Rosaline
The wedding festivities were truly begun now. The engagement ball, the gifting ceremony, and today, I would be granted a title by Isabella so that I might marry a Prince without question. Uncle was beyond thrilled. My gown itched.
"Ros, can I talk to you?"
"Livia! Where have you been hiding?" I smiled, taking my sister's hands. She narrowed her eyes at me and cocked her head to the side, curiously.
"Has he spoken to you then?" She asked in a hushed whisper.
"I'm sorry?"
"Has he... you look happy." She pointed out, an odd edge to her voice.
"I... today I am. I've been thinking, Liv. Today, I'll be given a title, and while I could hang all about the stupid title, this is a good thing. You won't just be a Lady Capulet, you'll be sister to a royal, soon to be princess, and then Liv, you'll be able to wed for true love. You needn't worry about comfort or riches, for that you shall have in abundance. You shall be able to live your life unfettered."
"Sister I appreciate the sentiment, but the price is too high."
"It isn't." I spoke quickly, cutting her off before she could continue. "I would do anything for you."
"I know!" She hissed at me. "That's why I worry. Rosaline, I know that you're only marrying the prince to protect Benvolio and me. Please. You needn't worry about us, there are safeguards in place. Tell me what the prince holds over our heads so that we might step out from under it and save you the trouble of a miserable life!" I grew cold and I stepped back from my sister.
"Livia. You can't know."
"I overheard you and Isabella speaking, I do know, I-"
"You misunderstand me! I don't mean to say that it's impossible for you to know, only that you are now in more danger because of it! Curse my tongue if it is what first betrayed you in this! Forget what you know. Forget what you've heard. I am content to make my choice to benefit those I love, and I wish you to look upon my union with only support and goodwill."
"Ros! I cannot! I know you do not love him! I know that you love another!"
"And let that be the last time those words escape you. Forget what you know sister. Things are far more complicated than you are aware."
"Ros!"
"Things have changed!" I spoke quickly, praying no ears but hers would hear my words. "The Prince was angered at... it doesn't matter. He wishes to ensure that I comply, and ensure he has. I beg of you, if you ever loved me, you will walk away from this misguided mission of yours, and give a toast at my wedding."
"You ask too much sister."
"On the contrary, Livia, I only ask the bare minimum. And I beg of you your word! Swear to me, Livia, swear to me you will drop this."
"I cannot do as you ask. As you would protect me, so I would protect you."
"From what? He would not hurt me. I would want for nothing material. I would have power in my own right. I could do real good for the people of Verona. Why is this a bad thing? Why must I be rescued?"
"Because you do not love him."
"Love!" I cried out something between a sob and a laugh. "I did once. I prayed that we might wed once, upon a shooting star. And see? My wish has come true. Escalus. Forever." I could hear the bitterness in my voice but I had a right to every ounce of bitterness I possessed. Benvolio had given me my heart, in more ways than one, and most recently in giving me my home back. Escalus had seen how I reacted and was most anxious that I might care for Benvolio still and... well anyway, if his threats over their heads hadn't been serious before, they certainly were now. "I will marry for love of those who mean the most to me." I said, cupping her face in my hands. "That is more than enough for me."
"Rosaline!"
"Promise me you will leave this alone, Livia. Swear to me."
"I cannot!"
"You must! I beg of you! You will be in far more danger if you pursue this!"
"The way you were in more danger pursuing the killer who ran rampant around Verona? The way you were in more danger running off with The Montague to help save him?"
"No. Not at all like that."
"It is no different!"
"It is very different! The masked killer needed to be brought to the law. Escalus is the law. Please. If not for yourself then I beg of you, for him. Livia, Escalus will... I must protect him and this is the only way."
"There's always another way!"
"There is not! And I beg of you, Livia, please, I will die in agony if I know that he has been harmed and when I might have stopped it. Please. Help me. Drop all of this and let well enough alone."
"Rosaline,"
"Please Livia. Help me save him. It's all I want for the rest of my life, to know that I saved him, that he has the chance to fall in and out of love some more, to be happy."
"I don't think he can be without you."
"I have hurt him. He will learn to look at me with misery and disdain and he will move on and find someone else."
"And shall you watch that? Will you toast at his wedding?"
"If I am lucky enough to see him alive, healthy, and happy, I shall toast to him at his wedding." Livia shook her head at me, sadness filling her eyes as mine blinked back tears. "Please Livia, help me save him. Let all of this go." After a silence that lasted an eternity she finally relented.
"I will let it go, Rosaline, but do not expect me to stand at your side and watch you throw your life away. You ask too much of me." And with a turn of her heel and a swish of her skirts, Livia walked away from me.
Benvolio
"Well? What did she think of the plan?" I asked, in lieu of the millions of other questions I had about my darling Capulet.
