“Let me guess.” I smiled, taking out my dagger and stropping it against my boot top. “Could your distress have something to do with our Signorina Cuoca leaving for the Convent of San Sisto tomorrow morning? Or perhaps fleeing for the Convent of San Sisto would be more accurate. And you’ve been in love with our bad-tempered Venetian cook since you were, oh, fifteen?”

“Carmelina said you saved her from the Duke of Gandia,” the boy cut me off. “So I’ll thank you for that. But don’t twit me, Messer Leonello. I’m no boy anymore.”

“Debatable,” I said, but Carmelina’s apprentice had grown since I’d last bothered to notice him. A strapping young fellow, really, standing with one shoulder jammed truculently against the wall of the courtyard and his face leveled down at mine in a cool stare. Whipping egg whites and cream tops might not be as noble a calling as the sword, but it evidently built men every bit as strong.

“So you have heard what happened to Carmelina,” I said, and pushed the knife back into my boot top. “Regrettable, but hardly uncommon. I hope you’re not thinking you can take on the Duke of Gandia in revenge?”

“He’s too high for me,” Bartolomeo returned. “I’d sink a meat cleaver in his skull if I could, but I don’t want to die or be excommunicated just for crossing the Pope’s son. I’d rather live, marry Carmelina, take her to Milan so we can learn how they do that leavened citron bread of theirs, and come back to Rome someday to cook for the next Pope.”

I whistled. If this redheaded boy had gotten through all the thorns around the heart (or the bed) of our prickly palazzo cook, I was prepared to be impressed. And possibly ask for his secret. “She’s going to marry you, is she?”

“I’m working on that part.”

“Making any progress?”

He ran a wide, scarred hand through his hair. “Slowly.”

“Fair warning—she has a secret or two that might inconvenience your grand plans.”

“You mean that she’s a nun?”

My eyebrows shot up. She had trusted him with that, had she? Interesting.

Bartolomeo shrugged, seeing my expression. “It’s a wrinkle, I admit.”

“Surely more than that.” I inspected him. “Don’t tell me you mean to run away with a bride of Christ! Don’t you know what they do to despoilers of nuns? And you such a stainless young man—”

“It’s a wrinkle,” he repeated, chin jutting.

Dio, the dreams of young men. “So, if not il Duche, whom are you thinking of killing on her behalf?”

“No one.” A level look. “I wouldn’t quibble at killing him, but I don’t want to swing from a gibbet. And I don’t want blood on my conscience, either. I’m no murderer, like you or that dead-eyed thug Michelotto—”