Juan Borgia had recognized the glove the moment he saw it—Bartolomeo said the Duke had held it to his nose when he opened the letter at Vannozza’s cena, held it and inhaled Giulia’s scent. Not just the smell of honeysuckle and gillyflowers, but passion; the passion she brought to everything she did. It wafted from the glove, from the note she’d written; a passion to make the blood boil in any man’s veins if he read the words on that scented page and thought they were meant for him. Never mind that she’d written those words under my direction with nothing but disquiet; the passion was still there. No wonder Juan Borgia sang under his breath as he went to cuckold his father.

He halted his horse, eyes searching through the dark for the door that Bartolomeo had described from behind his mask. A door with faded green paint, marking the entrance to a tall building with a sagging roof. Perhaps once a merchant’s dwelling with a shop below and a place for wife and children and a servant or two above, but this quarter of the city had deteriorated, and now the house was divided into small apartments rented by the week, by the day, by the hour to whoever wished to flop there among the fleas. If Juan had a brain in his head, he’d wonder why Giulia Farnese had arranged an assignation in such a sinkhole, but fortunately for me, Juan Borgia did not have a brain in his head. And even if he did, I doubted his head was his primary working organ at the moment.

I saw a beggar limp past on a crutch, half visible in the light of the torch over the door. I’d put that torch there myself when I rented the room—or rather, when I paid a half-drunk fellow at a wine shop a few coins to rent it for me, as I had no intention of being remembered by the man who rented out the rooms.

“Giulia?” Juan called hopefully toward the door, halting his horse. “Are you already wet and waiting for me in there, my girl? You like it dirty, flopping down in a slum like this? If you want it filthy, wait till you see the things I can do to you—”

I hissed to Bartolomeo through the darkness. “Now.”

* * *