That smile told me everything.

It was not the smile of a woman who had made an innocent mistake, who might, if gently corrected, be mortified to realize how her gift had landed.

It was the smile of a woman who knew precisely what she had done and was watching, with satisfaction, to see how we would respond.

It was a smile that had already calculated the trap.

Because that was the whole art of Beatrice’s cruelty, and in that silent, terrible moment, I felt the jaws of it close around us just as she had intended.