“—olive oil and French wine and some good cheese and so forth. Corinthian raisins, very tasty, you’ll like them. But I need at least a few extra ingredients to work with, and this kitchen doesn’t even have basil. Whoever heard of a kitchen that doesn’t have basil?” His voice rose. “I can’t cook you tortellini. I can’t cook you anything!”

I put my finger across his lips, stilling the flow of words. “Bartolomeo Scappi,” I said firmly, trotting out his rarely used second name for this most sacred of occasions. “You are no longer in any way my apprentice.”

“I wanted to prove it,” he grumbled.

“You proved it in my bed, didn’t you?” I said just a bit saucily. “After the fried tubers . . .”

That made him grin. “But you really would have liked my tortellini.”

“Stop talking about food,” I said for the first time in my life, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him again, and he bent and picked me up so my legs circled his waist. The vial of olive oil went smash all over the floor, and so did the little dish of raisins. So much for his hamper.

“Do you have a chamber somewhere?” he murmured. “A cell? Something with a bed?”

“Here, the storeroom—”

He backed into it, kicking the door shut without lifting his mouth off mine. “Does that have a bed?”

“Better. It has a lock.” I dragged the shirt over his head as he pulled me down to the floor between the flour barrels. “Mouth shut, Bartolomeo. Hands moving!”

His lips against my ear made my skin prickle all the way down to my toes. His hands were already following the prickles, down my back, down my hip, tugging my thigh up around him. “Yes, signorina.”

Giulia

Considering that I never wanted anything to do with la famiglia Borgia ever again, I really do think my final performance as the Borgia mistress was remarkable. I quite enjoyed myself. Perhaps I missed my true vocation in life: I was never a very good wife, or a very good whore either, and I was certainly never going to be a nun—but Carmelina had always said there were shadowy spaces between that stark trinity of futures, and she was right. Perhaps I should have been an actress of pantomimes and miracle plays!