The castello was square and crenellated and cool, a place of archways and parapets and deep cushioned stone sills for curling up with a cup of warmed wine. A lakeside castello like the one where I’d grown up, though this castello was both grander and less crumbly. The sala’s ceiling had been new-painted to please me with scenes of nymphs and urns and mossy springs, and Orsino in a grand gesture had ordered all the gardens planted with pink roses. “For my little rose,” he said, chucking me under the chin. “Giulia Farnese: the Rose of Carbognano!” I really did prefer yellow roses to pink, those tiny rambling spicy-scented blooms my mother had cultivated when I was a child, but Orsino’s chin trembled in disappointment when I suggested adding a yellow bush or two among the pink, and I let the matter drop. He had made a very romantic gesture, after all, and anyway the sickly pink blooms all fried in the summer heat like eggs because it wasn’t anywhere near the season for planting. Maybe next year I could sneak in a yellow rose or two without Orsino looking quite so hurt.

Yes, on the whole I liked Carbognano very much.

Fra Teseo bowed as he approached, puffing a little from the climb he’d made from the church to the castello. “Madonna Giulia,” he greeted me. “You wished to be consulted about a new window for the church altar; I have the estimates from the glaziers. And there is that dispute between Messer Bernardo and Messer Guglielmo, the property line dividing their orchard; both have submitted a petition for your judgment. And the harvest festival to be arranged in October . . .”

The day-to-day business of governing a small town. “These figures from the glazier are very dubious,” I said, scanning the first set of papers. “He’s padding his estimate. Drop a hint, Fra Teseo, and see if his numbers come down. Messers Bernardo and Guglielmo, bring them to me next week and I’ll see if I can talk some sense into them . . .”

“Will Signore Orsini wish to hear them?” Fra Teseo hedged.

“My lord husband is involved in greater matters and will leave such small things to me.”

In truth, my lord husband did not like to arbitrate any kind of decision. Whether it was a boundary dispute, a charge of theft, or the choice of an Annunciation or a Resurrection in stained glass for the church’s new window, Orsino would just blink a few times and say, “I will think on it.” Which meant putting the decision off until hopefully it solved itself. I hadn’t resided in Carbognano a month before people started bringing such matters direct to me. I did not put myself forward—that wouldn’t have been proper, or wifely—but the villagers murmured their concerns to Fra Teseo, he brought them to me in the garden where I sat with my sewing, and Orsino beamed contentment without seeming to wonder why he had so many fewer petitions.