‘I have felt it too,’ she answered honestly. ‘Friendship is the least I may offer as you have been so gracious and kind, welcoming a stranger into your home.’

Elisabetta raised herself to sit. ‘There is something I must tell you, which I’ve kept a secret for many years, and should have shared with you when first you arrived.’

‘What can it be?’ Luna asked, bemused at the lady’s sudden change in tone. ‘You are alarmed. Remember, your nerves are still recovering. How can there be secrets between us when we only met months ago?’

‘You do not remember me, that is understandable. You were a baby.’

Luna shook her head. ‘I am sorry, mistress. What do you speak of?’

‘Your father, Vincenzio, compelled me to remain silent.’

‘My father?’

‘Your mother was my dear friend.’ She took Luna’s hands again. Her grasp was firm and her eyes glistened. ‘And now I am blessed to have her daughter with me.’ Elisabetta stroked Luna’s cheek. ‘You were a newborn babe.’ She sighed. ‘I was at your mother’s side when she gave birth to you.’

Luna pulled her hands away gently.

‘My family sent me to the Medici estate at the same time as Giulia. Your mother and I had been friends since childhood; she was strong-willed, Leonarda. Even at her young age, she carried you with such pride to be giving Vincenzio his firstborn.’

‘Tell me about her,’ Luna whispered.

‘No one realised …’ Elisabetta shook her head. ‘You came early; keen to see the Sun, we all thought when Giulia’s pains first began, but then that day ended and the next too, and still you stayed in the shrouded world of the womb.’

Elisabetta gestured to Luna to pass her the cup of wine again. She drank deeply. ‘I stayed with you for as long as I was able after Giulia passed into eternal sleep.’

Luna leant forward. ‘But I was three years old when my mother died. She succumbed to the Naples flu.’

Elisabetta frowned. ‘Your mother died giving birth to you, Leonarda.’

‘No, you are wrong. I remember the feel of my mother’s arms around me.’

‘That would have been Livia, your wet nurse,’ Elisabetta said gently.

‘But Papa told me the story of my birth often: my mother holding me in the moonlight and every moment after that till she died.’ Even as she said the words, Luna remembered how the details of her birth story had changed with each retelling.

‘Your father left the morning after you were born, on business he said was unavoidable. You settled well. Why would you not, an innocent babe? Your father delayed returning to claim you, again and again, so Lorenzo and his son Piero agreed that you could stay on at the Careggi villa. Your wet nurse, Livia, stayed too, and became your carer. Yet it seems God has sent you to me again, Leonarda.’