When the steps of the dance bring us close enough to speak, he asks, “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“I’m not particularly fond of the saraband.” This is a lie. I love a good saraband. As a matter of fact, I love anything Jesuit priests consider indecent. “Did you know that Cervantes wrote an entremés in which hell is described as the birthplace of the saraband?”

I’m rambling. I know I’m rambling, which makes it worse somehow. But filling the air between us with nonsense seems preferable to passing the length of this dance staring into one another’s eyes.

“Is that the charlatan who wrote that dreadful tale about a man and his donkey?”

To slander Don Quixote in my presence. The nerve. The audacity. The absolute gall.

“One and the same.” I glissade away from him, twirling in the air, glad that for at least a few seconds, I can pretend that he doesn’t exist. That he doesn’t symbolize the end of my life as I know it.

But eventually, we are facing each other. I don’t like the feel of his eyes on me. So I decide to do what I do best. Hurt him.

“What happened to your face?”

It’s quite possibly the worst thing I could have said to a boy as vain as Sebastian.

Those lovely lips twist into something close enough to a sneer that for a fleeting moment, his beauty is eclipsed by the venom running just under his skin.

He—or likely, a maid in his household—has done a decent job covering up the bruises on his fair flesh, but my eye is too knowing. Lord knows I’ve spent many a morning covering up the remnants of my own fights in a similar manner. But all the paint and powder in the world can’t hide that telltale sallow stain from me.

“Nothing.” The word is hard and clipped. He clenches his jaw so hard that I can see the muscle just underneath twitch with the force of his repressed fury.

“Is that so?” I cannot help myself. If I am to be shackled to this man until my dying day, I want to make sure I am not the only one who lives in misery. “Because it looks like someone bested you in combat.”

Now perhaps that is the worst thing I could say to him.

“It was a lucky hit,” Sebastian says through gritted teeth. “Nothing more.”

“If you say so.” The dance calls for me to twirl away from him, and I have never felt more blessed by a bit of choreography.

When I twirl back, his gaze is measuring. His hands on mine are oddly gentle. “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know. All barbs and jabs.”

“It looks like someone else got to the jab before I did.”

Petty, I know. But I couldn’t help myself. It was right there.