This man looked nothing like any of his previous incarnations. This man was weary, heartsick, determined—and stainless. He could have been an exhausted Moses gathering himself to face the Red Sea, or a bowed John the Baptist turning away from the temptations of Salome. This man was not Rodrigo Borgia; he was Pope Alexander VI. A man about whom even Fra Savonarola would have nothing evil to say.

Juan’s death. A maelstrom of pain and fury whirling out from the ending of that worthless, wasted life. If something good could come of it—if Pope Alexander could come from it—then perhaps all my lover’s grief would not be wasted.

“Your Holiness,” I said slowly, and dropped to my knees. “May I have your blessing?”

His ringed hand touched my head, stroked just once over the smooth piles of my hair. “Bless you always, my child.”

Our eyes met, and I saw love there. But so much weariness, so much grief. “May God keep you,” I whispered.

He would have to.

That job was no longer mine.

I remained kneeling as my Pope passed from the room to his private chapel with bowed head and bowed shoulders—but not bowed spirit. Not that, and I was glad for it.

“What are you doing?” Cesare hissed. “I brought you here to talk some sense into him. Not feed this fantasy of his—”

“Is it a fantasy?” I rose. “Perhaps it is a calling.”

Cesare regarded me impatiently, fingers drumming on his lean thigh. “He’s had these fits of reform before. When my older brother Pedro Luis died, many years ago in Spain—my father was going to renounce us all, give up his palazzo, join the Franciscans. As a plan, it lasted a month. Then he was back to his old ways.”

“Perhaps he will be back to his old ways this time, too.” I looked at the door where Rodrigo had gone, where I thought I could hear a murmured stream of Latin. “But if not, he could do great good.”

“Sweet Christ save me,” Cesare said in disgust.

“I hope He saves your father,” I said, and for the first time all day my sore heart felt lighter. “I would very much like to see what Pope Alexander VI could accomplish in this world, instead of Rodrigo Borgia.”

I couldn’t help a moment’s anxiety for what would happen to Laura—to me. But only a moment. I saw a castello in the green countryside, rearing over the bank of a heat-shimmering blue lake. Waiting for us both.

“Go home,” Cesare ordered. “Go home, and be ready to receive my father again when he has need of you. Because he will have need of you. Once he’s found Juan’s killers and put this all behind him, he’ll want to celebrate, and he’ll want to celebrate in your bed.”