Madonna Giulia—well, she had always been kind to me but she was a woman of noble birth, a respectable one now, even, and she couldn’t be gossiping with cooks the way she used to when she had no one else to talk to. Leonello, though . . . after the whole black business of Juan Borgia, I’d begun to think that Leonello and I were friends, funny sharp-tongued little man that he was. And he hadn’t even had a glance for me.

The kitchens were usually dark, the fires thriftily banked, and I was already thinking of making myself a little stewed nettle tea, nasty stuff. But I saw lights flickering as I pushed the door open, and I looked around to see candles lit everywhere. “That’s a week’s supply of tapers,” I said indignantly as I pushed my way in, fully expecting to find Suora Crestina raiding the sugar supply again, the greedy bitch. But behind me I heard an odd sound like a whoop of joy quickly stifled, and felt a man’s arms seize me about the waist instead.

“Told you I’d come for you,” Bartolomeo whispered in my ear. And then he kissed me.

Of course I smacked him. With my hand, not the ladle, because he grabbed the ladle away the moment I seized it up from the table, and he held it up far over my head with an infuriating grin.

“Wretch!” I pummeled his shoulder instead. “Not one word to me for weeks and weeks—”

“You think I was going to spoil all my plans by putting them into a message?” He was still grinning. “A message that could be intercepted?”

I stopped hitting him long enough to drag a trestle table in front of the kitchen doors. All we needed was Suora Crestina coming along now to raid my sugar, or some other sharp-eyed choir nun with her high-bred nose sniffing out scandal. “So Madonna Giulia—and Leonello—”

“Leonello owed me a favor—owed me quite a favor, in fact—and he recruited Madonna Giulia. D’you think he’s in love with her? I’ve always wondered.” Bartolomeo put the ladle up on the tallest shelf where I wouldn’t be able to reach it without dragging a stool over. “Officially speaking, I’ve left Signore Capece’s household for Madonna Giulia’s. She’s busy setting the stage for us now, throwing tantrums and keeping everyone busy. For someone so obliging, she’s terribly good at being a nuisance, isn’t she? Do you thinks she models it more on Madonna Lucrezia or the Tart of Aragon?”