“Will we?” I asked him without looking away from the flickering light of the candle on the table. I’d been staring at it since it had been lit, and now it was a guttering nub. “Why?”

“For the same reason you forced us from that place,” Romeo said. “Because Mercutio is our friend, and Mercutio’s friends had best show themselves to be good and well-mannered sons. The family will protect us, but they’d best hold no doubts of our innocence in private.”

I was being shown a fool by my own younger, less responsible cousin. Without him, I might have remained immured in my apartments, hiding and brooding, and that would have occasioned comments—if not in public from the family, then in private amongst the servants, who would rattle their gossip about the town. And soon I’d be suspect as well. My own extended bachelorhood would be dragged out as proof.

Romeo was right. We had to show our clean, well-scrubbed faces and, when the music was played for us, dance most sweetly.

I could not forget Mercutio’s wild mood before dawn. Married and buried, wed and dead. Would they still wed him? Or would his family lock him away in some monastery, sworn against his will to holy orders—no, they dared not; he was their eldest son and must be made to run to heel. They’d marry him, and he was right: He’d hurt the girl, more now than ever before. Her family had been willing to sell her for position, as all girls of means were sold or bartered; they’d simply seek a better bargain now that Mercutio’s reputation lay in tatters, but marry her they would, and as quickly as possible. His father would demand it, to shore up the Ordelaffi name. I did not like to think on that unhappy wedding night. If it was consummated at all, it would be done coldly and ruthlessly. Mercutio had nothing in his heart now but ashes and gall, and that would make a bad marriage, a poisonously cruel one.

The certainty of seeing my sister at dinner made me feel sick with the desire to close my hands around her plump neck, but I rose, allowed Balthasar to dress me in appropriate clothes, and met Romeo in the hall, newly washed and berobed himself. He looked at me somberly, nodded, and the two of us strode into the dining hall together.

Conversation dimmed upon our entry, but we looked neither right nor left, heading steadily and calmly for our seats. They sat empty, awaiting us, and as we took our places servants quickly sprang into action to bring us wine and soup. I know not what flavor they placed in front of me, though certainly the cooks had labored for hours on the preparation. The wine and the soup and the napkin would, at the moment, all have the same inedible texture.

I ate mechanically, smiled when the occasion seemed to call for it, and made conversation with my mother, who watched me with unnerving focus. She was worried, I thought.