“He wants his wife back,” I said. “Not that he’ll do anything about it. It takes guts to go up against a Borgia, far less a pope, and that boy hasn’t got the guts of a plucked chicken. I take it back, you know—what I said in Pesaro. I can see now why you abandoned the handsome lad for the aging cleric, and it wasn’t for the jewels.”

“Orsino Orsini is my husband.” A spark of anger lit Giulia’s eye as she looked down at me.

“But not Laura’s father, I think, despite the Pope’s doubts.” I cocked an eyebrow, grinning. “If I were you, I’d be on my knees praying she turns out a bastard Borgia rather than a true-born Orsini. Bad enough having a gutless husband without getting saddled with his gutless offspring.”

Giulia Farnese slapped me. Not one of those dainty slaps I’d seen women deal out to disobedient maids or pouting children either—she got her arm and all her weight behind it, and her hand crashed against my face like a clap of thunder. I staggered sideways and fell, barely catching myself on my elbows.

“Follow us or not, you twisted little bastard,” she said. “As you like.”

She turned and swept back to the puzzled Orsino, who had been crouching on his haunches to speak with a still-wary Laura. “There’s a lovely view of the town a little way down the shore,” Giulia announced, reaching to take Laura’s hand. “Shall we?”

Orsino looked as though he wished he could take her hand too. But he took Laura’s other palm instead.

I sat up slowly as they walked away, brushing off my muddy palms. I had lake slime on my fine black breeches. Dio, how I missed Rome. Give me stinking alleys and noisy wine shops and foul city smoke over the joys of the country any day.

Once I would have thought Giulia Farnese agreed with me—the Pope’s elegant concubine in her velvets and jewels, dancing till dawn and reveling in parties and parades and masques. But after a summer spent in sleepy little Pesaro, sleepier little Capodimonte where the greatest event of the week was Sunday Mass . . .

Afternoon sun glinted off the trio of fair heads retreating down the shore of the lake. Young Orsini looked like he was describing something, waving his free hand. Giulia had her head tilted at the attentive angle all men seemed to find so flattering. Laura skipped between them, swinging on their hands. Husband, wife, child—a little trinity of family contentment.