“Shut up!” She whipped around on me with a ferocious scowl as the maids hastily scampered out. “What in the name of the Holy Virgin were you thinking, Leonello? You’ve been hard sometimes, and you’ve been sharp-tongued, but you’ve never played the fool! Not for anyone!”

“I missed my calling. Don’t I make a splendid fool?”

“You certainly do. Hold out your arms.”

Her brow was stormy but her hands were gentle as she sponged away the wine that had soaked through my doublet to the skin. I should have been humiliated, standing half naked before my former mistress with a sheet clutched about my waist, but I was far beyond humiliation. My head rang from the sudden silence of the little chamber after all the raucous noise of the wedding festivities, and I closed my stinging eyes. For all my splashing about in the wine this evening, I was not drunk. I wished I were. Fool. Buffoon. Demon dwarf. The words rang nonsensical in my ears. Show off your cock, little man.

“I’ve been looking for you, these past few months.” Giulia’s voice was quieter now, though she tugged harder than she needed to as she dragged a wet comb through my wine-damp hair. “Where did you go?”

“My good master sent me to Romagna.” I blinked hard. “The lords there are in disorder—when are they not in disorder? So he intends to wage war on them, and add their lands to the papal territories. I was sent to make quiet observation of the various fortifications.”

“Better than sending you off to kill Borgia enemies, I suppose.”

“Oh, there was some of that too.”

“Sit.” She gestured to the bed behind me, and I sat. She pushed a silver goblet into my hand, and I drank obediently. Lemon water, tart and chilled, cooling my fevered blood. Such a hot summer night; I could hear the insects calling through the shutters. Surely it would be dawn soon, and the wedding festivities broken up. Lucrezia Borgia would be bedding down with her new husband by now, and the Pope pumping and wheezing over his current mistress.

Giulia put away the basin of water, splashing a little on her own face. “I’m tired,” she said.

“Then go to bed. I don’t want you here.”