known that long before the balcony scene."

He wrenched open the door and waved his sergeant in to take the wheel, but Camille stopped defiantly in front of him, her feet planted firmly on the tarmac. "Want to bet?"

"On what?"

"A year's pay says we dance at Alfric and Elaine's wedding eight months from now."

"No." Poole waved again but his sergeant didn't move. Poole sighed. "Camille, it takes adults to have an adult relationship like marriage."

Camille pounced on this. "Adults like us!"

"Glory, are we back on that again?"

"You said we were engaged!"

"I meant that I was committed – as I should be after today!" Poole let out, then brought the decibels down as some of the Montfort crew passed to their vehicles, arguing quietly amongst themselves. "Dogberry is alive and well!" he grumbled at Camille, then began trekking around the vehicle again, to climb into the passenger seat.

Ned Clifford and Hennie Montfort were approaching, as side by side as their mutual animosity would allow, and Poole waited beside the car door, looking stern, until they had parted without blows to their respective vehicles. Alfric passed by in the custody of an aunt, who was being assured by Fidel that yes, Alfric could actually legally depart the Clifford eyrie and set himself up in his own place as an adult. Alfie himself was grinning shyly at Elaine, who was being escorted by a cocky Dwayne to her mother's SUV. She in turn was smiling at Alfric, under cover of wiping away what had become crocodile tears. Poole sighed, shook his head and clambered into the Defender.

"And what is dogberry?" Camille shouted at him as soon as he was seated.

"Dogberry," he replied, after his ears stopped ringing and while he searched out his seatbelt, "is what every law-breaking civilian wants a policeman to be and what every policeman hopes he never sounds like. Something like me," he prodded her as he snapped the belt into place, "being as I am an irritating, aggravating, stubborn stuffed shirt."

"You are!"

Neither of them spoke then as they waited for the car park to clear out enough for Camille to maneuver the Defender toward the tunnel exit. The Clifford Grand Cherokee and the Montfort Range Rover reached the tunnel at the same moment, and in the full view of Dwayne and Fidel in their antique Enfield, Ned actually waved Hennie through first, though with a sour twist to his mouth.

The Defender had reached the road before Camille spoke again, and her voice was gentle. "But you did give Alfric and Elaine a chance, by calling their families to account back there."

"I tried," Poole admitted. "It was maudlin and probably futile, but –"

"It was admirable," she said, and set the car to crawl back up through the drifting dust of the other vehicles and the remaining donkeys toward Honoré.

"Thank you," Poole muttered. One couldn't be stand-offish, after all.

. . . It was just that, well, after all these many years, he'd gotten into the habit of thinking he'd not live long enough to marry. That was all.

. . . Camille was a lovely woman, that was true enough. And honest, capable, savvy; all those. And she was intelligent – she was bloody brilliant, if truth was to be told, even if she did claim to be in love with him . . . for he was horribly in love with her!

. . . so, about the time the Port Royal came in sight above the trees, he cleared his throat. "Ssso – in spite of all my faults, you actually . . . you know?"

For Camille, at that moment the encircling jungle suddenly parted and the glorious Caribbean sun shone down, warm and life-giving. "Love you?" she asked, trying not to sound too giddy. "For all of those faults together. If you were to admit any good traits you would not be English."

"Oh, thanks very much for that," he groused, comfortable once again.

Camille guided the car up past the resort. "So, which of my virtues made you love me?" she needled.

"'Made me' love you is the best way of putting it, as it's against my better judgement," Poole nettled back, eyes on the road.

"So you do!" Camille crowed.

"Yes," Poole replied, eventually, and intently inspecting the passing vendors heading to market as he did so. "Yes, I do – love you."

Camille slowed and swerved to avoid one last donkey. "With all your heart?"

Poole cleared his throat, very softly. "With so much of my heart that none is left to complain about it," he muttered, but Camille heard him nonetheless. To prove it she gunned the Defender into the car park of the Saint-Marie Broadcasting Corporation and screeched to a stop.

"What?" Poole demanded, all tensed up again.

"Will you say it out loud?" Camille challenged. "Over the radio to all the island? Will you?"

"Not for the finest plot of land on Saint-Marie!" Poole told her defiantly. He nearly, almost didn't say it but, looking at her, he had to add "London, maybe . . ."

"Paris?" she demanded.

"No!"

"Get out and walk, then!" Camille told him, her heart soaring again.

"Now look," Poole began, a grin forcing itself onto his face, "as your superior officer, I –"

"So I'll get out and walk!" she declared, and began feeling for her seat belt.

Poole reached over and grabbed her hand. "No, you don't!"

Camille caught at his hand, holding it firmly, not too tightly. "Well, then?"

For a moment the whole of the island stilled. Green eyes locked to brown. "Camille, you and I are too wise-crack'd to woo peaceably," he murmured.

Camille shrugged, glowing. "That is as may be, Inspector Poole. But that we woo – that is the thing, n'est-ce pas?"

Poole considered for barely a moment. "C'est ca."

[Exit.]

Note: The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act stating that couples must be 18 to marry legally in England and Wales was put in place 27 February 2023. Before then 16 was the accepted age, when it was with parental consent, so this story would be set circa 2012-13. The 2023 law was meant to end the practice of child marriage, now once again becoming a hot issue in Britain, and it most certainly would have drastically changed the outcome of Romeo and Juliet, had it been enforced in 15th century Italy.