Giulia laced her dress back up and rose, returning to her chair. She picked up the slumbering goat, dropping a kiss on its nose, and looked up. The men were still staring, and Caterina Gonzaga looked as though she had eaten a lime.

“So which of us wins?” Caterina said rudely. I saw Madonna Adriana cast a disapproving glance from her embroidery. “Me, or Giulia Farnese?”

Lucrezia’s face fell again, and I swung quickly off the wall bench.

“Perhaps the dwarf may prove the best judge of the contest?” I interjected quickly, striding to the front of the company. “Who, after all, can judge beauty better than one as ugly as myself?” I spread my arms at the little murmur of laughter. Lord Sforza guffawed. “I think, in all fairness to La Bella and to our beauteous visitor”—a bow in their direction—“we must award the crown to our fair Countess of Pesaro. Lovely as is the golden orb in its full glory, a dawning sun must always be counted the most beautiful.”

“I think dawning suns are pale and scrawny,” the Countess remarked sotto voce, but she was drowned in the prudent burst of applause led by Madonna Adriana. Lucrezia’s face brightened a little, and I was glad to hear the subject of the French invasion raised again. Altogether a safer topic than the comparative beauty of women who are all present in the same room.

“Excellent, my dear,” I heard Madonna Adriana murmur to Giulia as the men called for wine and maps and began loudly arguing over which route the King of France would choose in his march on Naples.

“You really think she got that ring from Rodrigo?” Giulia whispered back. “I saw how she made eyes at him at Joffre’s wedding—”

“Maybe, but that ruby’s nowhere near the value of your pearls. If he tumbled her, I assure you it was a tumble quickly forgotten . . .”

“And they say women know nothing of politics,” I remarked as Madonna Adriana patted Giulia’s arm and bustled off. “Is it so important, keeping the Holy Father’s favor?”

Giulia blinked. The other ladies were starting to yawn; any moment now they’d go trailing off to bed, leaving the men free to argue about the French until dawn. I took the stool at Giulia’s feet, leaning back on my elbows, and she looked down at me, puzzled. “What do you mean, Leonello?”

“The Holy Father is more than forty years your elder. He has a short temper, an unfaithful heart, and a girth that will keep right on expanding until he looks like a sack of millet.” I reached up to the goat in her lap and gave its silky ear a flick. “So why do you fight to keep him?”

She shrugged. “He’s all I have.”