Wise Leonello. Maybe I hadn’t been the one to end up crumpled beneath a collapsed doorway, but I’d still thrown it in Rodrigo’s face that my husband had gone behind his back, had bedded me all along—and I’d been punished for it. My punishment had come all neatly tied up with vengeance against Orsino; there was a tidiness to that which I thought might have come from Cesare. I could see Rodrigo raging to his eldest son, and Cesare applying his cold and fearsome logic to the solution.

My fault. But my poor mother-in-law would never know what had truly happened to her son, nor would anyone else. That was my burden to bear. Mine alone.

“Would you look after Laura for a little while?” I had asked Adriana instead after drying her tears. “Lucrezia has required me to return to Rome for her wedding, but it’s time Laura had the comforts of home. And she’ll be such company for you.” I wasn’t taking Laura back to the Holy City ever again if I could help it. Not as long as the Holy City was under Borgia rule.

“Yes, of course I’ll look after her.” My former mother-in-law wiped her eyes. “Bless her, she’s the image of Orsino already. Those beautiful curls—”

“His true daughter,” I agreed. Cesare Borgia had once told me I could not lie, but this was a falsehood I’d gladly tell for the rest of my days.

I missed my Laura so dreadfully, but she was safe in Carbognano now. She was able to write me misspelled little letters under Adriana’s tutelage, straggling words galloping up the page and back down again, all about her pony and the ripening nuts on the hazel trees and Fra Teseo who was teaching her French but it was boring. And when was I coming home?

Soon, I thought. Soon, Laura. One more thing to do. Just one more thing, I clung to that—when it was done, I would leave this snake pit and go home.

Oh, but I was so tired.