Not Yet Enjoyed

"One half of me is yours, the other half yours - Mine own, I would say. But if mine, then yours,

And so all yours."

June 22nd

"M'lady?" The servant inched closer. "M'lady?"

Georgiana started out of her reverie. "I'm sorry." She hesitated, feeling a bit guilty that she couldn't remember the woman's name. The unfamiliar servants had come as part of the rental of the house. "What do you need?"

"The kitchen is asking if you'll be wanting a full supper tonight."

Georgiana's eyes momentarily drifted over to the window. The world outside was still green and blue, with no hits of red visible. Yet, she knew the sunset, like her husband, was not so far away. "The same as last night will suffice, so long as my husband had no complaints."

"None that I heard, m'lady. Begging your pardon, but are you feeling better today?"

"Much, thank you." At last.

"I'm glad of it. Can I bring you anything before supper, m'lady?"

While her lips moved to say 'no', Georgiana's mind caught on the servant's address. It was hardly the first time she had heard it; servants and other hard-working people had better things to do than discern who was a lady and who a mere miss. Now, for the last four days and all the rest to follow, she was a lady - and a Capulet at that. Perhaps it was time to try to behave as one. "Bathwater, please. It doesn't have to be particularly hot this time. And I would like my white gown with the blue sash laid out."

"Right away, m'lady."

After the servant left, Georgiana pulled herself to her feet. She wandered over to the open balcony doors, but she didn't see the cloudy, gray sky or the light ripples on the surface of the sea. She wasn't looking forward; she was looking back.

"Dearest, you don't need to upset yourself like this. You're hardly the first young lady to have her course conflict with her wedding. You planned as carefully as you could, and that is all you could do."

"But the entire wedding is going to be a disaster, Mother! The church will be stifling in all this heat tomorrow, there isn't enough wine for everyone, they're worried that the meat will turn, and now I'll be worrying about that foolish white underskirt I chose and if anyone can tell that I feel like the ugliest, grayest creature in the world! And I'll have to tell Tybalt..."

The wedding had not been the disaster Georgiana feared. To be sure, the cathedral had been overly warm and the wine not as abundant as it ought, but the guests had been happy. More importantly, she had forgotten all of her troubles, even her white underskirt and the cramps in her belly, while she shared the chancel with Tybalt. She left the church a sincerely happy woman. Genuine cheer slipped out of reach as the day and her condition wore on her. Determined to make the day perfect, she played the role of the joyful bride right up until the moment she was left alone with her husband for the first time. 

"I'm not frightened, Tybalt, truly. It's simply... I'm bleeding."

"Where?"

"What do you mean, 'where'?"

"Where are you bleeding from? How were you hurt? I never saw it-"

"I'm not- stop! Please, stop spinning me about and listen. I'm not injured, Tybalt. I'm just bleeding."

"You mean... it's that sort of bleeding?"

"Yes."

"For God's sake, Georgiana, how could you let this happen!"

Idiot.

Tybalt was no great scholar, but even he knew women didn't bleed by choice. His stupidity hadn't ended there, either. He had bickered with his wife of mere hours, drank his way to oblivion after she threw him out of her room, and overslept the departure for his own wedding holiday by an hour. He had been too groggy to understand Georgiana hadn't needed to spill any secrets to Hermia, who had at last came to fetch him in a white-hot blaze. The carriage wasn't past the Manor gates before he fell asleep again, not a word spoken. The journey's end had been upon him when Tybalt realized his condition and whereabouts had told his sister everything. By then, it was too late. Georgiana, looking pale and tired when the torches' light cast across her face, shrugged him off when they alighted from the carriage and escaped upstairs.

That night, he had laid awake all night, trying to decide what to do. He knew what he shouldn't have done, which was everything he had. Lacking a solid plan the next morning, he had chosen to take her lead. He interpreted her non-appearance as a sign to leave her alone. After days of doing just that, however, Tybalt wasn't sure he had stopped being a selfish bastard yet. The only thing he had gained by riding up and down the coastal road was a layer of grime that took a long time to scrub off. Some of his skin was still damp and pink when he jumped up onto a fence post to watch the tide and consider his situation.

