He crossed the floor in three violent strides and seized my hand, bringing it up to his face. I felt the roughness of beard stubble as he pressed each of my pink-stained fingers one by one against his mouth. His arm circled my waist like a chain, and his thumb had slipped from the nape of my neck down inside the edge of my shift, caressing slowly back and forth between the twin points of my shoulder blades. The pomegranate fell from my hand, rolling on the stripped floor, and I twined my fingers through his black hair as I pulled him hard against me. “Out,” he said to the servants as he set his lips between my breasts just below the pearl, and as he trailed kisses upward toward my throat I heard rather than saw them fleeing with nervous stifled titters. Then I felt a hard mouth on mine, kissing me as luxuriantly as if we had all day, as if there weren’t a dying Pope and an imminent papal Conclave to take precedence, as if nothing at all could take precedence over this.

“Bed,” my Cardinal whispered, lifting me up as if I weighed no more than his cardinal’s hat and carrying me back through the empty echoing rooms. “Fortunately there are still one or two not yet packed away—”

“Wait,” I managed to murmur against his mouth. “Wait—” And I squirmed free of his arms.

“What?” He cupped my face in his big hands. “What, Giulia?”

I was breathing as hard as though I had run a race, and my mouth felt swollen from kissing. My heart hammered. I felt more naked under his eyes than I had ever felt in my bath. “You should know something.” I felt a scarlet blush mounting up toward my face, but I held his gaze steadily. “I’ve been— Orsino bedded with me—”

I saw the snap of some emotion in my Cardinal’s eyes—anger? Outrage?—and rushed to finish. “You mustn’t punish Orsino. He’s my husband, it was his right—and it was only once. And he doesn’t—he won’t—he’s gone back to Carbognano now. He doesn’t want me. Not enough.” I lifted my chin. “But I’m no virgin anymore, and if that means you don’t want me either—”

I stopped. Every inch of my skin was vibrating to be held, to be lifted and kissed and comforted, but I refused to look away from the big swarthy man standing so close to me. I hadn’t solved the guilt-laced mess that my marriage had become by bedding my husband—and maybe that one act had doomed anything with my Cardinal. But if I was going to break my vows, I wouldn’t do it by lying to him. If he didn’t want me now, I didn’t want him. I’d go home and cry alone.