I wondered if she had those words embroidered on all her sigils as a personal motto. I didn’t care for our guest. Before cena she’d asked over my head if the dwarf juggled or tumbled, and then she’d spent the meal itself tossing me scraps from her plate as though I were a dog. Giulia had spent the meal requesting that she please desist, sweetness of tone decreasing markedly with each request.

Still, there could be no denying Caterina Gonzaga was a beauty. A very pale beauty: a great deal of white-blond hair and even whiter skin; pale gray eyes that gleamed like silver—and that, of course, was why she could be ill-tempered, capricious, and spiteful. Beauty excuses everything. Easy to forget that when living beside Giulia Farnese, who was certainly a beauty but who lost her temper at no one, offended nobody, made no demands, threw no tantrums. Far less regal than Caterina Gonzaga, but far easier to live with.

Count Ottaviano da Montevegio was already snoring at the back of the sala as his wife came out and struck her pose, and the audience burst into applause. More desultory applause this time, as the women clapped only the bare minimum they could get away with, and the men were too busy gawping to put their hands together. The Countess had not quite appeared before us naked, but she had stripped to the filmiest of shifts and loosened her pale hair to stream to her hips. One hand she held modestly across her breasts; the other brought a hank of her own hair around to cover the joining of her thighs, and she gazed out over our heads with all the splendid serenity of a goddess.

Madonna Adriana clicked her tongue in disapproval. The men shared lascivious grins, and Lucrezia jabbed an elbow into her husband’s ribs. No one seemed inclined to make a guess, but the Countess did not seem to mind anyone taking their time.

“The Birth of Venus,” I said at last into the small silence. “Also Botticelli. Though you are lacking a seashell to stand upon, Madonna Caterina, and you should have taken off that ruby on your hand. Venus came from the sea without the benefit of jewels.”

“Oh, this?” the false Venus said artlessly, breaking her pose to display her hand (and as much as she could of her bosom), letting the ruby sparkle in the candlelight. “I couldn’t bear to take it off, that’s all. I treasure it—a present from His Holiness, you know. He was a very generous host when my husband and I were last in Rome.”