This Bud of Love: Part Two

"You have bereft me of all words"

May 4th
Continued from Part One.

Romeo wasn't a nature lover, but where Rosaline went, he followed.

Unfortunately for Romeo, the lady neither wished for nor welcomed his presence. Rosaline had pledged to enter a convent once her sickly mother passed, having felt a calling to serve God from a young age. To Romeo, this seemed like a grievous waste of youth and good looks, and he was determined to convince the great love of his life to choose him instead. Two weeks into this non-relationship, Romeo had made no positive progress.

He had, however, acquired an audience.

"She'll sooner fuck the Lord Himself than you. Give up." Mercutio, as the older brother, knew he ought to guide Romeo through this storm. However, Romeo had a taste for storms and was more often involved in some hopeless admiration than not. His brother had begun to believe Romeo's real attraction was to romantic torture - what else was there to hope for from a cousin of the Capulets? "By God, she's not even pleasant to look at."

"All of Verona doesn't have so fair a flower!"

"Are you blind or just stupid, brother? That frigid wench is a pair of souless, gray eyes removed from being a goddamn Capulet." That Mercutio had once admired Hermia Capulet (as one might admire a painting or a statue not possessed of a soul bound to Hell) was, of course, irrelevant.

Romeo sighed. "Her eyes..."

After a good, long laugh, Mercutio and his cousin grabbed Romeo by the arms and physically hauled him out of the Fountain Yard. "Forget fair flowers," Benvolio urged him. "We'll find you one without thorns."

Nearby, but out of hearing, Fitzwilliam was struggling. He had outlined his half of the conversation in advance, just as he had to prepare for academic debates. What needed to be said, his choice of language, his inflections and expressions: all had been neatly drafted. Yet, he hadn't been able to get in a single important word. Juliette seemed determined to direct the afternoon's conversation toward the most unimportant topics imaginable.

"If you think of it, Fitzwilliam, it really is selfish to always leave your sister by herself when we meet. "

"I don't... I suppose."

"Yet, there are so few people we could trust."

"Perhaps there is a remedy."

"Hermia would not betray us, but she would not go out of her way, and certainly not in her condition. And there is Tybalt, but-

"Dearest," he interrupted, "I am sure that she does not resent us today." As anxious as a child on the eve of a holiday, he could not contain himself any longer. If she would not give him his opportunity, he must take it.

"Why? What is today?"

He gestured toward a bench they were coming upon. "I think we had better sit. I must talk to you about something."

"I don't want to sit," she blurted. "Let's keep walking."

"No, we must talk. I... I settled something unpleasant with my mother this morning so that I could freely settle it with you now."

"Oh?" Juliette swallowed hard. Many bets had been placed, by gentlemen and ladies alike, on how long it would take Lady Anne Darcy to break her son. If the rank of Established House was the end of the long path to nobility, the Darcys would be at the very door when the next duke was crowned if they were allied with two of the four Governing Houses. The Montagues were all but serving Beatrice up on a silver salver, and Lady Anne had tried to beat her son into submission with that same salver. Apparently, it had been too much for him to withstand. For Juliette, it was too much to endure.

People often remarked that, at almost nineteen, she was not a promising candidate to succeed her aunt. She laughed too much, they said. She longed to tell them all that she laughed now because the day would soon come when she might never laugh again. Even a few months ago, she could not have guessed that the sad day was so close.

It was plain enough, after all. Fitzwilliam needed a wife and heirs, and a Lady Capulet must have a husband and heiresses. It was as impossible as a king marrying a queen regnant. Each had to protect the supremacy of their realm, and, as the king and queen secretly loved each other, neither would ask the other to throw their pride onto their sword. The king would have to marry a foreign princess and the queen find a compliant prince, or, if current Capulet husbands were representative, marry herself to her throne.

"I cannot... we cannot continue..." It was no longer any wonder to him there was never a popular volume written on the discussion of marriage with a lady, for no man with the least shred of pride would own the babble that graced his lips for the occasion. "If I thought it could be, if it was even remotely possible-"

"Oh, God. God, I don't want to talk about this."

"You don't have to talk," he pleaded, "but I must explain myself to you."

Overcome, Juliette shook her head. Her heart was burning and aching like an exhausted muscle. It was a familiar feeling, one from her childhood. Vividly, she remembered watching her mother run back into the burning house. She had never known how much she loved her mother until the instant she realized she would never see her again. "Don't say anything."

"If I thought we could be happy in such a life-"

Juliette snapped. "Stop it! Stop explaining, stop apologizing! By God, if I hear one more polite word out of your mouth!"

