Think of Marriage Now

"My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour."

December 3rd

Bianca awoke to a winter sunrise peeking around the drapes. It was the same light, the same room, the same drapes with which she had lived most of her life. Long ago, the room had been the nursery. When her brothers outgrew the nursery, they had been given larger, better quarters. When Bianca outgrew the nursery, her parents refurnished it. At the time, she didn't see it as an insult. Claudio would always live at Montague Court, and Antonio might live and die there as well. She would leave the house forever when she married.

Throughout her engagement, Bianca had thought of her intended husband, Lucentio Amantes, as a haze of smiles and charm. She remembered him just the same. He didn't live long enough for her to know him better. After the only private conversation they ever shared, Bianca reluctantly agreed to delay their wedding by six months. A male member of a matriarchal family, Lucentio had to carve out his own place in the world. Proving himself to Bianca's father would have gone a long way toward this goal. She had no idea at the time that she had agreed to delay their wedding so Lucentio could study under one of her father's assassins.

After the news arrived that Lucentio and his mentor had been killed by Capulet vassals, Bianca cried. She wept for Lucentio and herself. Her mother and sisters-in-law tried to say the right things, but there were no right words. Worst of all were the quick assurances that she would find love again. She was too young, too freshly aggrieved to understand what they meant. What Bianca heard was that her grief was not warranted. She loved him, as she had been told to do, and with him died first love and liberty. Bianca spitefully resolved to never love again. She still craved liberty, although now by a means that did not require her heart. There was only one option.

Her father laughed at her request to take the veil. Bianca later acknowledged that it was not a good idea; God had formed few people less suited to deprivation and mortification. In the moment, Bianca had been adrift in her grief. Her only constant was the memory of Lucentio. She burned when her father scoffed that no daughter of his would be wasted on a convent. She boiled when he brushed her out of his presence with the assurance he would find her another husband, as though Lucentio had been a pet or a doll she lost.

Bianca stewed in her fathers words for the rest of the day. Joining a convent without his help was out of the question; the orders that took in noble ladies and didn't expect them to work hard required a dowry. The encounter finally boiled down to the word 'wasted'. As a marriageable daughter, Bianca was a commodity to him. If she had no more value, she had reasoned, it wouldn't be a waste to send her away.

There hadn't been many options. Bianca was too fond of comfort to run away. Mourning restricted her to the society of family visits or condolence calls, the latter of which only came from people on their way out of the capital to pay respects to Lucentio's family. Among them had been John Iden, the betrothed of Lucentio's sister. A despicable man with princely manners, he had been more than happy to comfort the would-be widow in the particular fashion she desired. Afterward, Bianca realized her mistake. Lest she catch herself a husband and not just passage out of her father's house, she had to aim lower. She aimed for two of the guards, a visiting squire, and the messenger who collected her brother's anonymous pamphlets. Along with the crypt-keeping churchman Bianca was finally caught with, they soon vanished from society without explanation. Bianca expected that she would disappear as well.

Instead, Bianca was swallowed up by her family. Her father had not spared any of his children the back of his hand, but he never raised it against her again. Each time she tried to break free, the family only held onto her more tightly. There was no more talk of a husband from her father, no matter how many years and how many of her mother's petitions came to pass. Otherwise, he treated Bianca as he ever had. She wore fine clothes in the family colors. She received gifts on all of the appropriate occasions. Anyone who questioned her place in a respectable family suffered her father's ire. Bianca was and would always be his daughter.

Another lady might have considered herself forgiven. Each and every time Bianca gazed longingly out at the world beyond her mother's shadow, she knew she was being punished. She could be comfortable or she could be free; her father would not allow her to be both. Eventually, she grew too tired of her bonds to shake them anymore. She accepted her boundaries and looked for the slivers of light. Living at Illyria after Hero's death, running her brother's household and looking after his children, had relieved her temporarily. That was over now. They were all firmly replanted at Montague Court forever.

Bianca didn't want this fate for her niece. Beatrice suffered a personality of extremes - at times she was strong and confident, at others she was sensitive and melancholy. If aggravated, she was capable of both exploding and imploding. She would feel her captivity more than Bianca ever had. With Antonio and his traditional ideals in charge of her future, Beatrice needed a marriage arranged as soon as possible. For that reason alone, Bianca agreed to a second partnership with someone she could barely tolerate at times, a domestic schemer of the first order: her mother.

"Why isn't my father here?" Beatrice questioned her aunt and her grandmother. "You said this discussion was about my future."

"It is," Bianca assured her. "I thought we might want to keep the early discussion a ladies-only affair."

Isabella disagreed. "Why in the world would you invite a man to discuss marriages at all? Your grandfather didn't know a blessed thing until the day we were betrothed. Better your father be performing his duties than be scheming matches with us."

"My father would have schemed with us before he became Lord Montague," Beatrice grumbled. "He only cares about Benedick now."

Bianca answered quickly, before her mother could utter any more words of wisdom. "Bea, love, your father loves you very much. Even good fathers struggle with their little girl becoming a lady grown, as you are now. Some fathers want to settle their daughters immediately and not risk leaving them unprotected; other fathers wait because they are not ready to give way to a husband."

"You expect me to believe my father ignores me because he loves me too much?"

No. "Not exactly, love. Yet, if you do feel unappreciated here, wouldn't finding a husband be a good solution?"

