“You will not do anything of the kind and you know it! The Orsini and the Borgia are powerful families—”

“And if they want to collude in despoiling my sister, they’ll find there’s a price!”

All I could do was gulp and mutter a prayer for Sandro’s safety. Daggers drawn over a woman’s honor; it all sounds very well in the songs, but in real life I found myself sick with fear when I imagined my big brother lying dead in the street for beginning a feud with one of the most powerful cardinals in Rome.

In any event, rapiers and daggers would have to wait until after the vote. It all comes down to that blasted vote, I thought, and rummaged for more of the sweet roasted chestnuts. I always eat when I’m nervous.

Leonello was still looking at me, one dark brow raised as if he were reading my head clear as the words in his book. “Stop reading my mind,” I told him.

“All dwarves are mind readers. Didn’t you know that, Madonna Giulia?”

I threw the last roasted chestnut at him.

“Dio.” He caught it neatly. “What are you, a child? The concubine of a possible pope should conduct herself with more gravity, as befits her lover’s station if not her own.”

Madonna Adriana gave a tsk at his rudeness, but I was already used to it. The first afternoon he’d spent in my company I’d been twanging at my lute, trying to memorize the fingering of a new song. Leonello had listened for an hour, trying to read, and finally put the book down and his thumbs in his ears. “You sound like you’re strangling a cat,” he said frankly. “But I must admit you look very fetching strumming away like that.”

I’d giggled, stilling my fingers on the strings. “I am terrible, aren’t I?”

“Torquemada would condemn what you are inflicting on that poor instrument,” Leonello told me, and I liked him for it. I had spent more than a fortnight in his company, and after all the silent obsequious servants his tartness refreshed me, like a tangy draft of lemon water on a hot day.

“You think His Eminence will give me up?” I found myself asking my bodyguard now, voice low as I fiddled with my embroidery.

“I wouldn’t.” Leonello had already gone back to his book. “But no one’s offering to make me Pope.”

I winced at that, then swore as I ran the embroidery needle into my thumb. “Oh, Holy Virgin, I give up. Lucrezia, come here.” I tossed the embroidery aside. “Let me brush your hair out. That braid is coming unraveled.”

She curled up on a stool before me. “Maybe Leonello can juggle for us!”

He kept reading. “No.”

“Not all dwarves juggle,” I told her as I loosened her plait. “Just like not all cardinals have beautiful blond daughters.”