“I never know if you are serious or if you are teasing me,” said Smythe, with a grimace.

“I do both,” said Shakespeare, with a smile. He lifted his pot of ale. “Here’s to your debut.”

ELIZABETH DID NOT KNOW FROM whence came this sudden, exhilarating boldness, and it both alarmed and pleased her at the same time. As she made her way home, she thought about what she had done and it seemed difficult to believe that she had really done it. She wondered what her father would do if he discovered that she had been at an inn, alone with a man, and a lowly ostler, no less. She could just imagine his reaction.

If he called her a slut, beat her bloody, and drove her out of the house, no one would question his right to do so. By any decent person’s standards of morality, she had disgraced herself and she had disgraced her family. But she did not feel disgraceful and she did not feel like a slut. She felt like a woman who had suddenly seized control of her own destiny and made her own choice about something. For far too long, all her choices had been made for her. For once, she had chosen for herself. And whether it had been a wise choice or not, it made her feel marvelously free.

She did not feel very close to either of her parents. Like many other children, she had been sent to live with another family when she was very young and did not return until she was nearly thirteen. This was considered a sound practice, for it kept parents from forming too close a bond with their children and thereby suffering from too much grief in the event those children should not thrive. And a great many children did not survive the first few years of infancy. Even adulthood was not without its risks, as the Plague demonstrated all too grimly every summer, so emotional attachments within families were best kept within reasonable bounds.

Still, though she had grown to know and understand all this, when she finally came home again, Elizabeth felt as if she had come home to strangers. She had seen the family resemblance, particularly with her mother, but the similarities between them seemed to go no further. And as Elizabeth grew older, she and her mother had continued to grow even farther apart. When she considered her mother now, she saw a vapid, vain, and foolish creature, a woman with whom she felt no real kinship, who cared much more about appearances than the way things truly were. And when her mother looked at her, Elizabeth knew she saw a daughter she could not even begin to understand.

Elizabeth wondered if there had ever been a time when her mother had felt the same way about things as she did. Had there ever been a time when she was young? There must have been, but it seemed difficult to credit. Sometimes, when she was looking at her mother, Elizabeth tried to imagine what she must have been like when she was young. She must have been a great deal like me, Elizabeth often thought, at least in her outer aspect. But inside, Elizabeth could not believe that they were anything alike. If she were to accept that her mother could have ever been anything like her, then it would have also meant accepting that something must have happened to change her into the woman she had now become. And that was a disturbing, even a frightening thought, because it implied that she might wind up the same way.

Elizabeth could not imagine being married to a man like her father. Although her father had never mistreated her in any way, and had provided a good home for her and seen to all of her material needs, neither had he shown her any affection. He seemed to care more for his sports, his fighting dogs, than he did for either her or for her mother. He was hardly ever home, tending to business during most of each day, and at night he went out socializing, ostensibly also to increase his business and make new contacts and connections with people who might help him advance himself. On those nights when he came home at a reasonable hour, all he did was issue orders to her mother and herself. And he was always finding fault and never seemed to have any shortage of complaints.

Elizabeth had never heard him exchange a tender word with her mother. She had never seen any sign of physical affection pass between them. She had never seen them kiss, or caress, or hold hands, or even hug. And yet, for all that, her mother seemed to consider it a good marriage. Well, Elizabeth thought, if theirs was a good marriage, she would hate to see a bad one! Whatever became of love? Beyond romantic poetry, it seemed to have no currency. From what Elizabeth could see, a good marriage was really nothing more than a sound business transaction. And Elizabeth was not interested in going into business.

As she walked through the cobbled London streets, all around her, she saw people whose lives were a constant, desperate struggle merely to survive. These were the honest, working class people of London, skinners and saddlers, cutlers and tanners, ropemakers and weavers, coopers and costermongers, and cobblers and simple unskilled laborers mingling with beggars and trollops and cut-purses and alleymen… all of whom people like her father and Anthony Gresham never even deigned to notice as they drove through the city streets in their fancy, curtained coaches. These people were the lifeblood of the city, and yet, they did not impinge upon the world of her father and of the upper classes, which gave them no more thought than a carter would give his dray horse. And even there, she thought, the dray horse would fare better, because the carter knew his livelihood depended on the animal and thus he cared for it, whilst the prosperous middle and upper classes cared nothing for the lowly worker, save for how they could use him most profitably, and with the least amount of inconvenience to themselves.

Her tutor had been right, she thought. We have forgotten how to feel. The poets were the only ones who knew the true depth of the human soul. There was no honor in the upper classes, but only avarice and selfishness and sloth. The true beauty of the human struggle was to be found within the breast of the working man, those tireless toilers all around her who would wither and grow old before their time, assuming they survived the next Plague season. Elizabeth sighed. Her father had discovered what sort of things her tutor had been teaching her-doubtless, one of the servants had been directed to report to him-and the man had been dismissed. She missed him. He was the only one who had ever truly understood her.

“ Elizabeth!”

She glanced up at the sound of her name and saw the open carriage that had just passed her stopped in the middle of the street. And standing up in it was Anthony Gresham!

“ Elizabeth? It is you! What are you doing there, walking through the streets unescorted?”

“And pray tell what business would that be of yours?” she asked, as she approached the carriage.

“Well, quite aside from looking out for a lady’s welfare, as any gentleman should do, I could say that as your intended, it is very much my business, since it would appear that I am still your intended. And this despite the agreement we had made.”

“ ‘Twas not I who did not honor my agreement,” Elizabeth replied, tersely. She resumed walking, holding her head high.

“Indeed? Well, ‘twas certainly not I.” He stepped down from the coach and caught up to her. “As it happens, I was just on my way to see you to demand an explanation.”

“Demand’?” She could feel the color rushing to her face. She wanted to throw herself upon him and pummel him to the ground for the insufferable way that he had treated her, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her lose her temper and act like the very shrew that he was trying to make her out to be. “Demand an explanation? You dare, sir, to take such a tone with me after the dishonorable way that you have acted?”