"I never got to the plan." Her sister spat out from between gritted teeth.
"Were you unable to see her?" I asked, my face falling at the thought of waiting even longer to hold her in my arms once more.
"I saw her. I told her that I knew and I barely got past refusing her protection or whatever it is she thinks she's up to when... ugh!"
"What?"
"She's going to marry him. And she says she'll raise a toast to you at your wedding." Livia stalked off, leaving me standing alone on the dusty street staring at the spot she had stood in, uttering incomprehensible words.
"Livia!" I called out as soon as I'd found my tongue, chasing after her. "Stop! Tell me... what do you mean?"
"She says things have changed. For the worse I would assume. She is more intent to wed the Prince now than ever before and she made me promise to stop trying to get her out of it."
"So she's scared. That's why we need to help her!"
"We don't even know what's really going on, Benvolio! What if we do something and we make things worse for her!"
"So what, you're just going to give up? Let your sister marry for wealth, and power, and your comfort?" Her palm made quick contact with my cheek. It wasn't the first time I'd been slapped and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
"Don't presume to know me well enough to say something so utterly insulting. She's my sister. I love her more than I love myself, but what she said made me think and I'll say it again. We don't know what's going on. We could make things worse. So, you and I need to do a little research. We need to know exactly what he's holding over our heads and we need to make the threat go away so she can get out of this marriage. And then, we find out what dark secrets he has and make him as miserable as he made her. And then, if he presumes to push too hard, I will see Isabella on the throne in his stead. He tried to claim a prize by forcing my sister into a cage but so help him God, he does not see what fury and hellfire he has wrought." Huh. I really had to stop underestimating Capulets.
"Isabella." She hissed as she passed by the lady on her way out the door, her arm entwined with mine. "Join us, won't you?" She asked, her voice raised and sounding gay and light, as if she were the girl watching her sister wed, nothing but happiness alight in her eyes. "Now." The scary Capulet voice was back. My eyes scanned the room as Livia and the princess exchanged pleasantries and plotted loudly for all to hear that our trio was to take a walk in the evening air, to refresh ourselves before dessert was served. My eyes met hers and I didn't bother to hide my stare. She was regarding us with great curiosity. Her sister's arm wrapped in mine. The Princess laughing gaily and looking at me kindly. It was all an act. (Well mostly. The Princess part. Her sister and I really were walking together but any closeness between us was of the familial sort not the romantic kind.) She almost seemed jealous, though she knew us all well enough to know that neither the Princess nor her sister would have any interest in a person like me, nor I them. I think that maybe she was jealous of our freedom to speak with whom we wished, to leave the party if we wished... of our freedom. My heart hurt for her and I renewed my efforts to free her from her gilded prison as soon as possible.
The princess on one arm, and Lady Capulet the younger on the other, I was the focus of many jealous stares as we departed the grand hall and made our way towards the garden. Princess Isabella was eyeing us oddly as we walked, and seemed confused by our secretive departure. As soon as we were ensconced behind some delicately groom shrubbery Livia gripped Isabella's arm tightly.
"We know." She said briefly. "We know Escalus is threatening us and that's why Ros is marrying him. Instead of the panicked look I expected, I watched the Princess breath a sigh of relief and pull Livia into her arms.
"Thank God! I've no idea what can be done. Escalus isn't evil, he's... he's misguided and he thinks he can make her fall in love with him again if only she'll give him a chance but he doesn't see that her heart won't be won over so easily this time! He doesn't see that every step he takes in forcing her to give him a chance is only pushing her away! He..." She sighed and looked at both of us apologetically.
"At first I thought we should call his bluff. The brother I knew wouldn't hurt a fly, I thought for certain that if she just refused and went home that he would grumble about for a few days and then focus on rebuilding our city after these terror attacks, that he could focus on cementing our family's crown and power and he could just... move on. But then, I found out he was having Livia followed. Not just Benvolio, the man he's seen as his rival for so long, a man whom he though was trying to kill him, but Livia." She cupped the girl's face in her hands. "Dear, sweet Livia, he was having her followed by an unmarked fighter, a man who could capture or kill the moment he so commanded. I paid the man off. He wouldn't dare hurt her now, but I don't know what other safeguards he has in place. I don't know what else he holds over the pair of you and he told Ros things... I don't know what exactly, but she was shaking like a leaf when she left the room and she was so pale I thought she might faint. There's nothing he wont do to have her." I swore and rubbed my hand across my face.
"We thought you might know what he all had over us, so that we could undermine that and help Ros." Livia said flatly, as disappointed as I at how little Isabella knew. "Ros won't tell me. She thinks I'll be in greater danger but Isabella, he's going to destroy her. He's going to..."
"I know. He's trying to break her spirit. He's trying to posses her."
