Read Online Still Star-Crossed by Melinda Taub - Free Book Online

Rosaline burst once more into tears. Escalus patted her shaking back. “Cry not.”
    “I shall,” she vowed. “Yea, I shall weep and weep, and never cease till thou return’st to wed me.”
    Escalus laughed, and ruffled up her curls. “Pray dry thy tears. I swear I shall return.”
    Return he had, several years later, when his father fell ill. But her own father had died in the meantime, and her mother died shortly after his return. The little girl of seven he’d left behind had been replaced by a poor, grim young maid barely acknowledged by her own family, not nearly grand enough to be friends with the prince. She’d seen little of him.
    All traces of that merry, adoring child were long gone, except her love for him.
    She stayed sunk in a deep curtsy, eyes modestly lowered—the picture of the polite obedience she was refusing him. With an impatient sound, Escalus’s hands gripped her shoulders, pulling her gently upright. “Stand up, for God’s sake.”
    Rosaline tried to hide the way her breath hitched at his touch. He was standing just a handspan away from her, peering quizzically into her eyes as if he could divine the secret to her defiance there. “Aye, we were friends once,” she said, stepping back out of his grip. “But thou hast spoken not a hundred words to me since thou didst return to Verona, Escalus. Canst truly say thou account’st me amongst thy dearest friends? If not, why should I count thee so? Pray do not so insult me.”
    Escalus’s frown deepened. “You are too familiar, lady. You forget yourself.”
    “Familiar, am I?” There was a harsh, jeering tone in her voice, but she could not seem to stop herself. “One momentthou dost plead thy will on the strength of our friendship, the next thou dost chide me as an upstart peasant. Punish me, then, your lordship, for my temerity. Deprive me of my fortune—I have none. Forbid me to wed. I shall thank you. Exile me—oh, dear sweet
friend
, you could do me no greater boon.”
    “You’re so angry,” Escalus said, but quietly.
    She swiped a furious hand across her eyes. “No less are you.”
    Escalus looked a bit surprised at that. But yes, she still knew him well enough to see the fury beneath that polished surface of his. “Aye. This feud has treated neither of us kindly.” He took out his handkerchief and offered it to her. She ignored it. “ ’Tis why I would move to bring it to an end.”
    “A noble aim, but your methods are wanting. Marry me with Benvolio and our cousins shall slaughter each other over the wedding feast.”
    “You’re wrong.”
    She smiled mirthlessly. “We shall never know. I have given this feud my blood. It shall not have my body too. I know Your Grace cares little for my happiness, but I promise you ’twill be so.”
    He looked as though she’d struck him. “Think you truly I care not for your happiness?”
    “I know you do not.” She swallowed hard. “ ’Tis no matter. A sovereign’s not obliged to befriend orphans of modest means, too lowly for notice even by their own kin. Livia and I have no need of your patronage, nor that of anyone else in this accursed city.”
    A flash of sadness passed across Escalus’s face. “Think you that is why I stayed away? Rosaline, I—mine own father was newly dead, my sister in a foreign city, myself just crowned. My old intimacies could not continue once I took the throne. I thought only of Verona.”
    “So do you still,” Rosaline said. “An excellent trait in a sovereign.”
    “They all abandoned thee?”
    “Had the Capulets had their way, Livia and I would have gone straight to a convent after our father’s death. ’Tis but luck that renting our house gives us a little income. That is the only reason the duchess lets us keep house in a corner of her estate until we may marry.”
    “Your house is in Verona,” he pointed out. “Perhaps you’ve more need of this ‘accursed city’ than you think.”
    “Aye, but we shall live in it no more.”