“Nonsense, you’re not so small as that.” I’d seen many dwarves; jesters and tumblers in the Duke of Gandia’s household or the Tart of Aragon’s, and Leonello overtopped them all by at least a hand’s breadth. He really stood only half a head below me. “A great many women would consider you handsome,” I informed him. “If you’d only make yourself pleasant to them!”

He turned a circle, still juggling for Laura, and I saw that the back of his neck reddened as it always did when he was exasperated. I did adore exasperating him. “Women like to point at men like me, Madonna Giulia. That does not mean they find me handsome.”

“Why not choose a woman like you, then?”

Leonello gave a snort of derision. “Because one dwarf is an oddity, but two together are a freak show. No.”

“You aren’t very nice to your own kind, you know.” I’d seen him watching Juan’s Spanish dwarves when they bounded out to entertain after cena. They looked at him in curiosity and envy, my bodyguard in his rich blacks standing so proud with his dark head thrown back, and he gazed back at them with no expression at all. “You’ve found yourself a soft billet,” I’d once heard a wizened little woman in motley tell Leonello, eyeing his livery cynically, and he gave her a smile of slow scorn. “Why don’t you ever seek their company, Leonello?” I persisted. Surely there was companionship to be found among those like him, but I’d never once seen him look for it.

“They envy me,” he said briefly. “And I despise them.”

“Why?”

“They wish they had a place in the world. A place where they are not laughed at.” One by one, Leonello caught the fragile glass vases. “And I scorn them because they never taught themselves any skills, nothing that would raise them above laughter. Instead they took the easy path, and let the world mock them. Eventually it turns them sour, and then they turn to drink, and most of the time they die badly. And as far as I am concerned, it’s their own fault.”

I studied him. “That seems very harsh.”

“The world is harsh, Madonna Giulia. I was born as I am, and I see no reason to whine about it. At least I can make certain that I never marry, never sire children, and never pass this deformity of mine to some unfortunate infant. Stop whimpering,” he said sharply to Laura as she clamored for more of his juggling, and I bit my lip. I did like to tease Leonello, but I would not hurt him for the world.