“Orsino—” I heard my voice rising and brought it down with an effort. “My lord husband, if the Holy Father dowers her, there won’t be a soul in Rome who doesn’t assume she’s his daughter, even if she has your name. I thought that to be the last thing you wanted.”

“Every soul in Rome assumes she is his daughter, anyway.” Orsino’s voice was stiff. “A French marriage might be the best thing for her; get her away from all this scandal. Anne of Brittany has raised a great many noble wards at her court—the King of Naples sent his own true-born daughter there, Carlotta of Aragon. You know Cesare has an idea of laying aside his red hat and marrying her? Carlotta of Aragon, that is.” Oh, the importance of trading such intimate gossip about the great and powerful of Rome! “Laura could join the French court there; be raised in the French fashion. By the time she grows old enough to marry, any malicious talk about her birth will be forgotten.”

I stared at my husband. In my ears I heard the soft click of marble on marble across the room as Cesare moved a chess piece for his laughing girl; a ripple of laughter from Caterina Gonzaga as she allowed the Venetian envoy to kiss her hand; a page boy muttering an oath as he tripped over his own shoe and nearly dropped his decanter. “I am not sending my daughter away to France to be raised by strangers,” I said at last, levelly.

“But it’s how things are done among the great,” Orsino assured me. “We must think of what’s best for Laura. She won’t be lonely in France, not among other girls of her own age. And we could send her pet goat with her, eh?”

My pet goat. My daughter. The things I’d brought from Rome when I came back to Carbognano, the things from my former life, the things my husband didn’t really like to look at because they reminded him of painful times. Well, with Laura off in France he wouldn’t have any such reminders left, would he? He could just keep on plowing me until I filled up his castello with little true-born Orsinis instead.

I shut my teeth on some very hot words indeed. Softly, I thought. Soft and sweet, as a wife should speak to her husband. I forced a smile, murmuring something dulcetly noncommittal, and he chucked me under the chin.

“That’s my little rose!”

I did not feel very soft or sweet. And if he called me his little rose one more time . . .

“Giulia!” Rodrigo beckoned me, his rings glinting. “Where is Laura? We had particularly wished to see her.”

“My daughter”—I didn’t particularly feel like sharing Laura with either of her rumored fathers at the moment—“is abed. The hour is far too late for a child of four.”