But I hadn’t even collared a maidservant yet to send up to the bride’s door when the bride herself came padding into the kitchens. The maidservants were all still asleep in the black hour just before dawn, as was the rest of the household. Except, apparently, for me and the bride.

“Excuse me,” a voice said behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I’d been far too nervous and jittery to sleep after the wedding festivities; I’d spent the night in the empty kitchens restlessly poking at the banked fires, snatching up a broom to sweep the flagstones one more time, or flipping through my father’s collection of recipes and hearing his hectoring voice in my head. Hastily I dropped the cloth I’d been using to wipe down the tables, and offered a curtsy to the small silk-clad figure now hovering in the doorway.

“Madonna Giulia?” I hazarded. I hadn’t had even a glimpse of the bride in all the frantic wedding preparations yesterday, but the carvers and maidservants who carried my dishes out to the guests had been all abuzz about the bride’s hair, which supposedly came all the way to the floor when loosed—and the girl now standing in the kitchen doorway had hair that cascaded all the way to the floor in a lustrous honey-blond curtain. I couldn’t say I envied it—if I had hair down to my feet it would just pick up all the stray chicken bones and dustings of sugar that seem to accumulate on every kitchen floor no matter how busy you’ve kept the scullions with their brooms. But it certainly looked lovely on her. “What can I do for you, Madonna Giulia?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes barely fastened on me; she stood in her blue silk wrapper in the dawn chill, tracing one bare toe over a crack in the stone floor. “Do you have any more of those little marzipan things?”

“I do, madonna.” I rummaged among the neatly covered dishes where I had stored the leftovers of the wedding feast, trying not to stare at her. Adriana da Mila’s son had bagged himself a beauty for a bride: small and voluptuous and juicy as a roast duckling just off the spit—but her little oval face was morose. “So you liked my marzipan tourtes?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“They turned out to be the best part of the night,” she said with a gusty sigh. “So I thought I might as well come down and eat a lot more.”

I offered her the dish, pleased. I am very good with marzipan—it takes a certain touch, a sort of delicate firmness. “I’d thought to come up in another hour and offer you a hot posset, madonna, or maybe some of these leftover baked apples—”