The color was bright in her cheeks for another reason, at the end—true pleasure, I thought, and I was glad to see it, because I’d not had such a challenging and entertaining game in some time. I rose from the chair as she tipped her king, and took her hand in mine. She rose, suddenly awkward again, and the blush deepened as I bent over her knuckles and brushed my lips lightly over the skin. I kept my gaze on her as I did it, and saw the response in her. It frightened her, I saw; she might never have felt such a thing before.

All in all, not as much of a disaster as it might have been, and when the lady and her daughter took their leave, my mother turned to me with a radiant, completely delighted smile. “My son, you conquered her heart completely! I had no idea you could be so charming.”

I shrugged. “The girl’s clever,” I said. “Far cleverer than she looks, or than her mother wishes her to be.”

“I know such things appeal to you,” my mother said. “But, Benvolio, remember one thing: A clever wife can be an asset or a burden. She’ll require close watching, that one.”

“I thought you wished me married, Mother!”

“As I do, my son.” She touched my hair gently, and kissed my cheek with paper-dry lips. “I also wish you happy. That is a selfish failing, but I cannot help it. Do you wish me to offer for her hand?”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Giuliana’s baby-fat face, lit with a shy smile, appeared before me, but beside it was another face, older and leaner, framed by falling waves of night-dark hair.

Another clever girl, one whose spell I could not break no matter how much logic argued I must. When I shut my eyes I saw her glimmering in candlelight, her body a delicious shadow beneath the nightgown, her full lips rapt and parted as she read her poetry.

I opened my eyes then, and said, “Not as yet. But I do not say no outright.”

My mother, in that moment, looked as transcendently happy as I could ever imagine. She gripped my shoulders and kissed me effusively—both cheeks, then the mouth. She framed my face with her thin hands and gazed on me with true joy.

“I am so glad you are seeing sense,” she said. “This would be a good match, Benvolio. The girl comes with a good dowry, and her family has ties to the pope himself, as well as several dukes. I could not hope for better.”

Neither could I, I thought. There were certain things that would remain beyond my reach, and one of them, always, would be Rosaline Capulet. Best I resign myself to that now, and find what joy I might. Giuliana was, as yet, no great beauty, but she had a sweetness of spirit and a sharpness of wit that would do well enough to complement me.

But I felt a sense of loss, of failure, so great that I could not bear to be in the glare of my mother’s happiness. I took my leave quickly, pleading affairs to conclude, but I had no refuge back in my own rooms; Mercutio was there, waiting for an account of my gruesome failure, and to admit some partial success in my marriage hunt would be unsettling and humiliating. I did not know how I felt. I did not want to explain it to him, for fear he might suss out the grief I felt at losing a girl I’d never had.

Instead, I went to see Master Silvio, the blademaster.

He was at work with one of the distant cousins—Pietro, this one, up from the country and fumble-footed. I leaned against the wall of the large, empty room and watched as Master Silvio—dressed as always in a doublet, hose, street shoes, and half cape—drove the boy back at sword’s point out of the marked square. “No,” he said, and lowered his point as the boy struggled to find his balance again. “No, this won’t do, my boy. You wield that blade as if you plan to reap wheat with it. Elegance, young master. Precision. These are the foundations of the art of the sword— Ah. Young master Benvolio. Did we have a lesson today?”

“No,” I said. “I need a bout to cool my blood.”

Silvio’s thin eyebrows arched. He was a tall man, spidery, with long graying hair that was always queued back to prevent it from obscuring his vision. His eyes were a startling cool gray, and according to the talk of the streets, Master Silvio had been responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen men in his life of dueling, if not more. He had not a visible scar on him.

Dueling with the master was something few wanted to do for recreation.

Young Pietro passed me and whispered, “Thank you,” as he collapsed on a stool in the corner, breathing hard. His clothes were soaked with sweat. I chose a rapier and dagger from the collection neatly hung on the whitewashed wall, and turned to Master Silvio.

“You’re wearing your finest,” he said. “Perhaps it might be wise to—”

I attacked in a leaping lunge, and he glided out of the way of the blade in a fade so graceful he might as well have been a ghost. He had none of the brawler’s technique so valuable in a street fight, but in a noble duel, there was no one better. He was right: I ought to have at least removed the hanging, annoying sleeves, but I had a black fire burning, and I needed to put it out.

