“Caterina Gonzaga is a goose.” I put a finger under her little chin, lifting it up. “Lord Sforza comes to visit us in a few weeks—then you’ll see. He’ll be too busy staring at you over the table to even know I’m there.” And if he did stare at me, I thought privately, I’d catch myself a convenient cough and take to my chamber to allow the newlyweds a little private conversation over cena.

“He won’t be allowed to stay the night when he visits, will he?” Lucrezia fiddled with her cuff. “With me, I mean.”

“No,” I admitted, picking up the other yellow sleeve and moving to her other side. I’d already had quite explicit orders from His Holiness on that point. Keep that Sforza bravo out of my daughter’s bed, he’d written me from Pitigliano. I want the marriage unconsummated a little longer—I don’t care if he’s hot for her; he can damned well wait.

“Can’t you ask Father for me?” Lucrezia pleaded. “Ask him to let me be a proper wife?”

“I’ll ask,” I promised, but I didn’t hold out much hope that Rodrigo would listen. My Papal Bull was as stubborn as a bull too, sometimes.

On the other hand, so was his daughter. Her lower lip pushed out as she looked at herself in the hand mirror again. “I’ll have a new dress for my husband’s visit, too,” she decided. “Something wicked—something older. I’ll make him so mad for me that he’ll carry me off to Pesaro on his horse the next morning, no matter what my father says.”

“If he does, he’ll be promptly stabbed by papal guards,” Leonello said from behind his book.

“Then he’ll die and I’ll join a nunnery,” Lucrezia said darkly. “I’d rather be a nun than have Sancha of Aragon laugh at me for being a virgin wife.”

“She’ll be the virgin wife,” I said, making a warning face at my bodyguard behind Lucrezia’s back. “She’ll be marrying Joffre, after all, and he’s a dear boy but he’s just a child and I doubt he’ll be able to do much between the sheets when they’re bedded down on their wedding night. And if she’s a virgin wife too, then she won’t dare laugh at you for anything.”

“Really?” Lucrezia’s little blond head twisted to look at me on her long neck—one of her best features. Her features were small, her eyes blue-gray rather than pure blue, and her skin prone to spots, but that swan neck made every turn of her head graceful.