Caught between opinions, Beatrice closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. Marriage was what she had been brought up to expect and anticipate. Lately, there had been days when she lived for her daydreams of living in a female-first culture. She would never admire the godless Capulets, no matter what she said to rile her father, but there were other noble houses and the entire Fae kingdom who valued ladies. Then there were days when fatalistic despair blanketed her, sapping her of ambition and even the requisite energy. Those days, she acknowledged a standard marriage as the easiest way out of Montague Court. Lastly, there were the in-between days, when romanticism stirred and the thought of being cherished for herself and wielding the power of a grand lady appealed quite a bit. Today, perhaps, was an in-between day. "Only if that husband actually appreciates me." And wouldn't prefer the daughter of monsters to me. "And isn't an ugly old man or only wants me for wealth or sons."

"Men of any worth at all want wealth and sons. The trick of it is that they must not need your fortune. And you should want sons for yourself," Isabella scolded. "Sons protect their mother when their father dies. Left to some step-son or sibling, a widow will be out of her home in an instant."

"And do you have any idea of whose weak, lonely widow I should be?" Beatrice snapped.

Bianca knew that disdainful tone. How often had she spoken in it herself, right up until her father's death put her mother out of the matchmaking habit? "We have several ideas, love, but there is one in particular that you and your father might both find appealing." A peripheral glimpse of her mother's surprise inspired a smirk. Bianca was not too old to enjoy beating her mother at her own game. "Lord Nowell still has an unmarried son, just a little older than you."

"A younger son?" Isabella admonished her daughter. "For Heaven's sake, Bianca, that boy could have been your son, if only his mother hadn't been such a forward, vulgar girl, may God rest her soul." Isabella had campaigned hard to make Bianca the third wife of Orsino Nowell. She remained convinced that the man would have waited for Bianca to turn sixteen if only Isabelle Anjou hadn't trapped him with indecent allurements.

"Be that as it may, he is not my son. He is also his brother's heir until and unless that odd man produces a son. We all know there must be something wrong with Lord Fabian, so why not sterility? Lord Henry may become Lord Nowell yet. And," she continued, shifting her attention to Beatrice, "he is a rather dashing young man."

Beatrice puckered her lips and looked away. "He could also be a rake, like his father, or mad, like his oldest brother. He could also be a horrible husband, if that matters to either of you."

Isabella took her chance. "If you prefer someone you know better, why not your cousin, Benvolio? I believe he admires you a great deal."

"Benvolio?" Beatrice shuddered. "How disgusting! He might as well be my brother, Grandmother."

"He is your cousin, and he is going to be one of your father's most important allies someday. There is nothing wrong with marrying a cousin for a good reason, you know."

"Oh?" Beatrice scoffed. "Is Romeo next on your list, to make him loyal to my father?"

"Of course not! Romeo is a Montague himself. Marriages are to make alliances for the family, not within it."

Before Beatrice could give her opinion on the purpose of marriage, the ladies were interrupted. One of several distant, barely-noble cousins who served as ladies in waiting curtseyed and begged pardon for interrupting.

"My child," Isabella said, "what is the matter?"

"I'm afraid there's a bad quarrel going on. Two of the ladies are fighting over a necklace."

"Oh, anything but that," Beatrice muttered disdainfully.

"Each one claims that it is hers. I tried to calm them, Lady Montague, but they won't listen to reason."

Bianca spoke up before her mother could send her to do the chore. "Mother, you really ought to set the girls straight. We can't be expected to help find them husbands if they persist in acting like animals."

Isabella was forced to agree and excused herself.

Bianca intently listened for the death of the footfalls heading away from the room. Once the silence fell, she switched her intense attention to her niece. "Love, listen to me. I know what it is to be your age. I know what it is to feel your opinions are being ignored." She nearly saw her niece's eyes roll before it happened. Bianca spoke more sharply, "Bea, listen to me."

"No! Why should I? You were just as bad as everyone else when your scheme went up in smoke. You didn't care about how I felt."

"I did care," Bianca replied almost too calmly, "only too much. I couldn't keep saying the same empty things to you that drove me out of my mind when Lucentio was killed. I didn't want you to take any ideas from what I did if I told you the truth, either. Believe what you will, but your father does love you. He would have kept you here if you acted out - out of goodness, not spite, but it would have been just as much a punishment as I received. Worse, perhaps, because I never needed to get out of this house as much as you do, Bea."

"Do I?" Beatrice stood, only to feel her feet freeze. She stood on the spot, quaking with uncertainty. "At least I know what to expect here. I don't know what any husband would be like! What if he's worse than my father? What if he's just as..." She struggled for a kind word. "What if he doesn't know me any better and he treats me worse?"

Bianca joined her niece on her feet. "Love, do you think for a minute that any of us, especially you, would stand for that?"

"Maybe not," she admitted.

"And have you truly gone from a girl willing to try anything to a lady afraid of giving anyone a chance to please you?"

"No."

"Then give me a second chance. Married ladies have much more freedom than daughters ever can. We will find a good husband to make you happy, and you will get out of this house. And don't you dare say this to your grandmother, but there are far worse rakes to be had than a Nowell."

Beatrice looked questioningly at her aunt. "Aunt Bianca?"

"We all have to find our joys where we can, love. What do you say?"

"I say we reconvene this meeting in the kitchen," she said, her smile growing, "where there is a fire and plenty of sweets. If I need to order Benedick to make friends with anyone at school before the winter break, I really must know now."

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