“She’ll bat her eyes at him. He’ll forgive her.” Cesare clearly had no interest in Giulia Farnese, and I remembered her remarking that he might be handsome, but he was cold as a corpse. “If the Holy Father had tasted the oysters and the peacock tonight, he’d know she didn’t have a chance in the world of keeping anything proper.”

I felt pride expand through me, a warm bubble. “My oysters and peacock,” I couldn’t help saying. “Perhaps the Holy Father should blame me, Your Eminence.”

“You are the cook?”

“Yes.” Normally I would have cast my eyes down, given the credit to Marco. But Cesare Borgia’s eyes had a way of hooking the truth out of you.

He stepped forward, still just a shadow. His eyes went over me coolly, and I hoped he could not see the pulse fluttering madly at the base of my throat.

“The cook,” he said, thoughtful. “Well. You’re not ill-looking. And it seems fair that if you rouse blood, you should have the burden of quenching it.”

“Madonna Lucrezia’s posset,” I managed to say, dry-mouthed.

His fingers linked around my wrist, overlapping like a steel cuff. “Forget the posset.”

He did not ask my name when he dismissed that frightening guard of his and took me to the nearest chamber. I doubted he cared to know my name, and in truth I didn’t care if he knew it either. The room had one guttering taper, there was a mahogany table inlaid with gold, and there were two bodies moving together toward it and no need for names.

He swept the table clear with one violent motion and had me up on it before I had even heard the crash of something fragile and costly against the floor. There was no passion in his mouth when he claimed mine, just cool curiosity as he tasted me, and I tasted him back as though he were a new sauce coating a spoon. I could taste the sharp sea tang of oysters, the heady musk of the truffles, the roe and the sparkling wine and the sugared flowers, and his lean body was hard against mine. I spent my days sweating over hot stoves and reaching into hot ovens, and I still felt so cold: the inviolable Madonna of the Kitchens who cared for nothing but work. Even when Marco reached for me, it was the win of a card game or the jingle of a lucky bet that put the fire in his loins, not me.

I was tired of being cold.