I fucked up. That's what I should say: 'Georgiana, I fucked up.' But I can't. You can't say 'fucked up' to your wife - not to mine, at least. Why is the right word the one I can't say? God, if it's so offensive, how do they even know the word?

Tybalt winced. He knew how Georgiana knew that particular curse, and it was his fault. His desire for her approval had overwhelmed his duty to protect her. He let a scum-born bastard live to spew filth at her.

I should have killed that sack of shit. I should have cut his head off and put it at her feet. She would have had me still. I didn't have to act the coward. She understands. She understands too much. I have to do better. 

She almost called out to the red speck with the slumped shoulders. She didn't. She couldn't shatter the twilight with their private matters. They had to talk, and they had to do it face-to-face. She had to go down to him. When she emerged from the house, she noticed her husband had come to a similar conclusion.

"Tybalt, why are you climbing that wall?"

His hands tightened around the balusters just above him while his free foot searched for a hold. In just a few more seconds, he would have been on the balcony. He held himself in limbo. "I wanted to talk to you." When Georgiana asked him why he didn't use the stairs inside, he shrugged and said, "This seemed faster."

"And would it be safer for you to finish climbing up or-" The last word was chased across Georgiana's lips by a gasp when Tybalt dropped straight down into the bushes at the base of the house. The distance was nothing to the carelessness of it. "Why did you do that?"

He picked his way out of the depressed hedges and brushed the scraps off his tunic. "I'm fine."

"That isn't..." Georgiana's words died with her desire to bicker. Tybalt would always do reckless things as sure as she would struggle with being too cautious. Even the best gardener could only shape how a plant grew; the roots had to be accepted as they came. "I'm glad to see you are in one piece."

"You don't look all that glad about anything."

"Maybe not." Georgiana wove her fingers together, that they might steady one another. Like a young girl remembering her lessons, she stood perfectly straight. But for the light sea breeze fluttering the hem of her skirt, she could have rivaled the fountain's statue for stillness. "I don't want this. I don't want to do this."

Squirming on the spot under the weight of the possibilities, Tybalt asked, "You don't want what?"

"This... this. I hardly know what to call it. Have we even exchanged enough words to call it a quarrel?"

Tybalt started to answer but stopped when he caught sight of a nosy servant standing too near a window. Tomorrow, I'm sending for more guards. With his wife's assent, he led her away from the house and down the steps to the beach. "Do the words from the other night count?"

Her breath caught in her throat, stopping everything up until her lungs burned and words rode out on the necessary exhale. "I am so sorry for that, Tybalt." She smiled to herself when she noticed how much lighter she felt. "I'm sorry."

"Don't-"

"No, please. Please don't tell me not to apologize." She pursed her lips. "Perhaps the original problem was no-one's fault, but I had my share in making it more than an inconvenience. I felt entitled to be angry long after I stopped feeling anger. We could have spoken like reasonable people, and we didn't because I chose not to. I'm sorry."

"And I'm sorry for this: Georgiana, I've been an ass and an idiot." Tybalt held up his hands in surrender to her wide-eyed shock. "Look, I wanted to say something else, and that's as polite as it could get. You are right, neither of us handled it perfectly." The words were hard to push out when Tybalt refused to believe Georgiana had done anything wrong, but he didn't want to be the sort of husband who didn't listen. "But if I hadn't been an ass and an idiot, the rest wouldn't have happened at all. I should have been worried about how you were feeling, not..." More excellent husbanding. Could I fuck this up any more? "How are you feeling?"

"Much better, thank you." Georgiana couldn't help but smile. She knew Tybalt thought the hidden similarities ran one way, but she thought they ran both. Just as she had her own ways of shielding her family, he had talent for bending himself for the good of loved ones and suffering it in silence - at least, as close to silence as Tybalt could come. "I feel like myself again."

His eyebrows raised. "Already?"

"Already?"

Her odd expression told him more than her words would. "Wait, were you...?"

