“When I was ten years old,” she said, “my father’s sworn enemy, the Borgia pope, sent his men to capture me and hold me captive until my father—still cardinal at the time—surrendered himself in exchange for me, as any good father would. They would’ve tortured him, forced him to sign a document of loyalty to the Borgia, presumably hung him.” Her dark eyes found mine; in that light, the color looked like flecks of moss floating in thick mud. While you’ll never catch me describing her eyes as kind, that night I saw that they weren’t always so murderous. “In the dead of night, my father’s men put me on a ship in the Mediterranean, sailing north to Savona, where my father’s family had sworn to protect me. However, the pope ordered his men to hunt me down. Papal galleons quickly caught up to us, and the pope’s men boarded our ship. I refused to serve as bait to lure my father into the hands of his enemy, so I . . .”

“Killed the pope’s men,” I interrupted.

She has a nice laugh. Too bad she doesn’t use it more often. “I jumped off the ship.”

“Into the Mediterranean?”

“In a heavy dress my mother had put me in to greet my father’s family.”

“You were how old again?”

“Ten.”

“Could you even swim?”

“I’d been to the Port at Ostia. Once.” She shook her head. “I remember my skirts billowing in the water, first holding me up, then pulling me down. It was dark. Cold. I splashed and flailed until . . . One of my father’s men was already in a rowboat—he’d obviously been fleeing the scene, although he claims he was waiting for such an emergency. He plucked me out of the water and rowed us to shore under the cover of darkness. We rented horses, and he rode with me to Savona. And after all that, who do you think got credit for protecting my father?”

I didn’t need to think about it. “The man who pulled you out of the water,” I said.

“The man who pulled me out of the water,” she repeated. “He got a bag full of ducats and a stretch of land, while all I got was married off to a man who turned out to be a Borgia spy. Too bad. He really was handsome.”

“My lady, I hate to tell you this, but you and I are nothing alike. You’re a far better person than I, for I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the ducats and laurels.” Our eyes caught. She has a nice smile, too, when she uses it.