Mercutio hissed to his companions to stop laughing. "If the shrew ever stops yelling, they'll hear you."

Benvolio promptly ignored his cousin and began a flagrant re-enactment of the romantic disaster as it unfolded just beyond their cover. Romeo soon joined in. Mercutio, though amused, tried to keep quiet. The Darcys were to be treated gently under a standing order in the family. However much Fitzwilliam didn't seem to be enjoying it, he was tossing off a Capulet wench for Beatrice, and that was worth a little silence.

"Juliette, we do not have to be enemies. My family-"

"Oh, what's in a name? Montague." she spat. "It is not a name, but a sickness. Call yourself whatever you like, Fitzwilliam. Your soul will be as diseased as any of theirs when you marry that featherbrained twit!" She took his silence and his crushed expression for defeat. "I hope you will be very happy. You ought to get something for selling your soul."

"Dearest, you don't-"

"Leave me alone!"

"No!" He fell forward trying to take her hand and just managed to take the hem of her gown into his fingers. ""For God's sake, listen to me!" When she tried to move, he scrambled for a better hold of her, sure he would literally let his life slip through his hands if he let her go. "One moment, for the love of God. Juliette. I'm not- I would never... dearest, they can dip her in gold and crust her with diamonds for all I care! I don't want her, and I never will. I need you."

She was seized by shock and sweet disbelief. "What did you say?"

For the first time in several minutes, he breathed. He breathed deeply, filling his clenched lungs with cooler, calming air. "You are the only joyous thing in my life. I knew love, I knew contentment, but not joy. Only you are joy, something I never knew I was missing until I found it. No man is as strong or as brave as a woman who can carry a family's burden and still laugh. I want to learn that strength from you, and I want my children to be that brave. If we could elope, if I did not know it would not make you miserable, I would beg you to do it. We must do things the difficult way instead, but I'll do them happily. Juliette, if you have the smallest pinch of love for me, give me hope - not a promise, merely hope. I will find the way to join us if you will have me."

Since the moment she had been told that it may be she, not Goneril, who was Contessa's rightful heiress, Juliette's life had laid down in front of her like a long, straight road. By God's design, she was healthy and well-educated. She was a young woman in a position of incredible opportunity; Lady Capulet, whoever she may be, would always be a leader in a successful and prospering nation and the head of a proud clan whose veins pulsed with rich, ancient blood. Her birth had given her almost endless blessings, sweet mercies and comforts that a scarce few of her sex would ever know. These privileges had to be respected for the women who would never know them and preserved for the ones that would. Who was she to shrug it off for a personal indulgence?

She was not a nameless Capulet matriarch. She was Juliette, daughter of Cordelia, and sister to Hermia, a pair of impulsive, passionate women. She was an imp, a tease, and a young woman with a beating heart. If all of life was God's design, the burdens and pleasures were equal obligations. If it was not, she was still a woman with no less desire to love and be loved than any other. She was still only human. "Can you, truly?"

He smiled. "Do you know Abaddon's Valley, in the Old Empire?" Juliette nodded, for it sounded familiar. "It is a nation of pure war - eight generations of clan wars that will not end until the last drop of blood is spilled. I still have nightmares of going back there, for we all ought to have perished there. I never knew, I never understood why I had been spared. I understood I must have a purpose but not what it was. I know now. I lived to find you, and I have already been to Hell to do it. Nothing will prevent me, Juliette, nothing on this Earth."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Not even my scheming, arrogant family?"

"Not even my scheming, arrogant family."

Was it this easy? Could such inconsequential things as emotions - positive emotions - move the tide in Verona? This man in front of her was the product of a love that survived by escape, not battle. If she and Fitzwilliam took up the struggle, were they stronger than his parents or more foolish? She didn't know, but she had to find out. "Then tell me."

"Tell you...?"

"Dearest," she laughed. "Tell me!"

"Tell... oh. Oh." He could have slapped himself. What wondrous good the hours of anxious rehearsing had done for such a blundering, blubbering idiot! "I love you."

She cupped her ear. "What did you say? I couldn't hear you."

"Tease!"

"Oh, that wasn't it at all."

"I said that I love a teasing, lovely, astonishing young lady."

"You do? Who?"

"You."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. What do you think of that?"

"I think you are fishing for a compliment."

"Do I have to throw you into the stream to get one?"

She kicked and twisted, giving him a hard time of it, and laughed all the while. "I think... I think I love a man who would never throw his lady into a stream!"

Yes, that was worth living for.

To be continued...

Next Post: "Only my blood speaks to you"