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She turned and looked away before he could ask anything, and he almost felt relief. But the questions didn’t stop in his head.

What did she mean? What was her goal? What did she want from him?

Why did she look at me like that? And why do I care?

He drowned the questions in his mind and calmed down, realizing he was tapping his foot. He forced himself to stop that as well.

Haven’t done that in years… curses…

As Sophia returned her attention to the play, Thomas thought back on his life. There must have been a time when he could feel what she felt. A time when he enjoyed simple, little, silly stories just for the sake of them and felt no need to pick them apart or call them a waste of time.

He could just about recall a moment like that, long ago, and felt his heart sink—another feud had stolen that from him, a feud he had tried to push out of his mind. A feud that, now that he thought about it, he had the power to end.

CHAPTER 18

“Noise?! Then I’ll be brief! O happy dagger!” Juliet knelt and pried the dagger out of Romeo’s cold dead hands. “This is thy sheath!” She pushed the weapon against her own chest and let out a throaty cry of pain.

The audience gasped.

The young woman looked up at the crowd with big, wet eyes. “There rust… and let me die…” And she fell on Romeo’s body with a thud.

As they were found by their families and the authorities of Verona, Thomas willed the end to come, tapping his foot. He had to admit that the thespians had some talent, all of them weeping as if they were at a funeral, thoughhecould still see Romeo and Juliet breathing.

As the feud ended with the deaths of the young lovers, the curtains fell down, covering the stage. Sophia had her handclasped to her mouth and so did many other members of the audience.

Thomas, still bewildered, looked at her with concern.

What am I missing? Maybe… Oh goodness, I hope she doesn’t start crying.

He sighed, then extended a hand and touched her shoulder. “Sophia…”

“She died! He died, and she died too! My goodness…”

She’s… she’s trembling…

“I can’t believe she died…” She leaned into him, tilting her head so it rested on his shoulder.

Thomas almost flinched, but he didn’t dare to move. It felt unnervingly intimate—far more intimate than anything they had done in secret, where all he had to do was concentrate on her and her pleasure.Thisdidn’t call for pleasure or the distractions of his tongue and touch; it called for comfort, which was something he had never known how to give.

Discreetly, he looked around himself and realized that a few eyes were fixed on them.

I guess this isn’t so bad… and it reinforces our ruse. Yes. This is fine—this is all right.

He put his arm around her shoulders. A lump formed in his throat, and he felt it slide down. She didn’t recoil or push him away as he had expected she would. She just remained there in his embrace, a small and vulnerable little thing, processing an unexpected loss.

He didn’t understand most of it, but he saw her reaction and everyone else’s. And they felt real. Even if the story that was causing these feelings was fake, made up, simple fiction, their feelings were as real as any others.

“You don’t have to do this,” Sophia eventually whispered.

“Do what?” he whispered back.

“You are embracing me. You don’t have to do it.”

“We are in public, and my wife put her head on my shoulder… what am I supposed to do?”

She peered up at him, teary-eyed. “I thought you only wanted to be your true self in front of others.”

“The Duke is known to be kindhearted,” he replied stiffly.