So Balthasar and I indulged my mother, and let her act the part of the aristocratic woman she would be on foreign soils.

“I need to bathe, Mother,” I said.

“I’ll have it prepared,” she said with serene calm. “But you will talk to me, my son. We have much to discuss.”

This did not sound at all entertaining. I sat up, pulling the covers chest-high, and tried to look less like a wayward child, though I’d always be that in her eyes. “I am at your disposal, as always.”

A tiny hint of a smile woke a shallow dimple just by the edge of her lips, but it smoothed again almost immediately. “Have you given thought to the girl? She comes of impeccable stock, her family’s fortunes are secure, and they are eager to secure a match before she’s thought too old.”

“She’s fifteen,” I said. “And boring.”

“She’s appropriate, biddable, and presentable.”

“What of the Toretti girl?”

My mother gave me one of those looks. “She is no longer appropriate.”

“Oh, you just made her more interesting.”

“Benvolio, do not be flippant. The girl has been . . . compromised. Her virtue is in question.”

“The interesting ones are always questioned.”

“That is why I offer you the boring ones, my son. Believe me, in the end, they will be a benefit to you, and the interesting ones, as you like to call them, would be a millstone on your back. You’d never live down the gossip.”

“Cruel market chatter, worth less than a goose fart,” I said. “I care nothing for it.”

“You’d care if it came from the mouth of Tybalt Capulet,” she said, with unerring accuracy. “I am trying to protect you, my son. If not the Scala girl, then whom? You’ve already rejected the best candidates I could bring you. Perhaps the Church would suit you better.”

Since one of the core tenets of our faith was “Thou shalt not steal,” perhaps not. “I tried on a monk’s robe recently, and I didn’t favor it,” I said. “Is there no greater match to be made from another city? Or even from your mother country?”

“The last thing I would wish is to burden you with a wife so alien to you, and to this family,” she said. “You bear enough of that stigma already, which I well know. And I wouldn’t wish to exile a young girl so far from her home and family without good cause.”