"Yes."

"But you were happy. You looked happy the entire day!"

"Well, you didn't see me before... but oh, I was happy while we were in the church, happier than I ever have been." She smiled a bit as she remembered it. "Afterward... well, what choice is there? Ladies have to carry on regardless, weddings included. We invited our families and our friends to celebrate with us. How can anyone be happy at a wedding if the bride is not?"

"Most of our friends and family are fools at best, Georgiana, and they all knew where the door was if they weren't sufficiently entertained. Goddamn! Do women have to do this all the time?" Georgiana's tentative nod fed his disgust. "So, you all bleed for, what, five days without dying, but instead of bragging about it, you have to be ladylike and pretend it isn't happening at all? God, what a pile of horse-"

She silenced him with a fleeting touch of his arm. "Why don't we walk a bit?"

"It is," he grumbled. But he obeyed, and all the more happily when she didn't pull away from his arm. "And there isn't a polite word for it. If there was, you ladies would use it. There should be one."

"Maybe one word wouldn't suffice, though. It isn't the same experience for every lady. Some can't press on for all the effort in the world, and some barely feel any different."

"And you are somewhere in the middle?" he guessed.

The strangeness of the moment struck her. A week earlier, this entire situation would have been unthinkable - out with Tybalt alone at night, his arm resting on her waist while they discussed an extremely personal matter. The last part still felt awkward; Georgiana supposed the act of being wed could not magically alter everything. That part was left to their effort. Hesitantly, she said, "Yes, mainly. It isn't always the same." Georgiana laughed helplessly at the dread and confusion that washed over her husband. "Usually, a little extra rest and a hot bath keeps things tolerable. But I was so worked up about the wedding, and that carriage ride was awful."

"And other than not being an ass and an idiot, was there something I could have done for you?"

"I don't know."

"Georgiana..." He grumbled and pulled her close. "You have to help me. I don't know anything."

"Well, most of it is new to me, too. Not that one part, but having a husband and trying to explain... I think we'll have to work it out for ourselves. Like everything else we have to start together, I'm sure we'll do better next time. No couple is perfect."

"Your brother and my sister." The utterance was less of an answer and more of a distraction. He was incapable of re-creating any distance she was willing to cede, so he needed something to slow his blood. Two years of longing to strip away that white gown was too much to give up for a lack of patience at the end. "I didn't get to tell you what he threatened me with, did I?"

"I can't imagine he threatened you with violence."

"Worse." Tybalt couldn't imagine a better wedding-day threat, even from someone who wasn't his inferior in combat. "He said if I ever gave you a reason to go home, he wouldn't send you back."

"A very good threat," Georgiana agreed quietly, "but not entirely correct. You are my home now." Or so said the warm, swirling, glowing feeling in her belly. It was every flutter he had ever ignited in her, grown up and melted together. The intensity flooded her senses to the breaking point, but she had to press on. She wanted to feel what it was like to break. "This is where I belong."

"I love you."

"I love yo-"

"Goddamn!"

The sky had opened in a split second. As the soaking, cold rain poured down on them, Georgiana and Tybalt parted out of shock. Tybalt lingered longer, cursing the timing and his luck under his breath. Georgiana stood only long enough to wipe the the first layer of water from her; then, she bolted for the garden.

"Why are you running?"

"I must get out of the rain!" Her slippers, not made for running on wet surfaces, fared poorly on the stairs. At the top, she stumbled forward toward the cover of the tall trees. Behind her, Tybalt sprinted and was scarcely later than she was to stop under the leaves. The trees lost worth by the second as the rain increased. "My gown," she despaired, "it's not meant to get wet!"

"It won't just dry out?"

"Of course it will! It's just that... well, if it gets too wet, I'll look... indecent." Her brows knitted when she saw his gaze immediately drop. The pleasant little flutter she felt was just one more thing dampened by the rain. "Tybalt." When she received no reply, she moved so close that he had to look up. "Tybalt, there are servants with eyes - male servants - in that house."

"Then I'll run. You just hold tight, my lady."

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