“You always tell us to be ready to fight in what we wear,” I said. “An enemy may not wait for me to remove my finery.”

He smiled. It was a meaningless expression with Master Silvio, merely a polite movement of the lips that affected the eyes not at all. “I do say that,” he said. “Very well, Benvolio. Have at me.”

I did, using all my concentration—I had a good reach, a sound balance, near-flawless control of my blade. It did me no good at all. Master Silvio, fighting at his true level, disarmed me in ten exchanges, swirling his blade up mine to corkscrew it out of my grip and into the air. I dropped, rolled like a tumbler, and came up to grab it before it hit the ground, but that left me fighting in an awkward crouch, unable to fully rise. “Not bad,” he told me, as he threatened me with a slow and agonizing death at the point of his blade in my guts. “But not quite fast enough. You should never try that unless you can make it to your feet again before your opponent can reach you.”

I threw all my strength into knocking his sword back and gained the space to straighten, then retreated two steps to firm footing. “Should I content myself with being dead, or take the risk?”

“There are never only two choices, Benvolio.” I used a trick Mercutio had taught me, coming in close and forcing Silvio’s hand to an awkward angle, but the man danced easily away, sidestepping the foot I placed to trip him, and then I was exposed and extended, and his sword was at my throat, the point just stinging me.

His gray eyes were very, very cold.

I dropped my sword and dagger in surrender. For a long moment, he did not move his point, but then he suddenly whipped it up and took several long strides back. I’d waked some instinct in him that was best not stirred, I realized. For one moment, he’d actually wanted to kill. Considered it, in the cold, animal way that a hungry beast considers prey.

“You’re a fool,” he said. “And you’ve ruined your doublet. Your mother will be most unhappy.”

I looked down. There was a vivid slash across my chest, one I’d not even felt. It had gone deep, all the way through the padded velvet, cut the linen shirt beneath, and there was a thin line of blood on my skin. Now that I’d seen it, it stung like a swarm of bees. The sight of the blood made me feel light and watery.

“Satisfied?” he asked me tightly. “Did I exorcise your demons, young master? Do you imagine that’s what your uncle pays me to do, indulge the whims of spoiled young men? I am here to teach you, and from the look of it, you’ve learned nothing of any significance. Were I in earnest, you would be choking on my sword just now, and your mother doubly grieved. The blade is no game.”

“I know,” I said. I felt remarkably still, all the black rage gone as if it had fled through the cut in my chest. “I killed a man yesterday with a sword and dagger to his heart. I don’t even know his name.”

Silvio turned to regard me, and the chill slowly faded out of his gaze, replaced by something like regret. He came back to put a firm hand on my shoulder. “Best you don’t,” he said. “I recall how it felt, to pass such judgment the first time. Sending a man to God is a heavy thing, young master. Little wonder you feel burdened.”

It wasn’t the killing, though, or at least not in whole. It was so many things, all impossible to explain. For Master Silvio, who lived for his art, there would be no understanding of this awful feeling of loss for what I’d never owned. And he was not wrong in what he said; the dead man’s face, with its deep scar and blind white eye, haunted me. He was an enemy, and he had earned what he was paid, but I still felt that there was a debt owed.

Master Silvio watched me for a long moment, then nodded. “I see there are still demons in you to be exorcised. Take up your sword and we will do drills. There is nothing like drills to drive the thoughts from your head. Sweat is better than wine for emptying the soul.”

He was right in that. The ritual of thrust, parry, retreat—of the eight parries and the eight thrusts—of the steps of the deadly dance—all that drove the candlelight from my mind, and even the shadow of her smile dimmed.

Dead men did not haunt me so much as Rosaline’s smile.

Better to marry than to burn.

The apostle had it very right.

FROM THE PEN OF ROMEO MONTAGUE, DISCOVERED BY HIS SERVANTS AND GIVEN TO LA SIGNORA DI FERRO.

She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste,

For beauty starved with her severity

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,

To merit bliss by making me despair:

She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow

Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

I had spent the last week collecting the various accounts of insults offered to House Montague, and they were gratifyingly legion: a poet who’d refused to take a birthday commission from my lady aunt, on the grounds that he was already sworn to write an ode for Capulet; a goldsmith who’d delivered a shoddy piece of work to my uncle; the feckless cousin who’d caused the beating of the jester in the marketplace; and an aspiring ally of Capulet who’d made rude jests in my hearing regarding my lady mother.