“Where are you going?” He sat up too, sliding his arms around my waist from behind and kissing the back of my neck. “You think I’m letting you up yet, as long as I’ve wanted to get you here? Just give me, oh, the length of time it takes to say a rosary, and then . . .” He buried his nose in my loose hair. “Sweet Santa Marta, maybe I won’t even need that long. You smell like cinnamon.”

“It’s very late.” I pulled away from his arms, keeping my words stern. “I’ll need to be back to my chamber before anyone’s awake to see me come out of here.”

“Why shouldn’t they see?” He fell back on his elbows, admiring me as I rose. “They’ll know soon enough anyway.”

“Oh, will they?” I snarled, fumbling for my shift. Men, always boasting about the women they’d wheedled out of their skirts. What an achievement for a mere apprentice: getting his own maestra di cucina to flop on her back. What a joke for the scullery.

Bartolomeo shrugged, unfazed. “They’ll know when we make the announcement.”

“Announcement?” I found my shift, yanking it gratefully down over my head. My whole body felt flushed and awkward with embarrassment. “Announcement of what?”

He grinned. “Marry me.”

I stood there goggling like a goose about to get its neck wrung.

“You think I’d bed you and not marry you?” He raised his eyebrows at my aghast silence. “What sort of man do you think I am? I know we can’t wed before I’m done with my apprenticeship, but I’m near finished anyway. I’m already better than half the undercooks Madonna Adriana hired on the cheap—”

Sweet Santa Marta, I thought again in utter horror, but the prayer stopped short this time. My patron saint clearly wasn’t going to be any help in situations like this, good as she was for keeping a roast rare on the spit or a sauce from breaking. This was far out of her control.

Bartolomeo must have taken my frantic, silent hunt for words as some kind of permission, because he rose from his pallet and came to slip his arms about my waist. “Summertime, do you think? We could save a little, go to the priest then—”