"What if we just... spirit her away. In the middle of the night. My family has money, Livia, and-and connections. I can get you both to Spain or France and you could live in one of our homes there. You'd never want for anything." I winced, remembering my conversation with Rosaline, in what felt like decades ago, talking about her making a run for it, and how she didn't want to go to Spain or anywhere else. She wanted to stay here. With me. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from tearing up. Tears wouldn't help her now.
"You really want to travel to France or Spain with two Capulet women bossing you around?" Livia teased, presumably in an attempt to lighten the dark mood that had settled over the three of us.
"I couldn't go with. If I disappeared, His Royal Ass would know to look at the Montague holdings. If I were here... angry as he was at her disappearance, he would only check Capulet lodgings, or with those sympathetic to the Capulets, and that is certainly not the Montague house. I could even act as though I was still bitter and angry at being overthrown. Pretend to hate her."
"You... you wouldn't come with us?" Livia asked quietly. "I don't understand, I thought you loved her? Wanted to be with her?"
"Of course I love her!" I swore passionately. "My heart breaks every day I do not see her face, or hear her laugh, or... but I could handle its breaking over her absence every day for the rest of my life if it means her being free."
"You would give up your life with her for..."
"For her freedom? I would give up everything, Princess."
"She wouldn't leave without you." Livia said quietly. "She wont leave without knowing you'd be safe. 'Probably' won't be enough for her."
"Then you'll make her leave me here." I told her angrily.
"By what? Tricking her into thinking you'll be meeting them? And then when you don't, do you think she'll just follow the plan, angry and sad that she was tricked? Of course not!" The Princess scoffed. "She'll turn around and come back to get you and we'll all be in the same position. Besides. You two deserve to live out your lives happily in that gorgeous house you bought her and be happy and damn it Montague, that's what we're going to accomplish, so stop with the last resort plans, and let's start thinking!" Rosaline was really rubbing off on these two.
"You'll have to find out what he holds over us. Rosaline won't tell us and even if she would, she likely doesn't know all. Escalus had a backup plan to his initial threats, and he will to these." Livia told Isabella. She nodded and agreed, saying she'd find a way to get us a message in a day's time with what she had learned.
"And you, Montague, need to find a way to get Rosaline alone so you can apologize." I blanched.
"I..."
"For the ball the other night."
"That was what the house was! Amongst other things! I treated her boorishly, I know, I let the drink control me and I acted on baser instinct. I have sworn never to act in such a manner again. I should not have pushed her to-"
"Pushed her?!" Isabella laughed. "That is not at all what she told me. She told me you pushed her away. You denied her."
"I..." I thought back to that night with a clear mind, knowing more than I had then. She wasn't going to marry me, not for the reasons I had manufactured, but because she loved me and wished to protect me. She... I... "I do not understand." Isabella rolled her eyes and looked at me pointedly. "She wished to demonstrate her love with the man she loved before she must do so with another and you left her alone, and wanting, in a dark room."
"I was protecting her virtue! She didn't want to marry me! I'd asked her to run away with me and she had said she would still marry the prince and I didn't know that she was doing that for me! I love her, Princess. I respect her far too much to take what I wish just because I desire her!"
"You idiot! Livia, who would you rather give your virtue to, a man you love or the man you're forced to marry and do not particularly like in any way at all?"
"The man I love, obviously."
"Even if you knew you could not marry him?"
"Especially then! I would not wish to give that experience to a man I did not and would never love if I had another option!"
"You weren't taking something from her, Montague." The princess said, turning back to me. "She wanted you. She wanted to have you if only that once so she might have a good experience to remember for the rest of her horrible life, and you left her, all but naked, crying on the floor of a ballroom."
"You did what?!" Livia turned on me.
"I- I... What do you want me to say I was trying to do the right thing!"
"And it was honorable and a lovely sentiment, but now that you know the truth, you need to apologize so she doesn't feel like the man she's desperately in love with doesn't even want her." Isabella looked at both of us.
"Livia, talk to some of the servants you trust. You'll need to arrange the backup plan, to get the three of you out of Verona if it comes to it. I will try for plan A, finding out Escalus's plot so we might foil it, and you, Benvolio, will go and cheer up Ros by being her friend, and telling her you still love her, and if something else happens, you can count on us to be discreet." Dear God, I think the Princess of Verona had just propositioned me on behalf of her best friend. What had my life become? "Shall we return? Dessert shall be served and we will need to honor the new Duchess."
Duchess. That's right. She was here because he gave her a freaking title. Could she have been more out of reach? I hadn't deserved her before, and this wasn't exactly helping matters. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter if I deserved her, or if I ended up with her... he didn't deserve her. And she didn't want him. And as such, I wasn't about to let her live a life of misery, in a cage. I would free her, even if it killed me.
Author's Note: Please review! xo - E