“I’m already storing away a few things,” my sister confided. “My better gowns, of course, and the good silver, and the pendant my husband gave me on our wedding. Though I may just let those hideous earrings from his mother get into the pile,” Gerolama added thoughtfully. “Not to mention that ghastly credenza from our great-aunt Lella . . .”

“Mamma, Mamma!” My Laura dashed into the sala in a whirl of bouncing blond curls. “Giuseppe the cook gave me a sugar lump! And he says there are angels in Florence, angels on every street corner—”

“Not the kind of angels you want to meet, Lauretta mia.” I lifted my daughter up into my lap, dabbing at the sugar on her cheeks. Nearly four years old now, plump and golden and giggling, and every time I looked at her my heart squeezed utter happiness. Even with the rest of me so unsettled.

“You’d better put her in a wool dress when you take her out.” Gerolama sniffed at Laura’s apricot velvet gown with the sleeves trimmed in fox fur, a miniature copy of mine. Laura had at last outgrown the stage of wanting to run about naked; these days she took a very keen interest indeed in her dresses. “Swirly skirts!” she always demanded of my robe makers. “With sparkles.” Sparkles were all she thought about now—Laura had wanted earrings for her last birthday, and so I relented and let Leonello pierce her little ears with a heated needle. She’d been so determined to have pearl eardrops of her very own, she hadn’t made a peep at the pain. “You spoil that child, Giulia,” my sister scolded as I kissed the top of Laura’s blond head.

“Of course I do,” I said without shame, and tickled my girl until she shrieked laughter. She had exactly the same ticklish spot at her waist as my Pope.

Gerolama eyed her: a shrewd farmer’s wife pricing a lamb to see how much it will fetch at market. “Still an Orsini, is she?”

“In name at least.” But in blood—well, blood was beginning to tell. Laura’s face was emerging from its infant roundness into a character and shape of its own, and from certain angles I thought I could see a chin that might turn out like Lucrezia’s, or an arch of eyebrow exactly like Cesare’s. And she definitely had Rodrigo’s nose. Laura Borgia? I wondered, and thought I could see my Pope wondering too lately as he looked at my daughter.

“Has His Holiness spoken of a marriage for her?” Gerolama pressed. “That would seal the connection for our family, you know.”

“She’s not four years old,” I protested.

“And you told me yourself Lucrezia had a betrothal at seven. It’s never too early to start planning a daughter’s future, Giulia.”

Says the mother of none, I thought unkindly.