He put a hand on the crown of my head and smoothed it slowly down the fall of my hair. “When I saw you were kind. When I saw you were brave. When you had special reinforced boots made for me because you understood how my legs ached, even though I’d never told you . . .” He pulled one lock of hair gently through his fingers, all the way to the very end. “Who knows?”

I took his hand and put it to my own cheek. “I have been a prize all my life, Leonello. Prizes exist to be paraded; to inspire envy. Maybe lust.” I turned my lips against his palm. “Not love.”

“You are still wasted on an ugly thing like me.”

And I had not seen his looks in a very long time, either. If he was small, well, I was not tall either, and I was tired anyway of being carried about by the whims of large, peremptory men. But I rather thought Leonello would need time before he truly believed that I didn’t find him ugly.

Time we had. “To bed?” I suggested.

He gave that smile of his that made him so handsome. “To bed.” Only a few days and I was already used to his quiet warmth beside me, the way his hand held mine through the night as we slept. I was not used to having a man beside me as I slept. Rodrigo had always been too busy to stay the night; he had to rush back to the papal apartments to resume his work, and Orsino didn’t think it seemly for husband and wife to share a chamber. Perhaps it wasn’t, but I’d long since given up on being seemly, and I didn’t intend to go any longer without a shoulder to sleep on. It would be more difficult to manage in Carbognano than it was here in the solitary splendor of the convent’s gatehouse quarters, but I already had plans. If I was bringing a certain devoted former bodyguard of mine back to Carbognano, a man who would now take up official position as tutor to my daughter, then wouldn’t he need a chamber of his own to teach her in? Wouldn’t I need to hire a woodworker, someone skilled enough to make bookshelves and writing tables all fitted to a small man’s height, and after that a stonemason to carve scenes on the walls from Leonello’s beloved Homer? Behind that frieze of Trojan ships and Greek warriors, I was already planning the construction of a discreet passage leading to my chamber. If the Pope used to visit me unseen through a private passage, why couldn’t Leonello?