I mopped my nose, looking at my lover’s youngest son. I didn’t know Joffre as I did Lucrezia. Rodrigo never had any time for him, but he had supplied an army of tutors to groom his youngest son for his future role as Borgia princeling and papal pawn, and so Joffre rarely crossed my path in the palazzo. But he’d always been a nice little fellow, trailing after Lucrezia and occasionally playing games with my pet goat, and the brown eyes now wide with pleading couldn’t help but touch me. “What do I do?” he whispered again.

“Give her a kiss and tell her she’s beautiful,” I whispered back. “That will please her.”

“Yes, but how else do I please her? Cesare offered to get me a whore first to teach me a few things, but I was too embarrassed to say yes. And Juan wrote me pages of advice all the way from Spain and I don’t understand half of it—”

“Your brothers mean well, but they’re idiots.” Holy Virgin, who knew what ghastly information Juan had seen fit to pass on for the occasion of his little brother’s wedding night? Who knew Juan could even write? I reached out and smoothed Joffre’s hair. Lucrezia’s youth might have spared her the bedding ceremony, but a boy would not be so lucky. Any Borgia son would be expected to prove his virility, regardless of age—no doubt Juan and Cesare had tumbled their first girls while still in the cradle!

“Don’t listen to what anyone says,” I told Joffre firmly. “I would advise that you and your wife just get a good night’s sleep. It’s been a long, trying day, after all”—I paused to sneeze twice—“and there’s more than enough time in the future for all the rest of it.”

“There is?”

“Madonna Giulia!” Caterina Gonzaga paused before me as Sancha of Aragon disappeared into the giggling throng of her Neapolitan ladies, and the Pope descended laughing from his ornate chair to escort her upstairs and give his blessing for the bedding. “Surely you will join us in disrobing the bride?” Caterina cooed in her Lombard accent, smoothing a hand over that little waist again.

Only if I could bed you down in a coffin afterward, I thought, and gave her my sweetest smile in demurral, somewhat offset by the sneezing fit that followed it. Even if Sancha of Aragon looked like a trollop, she didn’t deserve me sneezing all over her on her wedding night. I was hoping Rodrigo would stay with me—surely he could see how wretched I was feeling?—but he and the King of Naples were already ascending the stairs behind the giggling ladies, heads together as they traded wolfish grins. I gave Joffre a reassuring little wave of my sodden kerchief, and he was borne off in a tide of lewd well-wishers.