I hadn’t waited this time for Madonna Adriana or some other helpful informant to tell my Pope that his daughter and her husband had consummated their marriage. I had gone direct from bidding Lord Sforza good-bye, watching him give Lucrezia’s hand a squeeze from the height of his horse as she unashamedly held her face up in the courtyard for a farewell kiss, and sat down to write Rodrigo myself. And when I had the news he had returned to Rome a week later, I oiled and scented every inch of my skin, looped my throat with the huge teardrop pearl that had been his first gift, laced myself into my new lavender silk with the silver brocade insets, left my hair loose and rolling to my feet the way he liked it, and waited. By the time His Holiness Pope Alexander VI came storming into my sala at the Palazzo Santa Maria, his face was so dark with fury against his white robes that he could have been a Moor. My maids were fleeing for the door before the first furious Spanish roars erupted all over me like a fountain of scalding hot water.

“Lucrezia is a woman grown,” I said when my Pope paused for breath. “Old enough to take up her duties as a wife. As you yourself wrote, signed, and had witnessed in her marriage contract.”

“Don’t play notary, Giulia Farnese,” he snapped, still pacing the length of my sala. One of the maids had dropped the shift she was mending as she fled the room; he kicked it furiously out of the way. “You knew Our wishes in the matter. She was to remain virgin, and that Sforza lout was to keep his hands off!”

“I thought of Your Holiness’s alliance with the Sforza and Milan.” I kept my tone to a submissive murmur; soothing, caressing. “Lord Sforza had begun to believe you meant to cast him off—”

“We were damned well considering it! Count of Pesaro, hah. He’s a failed condottiere and a provincial puppet, and he thinks he’s worthy of a pope’s daughter?” Rodrigo’s papal ring flashed as he drove one fist against his other palm. “I bought a royal match each for Juan and Joffre; Lucrezia deserves no less!”

“. . . So Your Holiness does mean to annul the marriage?”

“We can hardly do so now,” he snarled at me. “Not with the marriage consummated! You air-brained fool, meddling in Our politics—”

“Cesare was there as well,” I couldn’t help pointing out, trying not to sound exasperated. “He knew your wishes when it came to Lucrezia’s marriage. Why aren’t you shouting at him for not stopping Lord Sforza?” Really, men. Lucrezia’s duenna and her big brother at hand to watch over her, and her misbehavior was still all my fault? I ask you.