Because he’s trying to figure out all my secrets, that’s why. “Not Leonello,” I said instead, and began to scrub at my cheeks with the towel. “I can’t stand the little wretch.”

“He’s stunted.” One of the other maids wrinkled her nose. “Besides that, he’s fair cruel. Said I had a nose like a hook, and made up jokes about it for days until all the stewards were laughing too. All because I asked if dwarves were really born with hair all over them like bear cubs—”

“And he’s got all those knives. Stab you as soon as bed you, I should think.”

“But he’s clever,” Giulia overrode them. “And funny; he can always make me laugh—”

“I’ve had him,” said Pantisilea. “He’s short, but that doesn’t make such a difference, lying down . . .”

“Better you than me,” I said. I wouldn’t take Leonello in a thousand years.

“It’s that good-looking cousin of yours, isn’t it?” another maid grinned, cracking her own drying mask. “You’re bedding Maestro Santini on the sly, admit it—”

“Certainly not.” Tell these laughing maids anything, and even if they did inhabit a different world from the scullions and undercooks, there still wouldn’t be a scullion or undercook who didn’t know everything by next week. I wasn’t about to tell a soul here that I’d begun keeping a prudent store of those Neapolitan limes on hand in my chamber, for those rare occasions when Marco won at the dicing table instead of losing, and came home victorious and amorous. Those were the nights he nuzzled at my ears and told me I was pretty even if I was as tall as a man, though I suspected most of my appeal came from the fact that I couldn’t pester him for marriage as any of the other maids would have done. I’d been putting off his attentions since I came to Rome, as was prudent, but I’d needed a favor out of him if I wanted to keep Bartolomeo on as apprentice . . . and after Marco tumbled me back onto my bedclothes like an eager hound, beaming from a recent win at the zara board, it had been easy to pick my moment and murmur just how we could slide a new apprentice past Madonna Adriana without the fees. And after that, if Marco came prowling at my door every now and then when he felt like a bit of a romp, at least he understood the need to do it discreetly.