Today's Reading
I didn't like the sound of that. "How not well?"
"She didn't understand how to graciously take disappointment." Mamma clearly felt uncomfortable. "She threatened me."
"Th-threatened you? You?" I was stammering. "You're Juliet!"
"She slammed her fist on the table and spoke with unwomanly vigor, and while I didn't banish her from Casa Montague completely—she was very young and suffered neglect from her parents—I did limit her time with you children and while she visited, I kept her under observation."
"Luckily, she soon transferred her devotion to Duke Stephano and forgot about me." Papà gave a deep sigh of relief.
"I didn't know. I'm sorry, Papà." This whole discussion made me squirm. "Titania wasn't like me. The unhappiness of her home seemed to bring on moments of brooding and melancholy. And her obsession with such an evil man! I understand her loving Papà, all women do, but to move from him to Duke Stephano? A man renowned for indifference to his own family, who never loved anyone but himself all his life?"
"Poor little girl." Clearly, Mamma's tender heart ached for Titania. "To have died so barren of love."
"She had love. She gave love." I remembered so well. "To me, it seemed like Titania was infatuated with the duke forever. She was always talking about him and watching him. Following him in secret."
"Did you counsel her?" Papà asked.
I grimaced at him. "You know me, Papà. If I have an opinion, everyone has the right to hear it."
"Only if you think it will help." Mamma was kind.
Papà not so much. "It is one of your most annoying traits, Rosie. Especially when you're right."
"But her devotion to Duke Stephano didn't give him the right to poison her!" I thought of the innocent, laughing, devoted bride I'd seen at the wedding a year before. My voice rose." As he did his first wife, mysteriously dead after a decade of marriage."
"That action of his surprised me. I believed he loved her, or as much as that wretched man can love." Mamma betrayed her real opinion of him without meaning to.
"Poisoned!" I charged on, louder than before. "Then another wife, also poisoned. Then Titania. All three younger than he. All wealthy. He squanders their dowries and marries again."
Papà's voice rose, too. "Don't bellow at me, young lady! The tales about his spending and his visits to the brothels and what happened to his mistress are no more than society tittle-tattle."
Mom flipped out her fan and used it to cool her face. "What happened to his mistress?"
"Nothing." Papà spoke too quickly.
"You assured me Duke Stephano was not what his reputation proclaimed." My mother was a Capulet and soft-spoken as befits a woman of her station. Our station. Whatever. Yet now steel hardened her tone.
"He may not be the ideal man, but... look at Rosie!" Papà held his cupped hand toward me. "She'll be twenty ere the summer ends. Twenty and a virgin!"
"This is your fault, Romeo." Mom seldom spoke sharply to him, except on this subject. "You insisted on naming her Rosaline after your first love. Rosaline, who swore to be chaste, and now we have a chaste daughter. Foreshadowing! What were you thinking?"
"I know. I know." Papà had heard it all before.
I gave him the eye.
He picked up his cue. "Rosaline the elder was not my true love, merely a foolish young man's distraction. I have had only one true love, my Juliet."
I nodded at him. Better.
Of course, he couldn't let it stand at that. "Although Rosaline didn't stay chaste, so I guess she got over me fast enough." Obviously a point of irritation for him.
Mamma said, "She wed at one-and-twenty. A withered old—"
"She might as well have been dead." I mean, obviously. In a little more than a year I'll be twenty-one, and I feel just fine, thank you.
My bitter observation pulled their attention back to me. My never-ending fault was my inability to keep my mouth shut. I made a run at distracting them. "Papà, why did you name me for your girlfriend, anyway?"
His face got all soft and sentimental. "You were so tiny and soft, you smelled good most of the time, except when you didn't, and even then I could tell you were going to be as beautiful as your mother. Your big brown eyes... and those lashes! All I could think was of all the men who would want to—" He bumped his fists together. "So I named you after Chaste Rosaline. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Darling Juliet, even you agreed!"
...
