“Giulia?” Lucrezia looked up as I stormed into the bagno. “Whatever are you shouting about?”

I seized the water jug one of the maids had left after filling the bath and upended it over Lucrezia’s head.

“You look like a drowned rat,” I told her as she spluttered and coughed and tried to rescue her drenched hair. “Your eyes are all red and squinchy, and your hair is getting overbleached and nasty, and that horrid lip rouge you wear has smeared all around your mouth so you look like you’ve been drinking blood. And now that I’ve been as thoroughly horrid to you as you just were to poor Adriana, perhaps you will feel moved to creep up to her chamber like the nasty little rat you’ve become, and make your apologies for being so cruel.”

“Giulia!” Lucrezia gasped.

I folded my arms across my breasts, scowling down at her. The maids had all fled, though they were probably eavesdropping just outside the door, and I had no mind to lower my voice and spare the Pope’s daughter her dignity. “How could you?” I demanded. “Adriana da Mila raised you.”

“She is not my mother,” Lucrezia muttered. “And neither are you!”

“No, the mother who birthed you was only too happy to give you up, and don’t pretend any fondness there because I see the sighs of relief you always heave as soon as her visits are done.” Vannozza dei Cattanei did not visit often, thank the Holy Virgin, and when she did we spoke with icy courtesy. I was too angry to summon ice now with her daughter. “Madonna Adriana raised you in her household, and you owe her the respect of any daughter. Just as I owe her the respect of a daughter-in-law.” I thought of Lucrezia’s little envies this past year whenever she compared our gowns, our jewels, our hair. Our anything, really. “Adriana and I both deserve better from you.”

“Oh, the faithful daughter-in-law!” Lucrezia cried out. “As if you’ve made Adriana’s son such a marvelous wife!”

“I admit I’m no one to lecture you on wifely behavior,” I said crisply. “But that’s a lecture you need as well, because Lord Sforza deserves better, too. Your brother threatened him at the masquerade, and you said nothing. You didn’t even go with him when he fled back to Pesaro the next day. Fled in utter terror with his tail between his legs!”

“I was the one who warned him he should go,” Lucrezia protested. “I said it would be wise to put a little distance between himself and Cesare. You know my brother when he decides he dislikes someone.”

“Then you should have gone with Lord Sforza. Sided with your husband, Lucrezia, and not your snake of a brother.”

Lucrezia started to rise, but I jabbed two fingers into her breastbone and sank her back into the water. No woman is really at an advantage sitting naked in a tub full of water with wet hair straggling into her eyes, and Lucrezia at a disadvantage was exactly how I wanted her.