My mouth was dry, and my heart hammered. In the light of the single taper I could see every detail of this tiny cubby of a chamber: barely big enough for a pallet and a stool and a bag of clothes but exquisitely neat for all that; a bowl of crushed mint leaves that he must have placed to keep the windowless air sweet; a packet of scribbled papers that might have been the start of his recipe collection. A tiny chamber not tall enough even at its highest point for my apprentice to stand up straight, but he was standing in the middle of it now, utterly naked and proposing marriage to me.

A tiny, astounded part of me thought back to the words that had drifted through my head when I first woke up, just an hour ago: This is the sort of dream a woman has when her life has no particular passion in it, and probably never will.

“These will be our kitchens, yours and mine, we’ll run everything between us!” His words poured fast and eager now, like warm olive oil out of a jar. “The two of us, we’ll be the greatest cooks in Rome. Sweet Christ, Carmelina, I’ve never known a woman who could cook like you! Even,” he conceded, “if you put too much orange juice in everything.”

“I do not,” I couldn’t help saying, even though it rocked me clear back onto my heels to hear him say my name instead of signorina.

“Yes, you do, but that’s not important. We’ll learn, we’ll both of us learn, we’ll travel!” His arms had tightened around me now, and he was gabbling faster. “We don’t have to stay in Rome, we could go to Milan; Lodovico Il Moro keeps a court there to rival the Pope’s. Then to Lombardy where I was born; I can show you how the French influence comes over into the recipes, and I know you scoff about the French and their sour spices, but there’s something to be learned there—”

“You’ve gone mad!” I had a handsome young man before me proposing marriage in all seriousness—was the world just laughing at me? What woman has to dodge marriage proposals after becoming a nun? He doesn’t know that, I thought disjointedly, and you certainly can’t tell him, so find some other way to dodge it.

I made myself plant a stern hand on Bartolomeo’s hard chest, pushing him back, but that might have been a mistake because I could feel his heartbeat speed up under my touch. Maybe mine too, but that was just more panic. “Bartolomeo, this has all been a mistake.” I spoke calmly, reasonably. “A very great mistake, and I do apologize for that. I am maestra di cucina, and you are an apprentice. I am seven years older than you, and I should never have—”