My eyes burned dry. I felt quick pressure on my hand as I watched the bridal couple pirouette through a lively turn, and knew my brother’s touch without turning. Dear Sandro, he had been such a comfort since Orsino died. I’d retired to his modest household upon my return to Rome, and Sandro welcomed me with one of his enveloping hugs, but none of his usual chatter. He seemed to know that for once in my life I didn’t want to talk, just sit quietly and perhaps lose a game of chess, or help his little mistress Silvia rock and croon over her babies, or listen to a chorus of pure-voiced boy singers who somehow had the power to bring tears to my eyes when the memory of my husband didn’t. Sandro had just handed me a kerchief in silence, letting me have my tears, not asking any questions. Dear Sandro. I’d worried for a time that Rodrigo’s anger at me might fall on my brother, but Rodrigo was far too practical to dispose of someone useful. Orsino had been a nothing to him, but my brother kept the peace in the College of Cardinals with his easy jests and droll capers. Rodrigo needed that, and thank the Holy Virgin he did. If he had ordered my brother murdered and not my husband . . .

Really, I was no better a wife than Lucrezia. We both placed our brothers above our husbands. Well, at least no one accused me of sleeping with my brother. However inadequate a wife Lucrezia had been to the Count of Pesaro in other ways, she didn’t deserve that charge. Ugh, but people have such twisted imaginations.

The wedding banquet. Lucrezia and Alfonso presiding over the guests for the first time as husband and wife, the new Duke and Duchess of Bisceglie, holding hands under the cloth and dispatching dishes to their most favored friends. Sandro claimed my left side, some minor Neapolitan princeling my right. “Rumors of your beauty have not been false, Giulia Farnese! A true ornament to the papal court; Naples has nothing to match you! Excepting our radiant new duchess, of course. Perhaps I might call upon you . . .”