“I assure you, the bitch liked it.” Juan seized me about the waist and yanked me back, pulling me up against him, and to my shock I tasted his wine-sour breath as his mouth leeched onto mine. I wrenched my head away, spluttering, hearing his soldiers hoot, and I would have slapped him but he had locked my arms fast against my sides with his own. He smiled, watching me struggle, and I felt just how strong he was. He could hold me all day if he wanted, and I felt a disquieting pang of fear thrum through my stomach. I had never feared Juan before—he was such a lout!—but his eyes had a fever-bright gleam now that pinned me like a doe pinned by spears on a hunt. Did Carmelina see that look in his eyes? I found myself wondering, and swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat.

I made myself stop struggling against his grip, made myself look into his face as though quite unperturbed. “Don’t be an ass, Juan. The whole palazzo is watching.”

“I don’t care, not if you don’t.” His voice was still a hot whisper, and one of his hands dragged upward toward my breasts. “You want it too, don’t you, Giulia? Just like that tall kitchen bitch. All women want it, I can give it to you—”

“Good morning, Your Holiness,” Leonello said brightly, strolling out of the doorway’s shadows to my side and aiming a bow behind Juan as though Rodrigo had just arrived in the courtyard. Juan’s arms dropped away from me like two limp strips of pasta. He whirled, smoothing a hand over his mouth, but the courtyard was empty of anyone except guardsmen and goggling servants. Juan turned back with a glare for my bodyguard, and the pang of fear in my stomach deepened to a needle-sharp shaft piercing all the way through me. I didn’t know the details of how Leonello had come to clash with Juan over Carmelina, but I knew it had happened, and I’d ordered Leonello to stay out of sight of the Pope’s favorite son. But I’d never had any luck yet trying to give Leonello orders, and here he stood at my side: arms folded across his chest, looking up at Juan with that cool insolent stare of his that would madden a saint.

“You and I have business to finish, dwarf.” Juan snapped his fingers to the half-dozen guardsmen at his back. “Seize that little monster at once. I’ll have him strung up!”

My breath froze in my throat, but Leonello merely smiled. “The first man to touch me,” he said, unfolding his arms to show the knives already in his hands, “gets a blade through the eye.”

“You think my men can’t hang you up by your heels in this doorway, dwarf?” Juan spat.

“Of course they can,” Leonello agreed. “Five will be more than enough.”