I heard Bartolomeo gasping at my side, and not because he was winded. “Santa Marta save me,” he said in an unsteady voice. “I’ve never stabbed anyone before. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“That usually happens, the first time.” At least the boy was still here. He could have panicked at the unplanned bloodshed, stumbled off and left me to deal with the Duke of Gandia on my own, but he did not. I was beginning to have a certain regard for Carmelina’s apprentice, who I suppose was now my apprentice, albeit in a darker trade than the whipping of egg whites and the kneading of bread dough. “Clamp your teeth down on the nausea, and let’s close the gap on that horse,” I whispered in brisk tones, and he obeyed me numbly. The numbness was common too, that first time one drew blood.

I hoped he would not have a second time. Far better this apprentice stuck with Carmelina’s trade than mine.

Juan was fast approaching the place I wanted, the place where he thought he would get what he wanted. He was singing now under his breath, riding along on his pale horse as happy as a bridegroom to a much-desired bride, and in a way I suppose that was what he was. He had wanted her so long, after all. I’d seen the lust in his eyes as he took her in his arms in the courtyard and plastered his leech of a mouth over hers. She was the woman he couldn’t have, and that made her even more irresistible than she already was. And of course, any man as vain as Juan Borgia assumes all women want him too, even if they protest the opposite. I know what you want, I’d heard him breathe in her ear even as she struggled. You’re too much for an old man, you’re wet for something younger.

When Juan Borgia broke the seal of the letter Bartolomeo passed to him in Vannozza dei Cattanei’s vineyard, he’d have felt nothing but a thrill of triumph.

My love, I cannot resist you any longer—you have finally made me realize that. If you follow the man who gives you this letter, he will bring you to me tonight. We must be very cautious—but I must have you.

Unsigned, but surely Juan would know Giulia Farnese’s easy looping writing by now, her rose-imprinted seal, the familiar honeysuckle and gillyflower scent that breathed even from the writing paper she used. Even if those details escaped him, I’d added one final touch: one of Giulia’s doeskin gloves, soft and perfumed and embroidered with her family crest, which I’d slipped into my sleeve when her back was turned and then added to the folded note.