“No, nothing like that,” I said. If I turned out to be wrong, I could always play dumb: Gasp! “I had no idea that was a slight against the della Rovere!”

She climbed my scaffolding. Should she be climbing a ladder while so pregnant? Mary forbid I be responsible for another loss. She asked, “Did you check every part of that ceiling?”

“Twice.” Eyes on the wall, eyes on the wall. Flick, flick, flick, flick went my brush.

She landed at the top of the scaffolding. Her gaze heated my cheek. “Truly?”

“Truly.” Yes, I considered telling her the truth. Or at least a partial truth, as I would’ve claimed that I’d done everything in my power to see that ceiling, but Michelangelo had, unfortunately, come after me with a marble hammer. However, if she’d known the truth, then she never would’ve put in a good word for me regarding the pope’s portrait, so . . . “Your father’s ceiling is in good hands.”

“So is it good or”—she leaned in so close that I could smell the lavender on her neck—“an embarrassment again?”

“No, no, no.” I won’t lie to you; I also considered telling her that Michelangelo had put heresy on that ceiling. I considered making up stories about all sorts of boys flipping figs and a whole host of Florentine crests hidden in the details—such lies certainly would’ve helped my cause—but Felice is the kind of woman to demand specifics, and then when she saw the ceiling for herself, she would’ve known I was lying and ordered my head on a silver platter. “There’s nothing embarrassing about it. Nothing at all.”

“Nothing at all?”

“He’s grown as a painter.” Off her skeptical grunt, I added, “Your father will be proud.” Surely, I could find something in the second half of the ceiling to support that claim. Art is subjective; I could subjectively claim to like anything. Besides, surely, he’d improved in some way. Surely, it couldn’t be worse than the first half. Could it? And even if it were, I could always play delusional like the pope: “I thought that mess was the plan!”

“How proud . . . ?” she asked, skepticism in her tone.

Flick, flick, flick, flick with my brush. “Very proud. You can tell he loves to paint now.”

“Sì?” She sounded surprised.

“You weren’t lying about him working fast, either. He told me he’d finished one of the panels—a creation scene, no less—in a single day.”

“He told you that?”

I nodded.

“And did you see this miraculous panel?” She was biting her bottom lip. I’d never noticed the habit before, but her lips were cracked and bloody with worry.

I put my eyes back on the fresco. “I told you. He showed me everything.”

“You told me you saw everything, not that he showed it to you.”

“Same thing.”

“How did you convince him?”