‘Church is the only true place to convene with the Lord,’ Guido responded hotly.

Papa nodded. ‘Lord, in thy hands are all things.’

‘Indeed,’ Signore Palagio added. ‘And are we not fortunate to have a man of such passion as Friar Savonarola directing the soul of our city?’

‘Will you be attending the lecture?’ Papa asked.

Signore Palagio nodded. ‘I have received an invitation from Bernardo Rucellai, as have most of the Council. I do not hold with the tenets of the Platonists, but I cannot refuse our Gonfalonier of Justice.’

‘He has been very generous in allowing the Academy to use his villa. Joannes’s work has been highly anticipated and the printer in Vienna only made a few copies, so many will come to hear Professor di Novara.’ Papa turned to the younger Palagio with a polite inclination of his head. ‘I hope you will accompany your father?’

‘I find books tedious and talking about them even more so.’

‘Indeed,’ Luna said, noting how Guido Palagio slouched over his plate, like a boy who’d always had to protect his food. She did not want him as her brother-in-law.

A look of warning crossed her step-mamma’s face. Luna cursed her disobedient tongue.

Guido laughed and addressed her father. ‘Do you always allow your daughters to interject so rudely, Signore Fusili?’ Then he turned to Luna and in those eyes that deceived everyone with their wide-set, childlike innocence, she saw malice. ‘I doubt you even wash your father’s collars without an investigation of whence the dirt came.’

Luna felt her cheeks burn. ‘Curiosity, sire, has no limit. It is not wrong to wish to understand as much as I can, for God gave us all the same opportunity.’

‘Arrogance and perversity!’ Tommaso Palagio cut in. ‘Is it because she is a cripple that the rules of society do not apply to this one?’

Signore Fusili frowned but didn’t reply.

‘Your daughter shames you at your own table, Vincenzio, and I cannot commend this behaviour when our two houses will soon be matched through marriage. I must insist the girl does not speak her mind again. Indeed, I would be more comfortable knowing she were hidden.’ He eyed everyone around the table and Luna felt her cheeks burn as she saw his wife nod in agreement and Guido smile.

‘Luna is harmless,’ her papa replied. A pitiful response.

‘You cannot deny her reputation, Vincenzio! She is known for her unseemly rhetoric.’

Luna stared at her plate. It was positioned a little too far to the left of her place and the imbalance of it rankled. There were streaks of grease amidst her unfinished stew and the juice around the edges had begun to congeal.

‘I do not, but she is a good girl.’