“Moo,” I said, putting Laura up to my shoulder and patting her small back. “Are you sure you won’t go away and be snide to somebody else? Lucrezia really is very tired from the wedding. A good mother would let her sleep.”

Vannozza’s lips thinned. “And all mothers should be allowed to attend their daughter’s wedding. I should have been there. I should have been the one to escort her. Not her father’s whore, who spends the feast dropping cherries down her own bodice and giggling.”

“You seem very well informed, considering you weren’t there. Tell me, did you know I was the one to teach Lucrezia how to manage her train? There’s a trick to it, making it flare without tripping, and that wedding dress was very heavy. We practiced for hours around this garden, so she would be ready on her wedding day.” I lifted my chin. “Lucrezia visits you often enough. Do you spend all her visits dripping poison about her father and complaining? Why was I the one to teach her how to walk in a train, and not her mother?”

Vannozza’s eyes dropped at that, down to the fountain in the center of the garden. My pet goat had wandered over to nibble at the moss growing along the lip, and she watched him as she turned a ring around and around one finger. A fine sapphire ring, I saw, in a heavy gold setting of carved acanthus leaves. I wondered if it had been a present from Rodrigo. “The Pope will tire of you,” she said evenly, still looking at the ring. “Make sure you get something out of it besides jewelry. I got a house and three prosperous inns, a series of respectable husbands, and a steady income. That lasts longer than love. Or at least Rodrigo’s love.”

I felt a pang of reluctant pity for her. It could have been Laura’s wedding, after all—someday it would be Laura’s wedding. What if I’d been the one forbidden to see my own daughter married? I hesitated, but then Vannozza dei Cattanei looked up at me again, and I saw the spite in her gaze had redoubled.

“At least he won’t take your daughter like he did mine,” she said. “It’s all about the Borgia blood for Rodrigo, you know. And that one you’re holding isn’t a Borgia.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tossed my head, any pity for her evaporating on the spot. “All Rome knows who Laura’s father is.”

“Yes, Rome does love to gossip.” She smiled. “But if that child were a Borgia, she’d never have been christened Laura Orsini. I take it back, what I said before—Rodrigo’s next concubine won’t be walking your daughter up the aisle at her wedding after all. Because your little Orsini will never be worth a Borgia alliance.”