The look he levels me with would be withering were it not tempered with genuine affection, albeit exasperated. “The two of you have been in a snit. Don’t think I didn’t notice. I’m not the doddering old man you children seem to think I am.”

My lips clamps shut. Silence generally can’t get me into trouble. I learned that at a very young age.

“I don’t know what happened between the two of you but I expect you to be on your very best behavior tonight.”

I shift in my seat, though the elaborate nature of my dress makes even that simple gesture harder than it should be. The coachman waits at the open door, his eyes studiously forward, his expression artfully blank. He will wait, however long he must. He will radiate the illusion that he sees and hears nothing unusual.

“I promise I won’t embarrass you in front of the viceroy, Papa.” Disdain trickles into my voice. If my father notices it, he refrains from commenting upon it. “As for Ana … well, I cannot make promises on her behalf.”

My father sighs. “Of course not. Ana will do what Ana will do. Part of her charm, I suppose.” He awkwardly reaches over to pat my knee, or rather, to pat what might be a knee hidden under approximately seventy-eight thousand layers of fabric. I hardly feel it underneath the mounds of silk. “You could never embarrass me.”

“Quite right,” Alejandro chirps. “That’s my job.”

Just like that, the tension breaks as my father chuckles despite himself. “Try not to bring disgrace upon our family, Alejandro.”

“I make no promises.” My brother gestures toward the open door. “After you, Father. I sense the line of coaches behind us growing ever longer.”

My father bundles himself out of the coach. “Far be it from the humble Sonzas to keep a viceroy waiting.”

“Humble.” Alejandro knocks a jovial elbow into my ribs; my corset acts like armor. “That’s us, eh?”

He climbs out of the coach after my father. Suddenly, it’s just me. I make no move to disembark. My hands curl into loose fists in the silk of my skirt. My skin looks oddly pale against the midnight-blue silk. When I look down at my fists, it feels as though I’m looking at someone else’s appendages. It’s like I’m not quite in my body.

The sound of a throat clearing draws my eye to the still-open door.

Alejandro holds out a hand to me. The permanent rakish grin on his face has faded into something softer, something realer. “You’ll be all right.”

It’s not what I expected him to say. But it is perhaps what I needed him to say.

“How do you know?” My voice is so soft it hardly carries outside the coach to where Ale is standing.