She wrinkled her nose, wry. “Why, surely you know they were all perfect gentlemen. So I intend to tell everyone, should I be asked.”

“Including the Holy Father?”

She looked out the window. “Especially the Holy Father.”

“I don’t remember much,” I said, and fumbled the words. I hate fumbling. “That first night. You went to dine with General d’Allegre . . .” And returned very late, her gown creased, two spots of color burning high in her cheeks, with a surgeon in her wake to tend my wounds, and food and blankets and lamps for her cold and shivering servants. “They refused to send me a surgeon until then. The French general, did he—”

She looked at me calmly. “He was a perfect gentleman.”

The creak of wheels and shuffle of marching feet came to me through the window, and the ever-present French smell of onions and stale sweat. I suddenly couldn’t bear the stench and struggled to close the shutter again. Giulia reached over to latch it for me. “Leave it!” I snapped. “I may be nine-fingered, madonna, but do you think I am too feeble to manage a bolt?”

She sat back, lashes veiling her eyes as she stroked Laura’s head again, and I bit my lip. I had a viper’s tongue that liked nothing better than to sting people when it was in the mood, and my mistress was easy prey for my temper, having none of her own. I could say it was the pain in my hand and my bandaged chest that made me sharp, but in truth I was always sharp. In the old days when I made a precarious living in the Borgo district fleecing sailors out of their money over card games, I’d thought it was poverty made me ill-humored. Surely steady money and a safe place in the world would make my tongue lose its edge. But for over two years now, I’d had steady money and as secure a place as could be wished as Giulia Farnese’s bodyguard; I had good food to eat and all the fine books in the world to read while I hung about waiting as my mistress went to confession or got her dresses fitted—and none of it made any difference. Kindness, apparently, had been left out of my makeup along with that extra foot of height that would have put my mistress’s eyes level with my throat instead of my eyes level with her collarbone.

“Do excuse my rudeness, madonna,” I said, my voice still sharp. Dio, but I wanted a drink.

Giulia shifted her sleeping daughter aside on the cushioned bench, uncorking the wicker-bound flask of wine. She poured me a cup, not spilling a drop in the jolting carriage, and I sipped.

“Thank you,” I said, and managed to mean it this time.