And my daughter was so pretty, so tall and quick and laughing with such dark mischievous eyes. She’d abandoned her book now, and plopped herself in the grass to weave a flower chain around my pet goat’s neck . . . A daughter for any man to be proud of, especially a man who adored his family. A man who had lost one child and might be feeling newly possessive of the rest.

I’d assumed that if I took myself away from the Borgia fold for good, my Orsini-christened daughter would come with me.

“Giulia?” Orsino looked at me, and I took the letter from his hand and crumpled it up in my own, feeling the sun beating down on my head. “Maybe a betrothal would be a good thing for Laura,” he said. “She could be a countess someday, even a duchess—”

My sister would have said that. I’d had a great many scolding letters from Gerolama, chiding me for giving up the Holy Father’s favor. This is no time for virtuous flutters! she wrote indignantly. Think of the family. Better yet, think of your daughter!

Well, I was. And if I knew anything at all after watching Lucrezia grow up, her head turned first by one grand match and then another, I knew that no illustrious marriage was worth seeing my daughter change from the happy, unspoiled girl she was into a vain, self-important little ninny.

“No betrothal,” I said. “Not for Laura. Not like it was done for Lucrezia. A Spanish count one day and then a French duke the next, or maybe a Sforza or an Este or a Colonna, and all of them tossed aside the moment they prove inconvenient. No.”

“How can we refuse? It says here”—Orsino snatched the crumpled letter back, smoothing it out—“if we do not present ourselves within the month, the Holy Father will send an escort! That means guards, Giulia. This castello can’t withstand papal guards!”

I pulled my words in sharply before they could escape me. I laid a hand along Orsino’s cheek instead and saw the blossoming in his blue eyes. Even after three months, he still did not seem to believe his good fortune that I had come back to him. I kissed him lightly, and his mouth claimed mine with all the eagerness of a bridegroom. “Orsino,” I said, still cupping his cheek, and his smile faded because I so rarely called him by name. I called him my lord husband, as was proper and expected. “Orsino, we must go to Rome.”

He looked as though I had stabbed him between the ribs. “To see him?”

“No.” Stroking his cheek. “To fight him.”

Carmelina