“I wouldn’t go boasting about Perotto’s kisses if I were you,” I warned, arranging more of my little honeyed pastries on their majolica platter. My new mistress ate them by the basket; she was already starting to get fatter under the chin, and they weren’t doing her teeth any good either. “He’s Madonna Lucrezia’s to flirt with.”

“But girls like us don’t count as flirting! You could have him too if you wanted, Carmelina.” Pantisilea never minded sharing her lovers, I would say that for her.

“You’re welcome to him.” I shoved a curl back behind one ear, feeling the rustle of paper in Santa Marta’s pouch. She shared her living space with quite a thick packet of letters by now, all from a certain former apprentice of mine. Santa Marta didn’t seem to mind, but I think she approved of Bartolomeo. Her dried-up fingers had always seemed to rustle approval inside their pouch whenever I took a sniff of one of his sauces. “I don’t like dark-haired men.”

“Well, Madonna Lucrezia does.” Pantisilea winked. “Do you think she’ll take him for a lover? Perotto, I mean.”

“She might, but he won’t.” I reached for my apron. Perotto flirted with my new mistress, and paid her extravagant compliments, but no more. A very shrewd young man, and you had to be, to make a career under Pope Alexander VI. “Perotto wants to rise, and he won’t rise far if he sleeps with the Pope’s daughter.”

“If she’s just his daughter.” Pantisilea widened her eyes.

“None of that,” I said in the same tone I’d always used when gossip among my kitchen apprentices shaded a bit too salacious.

She waggled an eyebrow. “Everyone’s saying it.”

I glared at her, fists on hips. “How long have you worked in the Borgia household, Pantisilea? Have you ever seen anything, one thing, to justify gossip that foul?”

“Well, no—”

“Then hold your tongue. It’s vile and disgusting, and I won’t have talk like that in my kitchens.”

“They aren’t your kitchens, Carmelina Mangano,” she laughed.

“They are for now.” I rubbed a pinch of sugar between my fingers, wrinkling my nose at the quality. “So, no filthy gossip about Madonna Lucrezia.”

Someone should have told that to the Count of Pesaro. Sweet Santa Marta, how the rumors were flying, and it was all his fault! He’d gone stamping and raging off to Milan, begging help from his more illustrious relatives to fight the annulment, and he hadn’t been satisfied calling the Pope a marrano bastard or a Spanish upstart. No, he’d had to burst out with a lot of resentful whining that the Holy Father only wanted Lucrezia free so he could have her himself.