She looked happy, if a shriveled and mummified hand enclosed in a bag could be said to have any expression. A rather dried-up and wrinkled thing, the fingers ancient and curled in on themselves, a single filigreed gold ring gleaming from one finger, the shrunken flesh over the ancient knuckles bearing the marks of old knife nicks and burn scars. The same kind of marks I had all over my hands, the same kind any cook had—and the severed hand I carried about with me for good luck was supposedly the hand of Santa Marta herself, patron saint of cooks everywhere. A most holy relic, and really she should not have been in the possession of someone as sinful as me, but there was that little incident of altar desecration in my past, and, well, accidents happen. And I must say, she seemed to enjoy getting out of a reliquary and into a kitchen again, because I’d never gotten actually caught, had I? Surely that was a sign of my patron saint’s approval.

Of course, someone finally had caught me now. That dwarf with his sharp knives and his even sharper eyes, threatening to ruin me. Unless—

“He wants a posset?” I told Santa Marta grimly, hanging her little pouch up on the drying rack alongside some sprigs of rosemary. “I’ll give him a posset.”

She didn’t approve, I could tell from the way her ring glinted at me in the banked glow of the fires, but I tied on an apron resolutely and began mulling some wine . . . and an hour or so later, long after Madonna Giulia would have settled her daughter and her bodyguard and gone rustling off through her private passage to the Vatican to see her Pope, I was tiptoeing up the stairs with a steaming cup in hand.

Leonello’s chamber was a tiny high-ceilinged nook wedged in at the very top of the palazzo. Madonna Giulia had seen him well settled on his narrow bed, his wounds rebandaged, the covers drawn up, his collection of books in easy reach and a branch of fine wax tapers lit and glowing if he felt like reading. The shadows danced over his face—a rather handsome face, despite the deep-set eyes and prominent forehead. His lids were closed, his dark hair rumpled and one arm pressed close against his bandaged side. I thought of leaving the mulled wine and skulking away like a coward. But then his eyes opened soundlessly, hazel eyes full of their usual bitter amusement, and he did not look one whit surprised to see me.

“Well, well,” he drawled, and managed to raise himself to one elbow even though a hiss of pain escaped through his teeth. “Come to ravish me, Signorina Cuoca? Pardon me, make that Suora Carmelina.”