But I did not want to think of such things, so I gave my mistress a light shrug. “I could ask you the same question,” I returned. “Why haven’t you gone to bed, Madonna Giulia?”

“I was tending my dear mother-in-law,” she said, a bit too wide-eyed and innocent. “Her guts are griping, poor thing. It came on very suddenly.”

I snorted.

“And once I settled her, well, I found I couldn’t sleep either.” Giulia fiddled with her sleeve, tucked a stray hair behind one ear, nibbled on a thumbnail. “I miss His Holiness.”

Perhaps I wasn’t the only one in the palazzo confined to a restless, empty bed tonight. “Why did you do it?” I couldn’t help asking. “Disobey the Pope just to aid Lucrezia?”

“Over the table tonight, she looked so . . .” Giulia’s little face lapsed from its usual dancing merriment to a somber sadness. She’d been very quiet that night at the table, folding herself deliberately into the background to let Lucrezia blossom. “She looked so hopeful. Full of love, I suppose. I think I looked like that too, when I married Orsino, but it didn’t end so well for me. Hopefully it will for Lucrezia—but either way, she deserves the chance. She is married, after all—it’s no sin to keep her from her husband, if they both want each other . . .”

My mistress sounded as though she were already marshaling her arguments for future storms. “I believe you are braver than you think, Madonna Giulia.”

“I think so too,” she said, smiling again. “I’m quite delighted with myself, really. I shall try to hang on to the feeling later, when Rodrigo is storming at me and threatening excommunication.” She couldn’t resist a shiver at the thought, whether of excommunication or her Pope’s anger, but then she brushed both aside. “Come into my sala a moment, Leonello—you aren’t too tired? You don’t look sleepy.”