“That was kindly done,” Leonello told me when Lucrezia finally scampered off, rosy and glowing, to practice her dancing, since I’d pointed out that even her father wouldn’t forbid her dancing with Lord Sforza.

“Was it kindly done?” I folded my arms along my chair’s high carved back, gesturing the rest of the maidservants out. I was suddenly tired of feminine bustle. “I doubt it.”

“That child’s lived her life among all these overbearing Spanish brothers and an even more overbearing Spanish father. Not to mention that bitter old bitch of a mother, which is worse than no mother at all.” Leonello looked up at my painted ceiling. “No sisters, no women in her circle except Madonna Adriana, who takes her father’s side in everything. But now she has you, the most glamorous woman in Rome, and you could brush her away like a tiresome puppy. But you don’t. Instead, you help her to be a woman.”

“Not a real woman.” I pillowed my cheek on my folded arms. “I can’t help her be a wife, not a proper wife the way she wants to be. But then I’m hardly a proper wife myself, so how could I ever help her with that?”

“Beg His Holiness very prettily on those dimpled knees of yours?”

“How do you know my knees are dimpled?” I asked, momentarily distracted.

“I overheard one of the guardsmen paying your maid Taddea five scudi just to hear what you looked like in the bath.”

“I’ll have a word with Taddea,” I said, but without much heat. My maids liked me, gossiped with me, even confided in me, but they all took shameless advantage of me: pilfering my cosmetics, stealing kerchiefs and shoes and other small things from my wardrobe they thought I wouldn’t miss, selling locks of my hair for love tokens. I pretended not to notice, most of the time. How could I blame them for making a bit of extra coin when they had the opportunity? I’d been born to a good family and a life of ease, but my maids had only their wages (and my mother-in-law paid the skimpiest wages in Rome). If Pantisilea stole a vial of my perfume to attract yet another lover, or if Taddea made a few extra coins from describing how I looked in the bath, they were welcome. “I’ll have a word with the Pope too,” I added. “I’ll intervene for Lucrezia with him, not that it will do any good. His mind’s made up. He doesn’t want the marriage consummated.”

“I suppose not.” Leonello marked his place in his book, setting it aside. “If Lucrezia stays a virgin, he can always annul the marriage in favor of a better one.”

“If Lucrezia stays a virgin she’ll remain His Holiness’s daughter, not Sforza’s wife.”