The Pope cleared his throat, and I wondered if he had forgotten I was there. “It was only your family you went to visit, wasn’t it?”

“I saw my husband.” Giulia’s voice was direct. “If that is what you mean.”

Rodrigo Borgia’s heavy hand tensed on his knee, fingers drumming. “And?”

A graceful shrug. “And nothing.”

The Holy Father still looked anxious. The most powerful man in Christendom, a force of nature in ecclesiastical robes, and he still felt the prick of anxiety over Giulia’s young husband. The absurdly named Orsino Orsini, blue-eyed and handsome and straight as a lance—but I had seen more spine in an oyster. He’d known from the beginning that his marriage was merely a polite fiction, a legality pasted over the private trade of financial patronage for use of his wife—but he’d taken one look at his innocent and beautiful bride when they traded their wedding vows and regretted the bargain. He’d pouted in the country for the loss of his wife ever since, not that it stopped him from accepting Rodrigo Borgia’s patronage. The young Orsino had come to visit his wife in Capodimonte when she had come for a stay with her family; I’d wondered if he meant to woo her back from her papal lover, but he had lost his nerve. He’d barely mustered up enough courage to tell Giulia that he would be happy to take her back when the Pope was done with her, and that was not the kind of passionate declaration to light a fire in a woman’s heart.

“Your Holiness.” Giulia drew the Pope’s chin toward her with a fingertip. “Orsino did not rescue me from the French. You did.”

“And would have if they’d carried you to the ninth ring of hell.” His hand stole under her furred cloak to her breast. “Come here, mi perla . . .” His private name for her. She nestled closer, lifting her face, and I looked out the carriage window and counted the rotations of the wheels. I’d never been more relieved when the horses finally halted at the Palazzo Santa Maria. I was surprised the passion igniting in the seat opposite me wasn’t streaming out through the shutters like the pale plume of smoke that had announced Rodrigo Borgia’s election as Pope.