I sat frozen, so small and absurd with my bare feet dangling off the edge of the bed and a sheet clutched about my waist.

“I have missed you every day since you left me.” Giulia dashed angrily at her eyes. “There wasn’t one hour I didn’t look around for you and then feel so lonely when I realized you were gone. You’ve been at my side since I was eighteen, Leonello. I hear a joke and I run to tell you before anyone else, just so I can see you grin. I don’t wear sandalwood scent because you hate the smell. I read silly poetry just so I can hear you making fun of it. You were with me when Laura was born and when she took her first steps; you taught her to read and you make her laugh and you’re more her father than either of the men who were supposed to have sired her. You’ve been at my side for so long, and I don’t know how to be without you. I did my best to be a good wife to Orsino these past months, but all the time I was thinking of you. I’d be with him yet if he were alive; he was my husband and I owed him that, and maybe in another year or two I could have persuaded myself that he was still what I wanted. But he’s dead, and God forgive me, I can’t even grieve for him. He was jealous of any man who looked at me, and he tried to send my daughter away, and every time he chucked me under the chin and called me his little rose, I missed you more.” Her eyes met mine. “Orsino gave me a ring and Rodrigo shared my bed, but all this time—all this time, I think I was truly married to you.”

My mouth was dry as tinder. Words; my last weapon; and she had utterly disarmed me. I averted my eyes from hers. Dio, but they burned. The cup in my hands shook, and I folded my fingers around the stem. “I won’t take your pity,” I said tightly.