“At least make her keep that shift on in front of the men!” A dark glance at me. But Giulia overrode them, and since she was off this afternoon on one of her surprisingly frequent mercy missions to Capodimonte’s beggars, it fell to me and a few nursemaids to take her daughter along the winding path that descended from the castello like a stairway down to the lake that lapped below, where oaks had managed to sprout among the craggy rocks of the shore. I’d sent the nursemaids back to the castello, tired of their chattering, and the lake stretched blue and sparkling before me under an equally blue dome of sky; wood thrushes warbled overhead, and across the water church spires pierced up toward the sun. It might still be summer warm, but I could see leaves withering on the branches of the oak tree above me, feel their crunch beneath as I shifted on my spread-out cloak, and knew autumn was here.

Whether La Bella liked it or not, her summer idyll was over.

“Leo, Leo!” came Laura’s shriek from the water. “Tattels!”

I was a fluent interpreter by now of Laura’s eccentric eighteen-month-old vocabulary. Tattels were turtles. “Don’t tell Signorina Carmelina when I take you back to the kitchens for your midday meal,” I advised over the top of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. “She’ll tramp out here with a net and the next thing you know, that little baby turtle you’re holding right now will turn up on your plate.”

Laura giggled: a wriggling little imp of a girl, squatting on her small heels in the shallow rivulets of the water’s edge, wiggling her toes in the soft lake mud as she carefully released the turtle back into the water. Half a summer spent learning to walk and run beside the lake had turned her brown all over, the fair soft rings of her hair bleached to pale gold. “No higher than your knees,” I warned as she splashed deeper into the lake. “You know what your mother said.”

“Iss, Leo.” Yes, Leo. Laura liked me—I was clearly an Old Person, yet one built conveniently to her size, and it fascinated her. She had practiced her toddling baby steps clinging to my stubby fingers, and I didn’t mind letting her. She was a fetching little thing, too young to know how to be cruel. I might as well enjoy that while it lasted.

“Leonello!”