‘But your father came back for you,’ Livia continued. ‘Most would never have reclaimed such a baby as their blood. He did the best he could, and didn’t he indulge you?’

Luna listened to her own breath and her heart’s beat behind each exhale, the one never without the other. Livia was right that her father had indulged her, but that had been a burden as well as a gift. She walked to the window and surveyed the view of the hills she’d come to know so well. The afternoon light lingered. Soon it would be dark and tonight the Moon in eclipse. Would she ever be free of her father’s influence? It coloured how she loved and who she was, right to her very core: in the way she’d copied his curved letters and in her passion for books; in the way she’d either chased after him or tried to please him, never succeeding at either; in the silent suffering of his brutish temper; and in never, ever being enough for him. She would carry all that in her heart forever, and now, this new discovery that he’d not even bothered with her for the first three years of her life and yet he’d stopped her from becoming an orphan!

Luna watched Livia fuss around her few belongings as she decided what would go with her to the convent. But she had never wanted to become a nun. That had been her father’s choice, and then the friar’s and she’d agreed, because what other choice had she?

‘Do you want to take this chemise that Signora di Novara lent you?’ Livia asked.

‘No, leave it here,’ Luna answered. Then she breathed deeply, felt her heartbeat and breathed again. This was her precious life. Hers. ‘No!’ she said again.

Livia chortled. ‘All right, it’s only a cotton thing.’

Luna laughed too with a deep belly full of her own sound. She felt a weight lift. She could choose. She’d always hold dear the many moments of love and laughter that enriched her life as Vincenzio Fusili’s daughter. Everything else, she’d let go.