Still Star-Crossed Read Free Page A

aye.” Livia stood on tiptoes to smack a little-girl kiss on Rosaline’s cheek.
    Rosaline swallowed, then returned her sister’s affections with an embrace, provoking a surprised squeak from Livia. Sorry though she was for Romeo’s death, she was also filled with relief that she and Livia had escaped this summer’s events unscathed. It all could have been so different, had she encouraged Romeo’s affections. It was just this sort of disaster she’d feared when she’d spurned Romeo’s love. Apparently cousin Juliet had had none of her caution.
    “Ay! Leave off, Rosaline, you’ll squeeze me in two.”
    Rosaline frowned, the effort of forcing her tears back sharpening her headache. What must it be like to love someone so desperately that you cared not what your own death might do to your family? However the poets might praise it, such a love was something she dreamed not of.
    What if she had accepted the dreamy-eyed young Montague who had begun to follow her around at the start of spring this year? Instead of barring her door against his visits, refusing to hear his earnest, pretty sonnets, sending back his gifts—what if she had allowed his courtship?
    Rosaline had not loved Romeo, but ’twas impossible not to like him. Quick to smile, never pressing the privilege of his rank, he and his two friends were a familiar sight in the city, and even his family’s enemies had grudgingly concededthat he was the best kind of youth. Few maids of Verona would have turned down a chance at such a husband. But Rosaline had not wanted any husband, so it had been all too easy to harden her heart against his entreaties.
    If she had not, if she had accepted his love and returned it with her own, could they have been married peacefully? She was not the only daughter of Lord Capulet, like poor Jule. Rosaline and Livia were mere nieces, and their name was not even Capulet, but Tirimo. Maybe those cut down would still be alive.
    But even guilt could not persuade her of this logic. In the eyes of Verona, she was still a Capulet. More likely, they would still be dead, and it would be Rosaline herself slumbering in the family tomb.
    Rosaline smiled and released Livia, who took the black dress and held it out in front of her, wrinkling her nose in distaste before giving a martyred sigh. Rosaline cast her eyes to heaven. “ ’Tis only for a few more weeks.”
    “I shall be old by then.” Livia stripped off her white linen dress and left it in a puddle on the floor. “ ’Tis all very well for thee. Black becomes thee so well it will only make thy pack of swains chase thee all the harder.”
    Rosaline shook her head at Livia’s prattle. But there was an undeniable grain of truth to this. Though both were counted among Verona’s beauties, the sisters could not have looked less alike. Livia took after their father, with fine, honey-blonde hair, big blue eyes, and fair skin. The kind of face they wrote sonnets about, Rosaline thought, but it was undeniably not a coloring flattered by black attire. Already,holding the dress up to herself in the mirror, Livia looked pale and colorless, like she might fade away altogether.
    Rosaline was a different tale. She looked every inch a Capulet, like their mother. Tall and long-limbed, she had the Capulet coloring too: green eyes, olive skin, a rosy mouth prone to pouting. Her tumble of impossibly thick brown curls was pinned back in a twist, but as usual a few strands had sprung stubbornly free and hung round her face. Her own black gown, she noted dispassionately, made her looks stand out all the better.
    She was beautiful. There was no point in being modest about it, as all who’d seen her had been telling her so since she left the nursery. But what of that? She’d trade places with the ugliest girl in Verona if she could. Juliet had been beautiful too.
    Rosaline bent and retrieved Livia’s abandoned white linen. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I’m sure I ought to parade round