I hid my disquiet at that. It wasn’t just the matter of returning home where Orsino seemed to have changed his mind. Lately he seemed more willing than ever to hear about these various suitors who had been sporadically proposed, one after the other, for Laura’s hand. Perhaps because such gossip granted power at these small private gatherings between powerful men—my husband seemed to have discovered how much he liked moving elbow to elbow among such men, telling them so casually that he just might make his daughter a countess someday. “A countess like Madonna Lucrezia,” he repeated importantly, and Cesare gave a bored blink.

“You forget that my sister is no longer a countess.” The young Cardinal slid off without farewells, toward a dark-haired beauty laughing over a marble chessboard. This was one of the larger halls in the papal apartments; Rodrigo presided at one end in all dignity, but the dignity was somewhat marred by Caterina Gonzaga perching on the arm of his throne—a sight that still gave me a distinct, if small, pang of outrage. The rest of the company lounged merry and at ease about the room, trading soft jests and flirtations. Another of those easy intimate evenings I had once presided over; the ones that sent Burchard into spasms of indignation over the impropriety of having such company in the papal apartments, oh, Gott im Himmel!

But I had other things to worry me now than Burchard’s proprieties.

“What’s this about a French comte for Laura?” I said low-voiced to Orsino. “His Holiness didn’t speak of it to me.” His Holiness had been too preoccupied lately with possible alliances for Lucrezia to talk much about Laura’s future—and I’d begun to breathe easier. “Where did this idea of a French comte come from?”

“He brought it up to me, Giulia. As is fitting.” Orsino’s worry that Rodrigo wanted me back had abated, the more he saw Caterina Gonzaga flaunting herself on the papal arm as though she were an empress and not a concubine. A concubine in too much jewelry, and tasteless two-tone velvet. “A French lord for Laura,” Orsino went on. “We should consider it.”

“Why? France is our enemy!”

“Politics have shifted now. A French alliance could be a great thing for our family.” Orsino accepted a cup of wine from a page with a regal nod. “I’ve had time to consider the idea, and you should consider it too. Laura could get a far better match through the Holy Father than she could from us.” I heard a hint of his mother’s careful coin-counting in his tone. “Daughters are very expensive to marry off, you know. If His Holiness dowers Laura, well, we can save the expense for our own daughters someday.”