It was worth thinking about. Mistress of my own kitchens, and for a cardinal too! Even if he was only twenty-six and more jester than churchman, it would be a step up in the world for me, and no mistake. But I was all but mistress of the kitchens in the Palazzo Santa Maria, and I’d grown fond of them. The scullions who hopped like obedient frogs whenever I spoke, the unlimited papal budget for rare spices and imported cheeses and anything else I wanted for the storerooms, Madonna Giulia and her endless appetite for my tourtes. Not to mention Marco, and I wasn’t at all sure Marco would let me leave Madonna Giulia’s household. It wasn’t my company in his bed that he couldn’t do without—he could have any of the maids he chose, anytime he wanted a girl between his sheets. He probably was bedding one of the palazzo maids back in Rome, since I had been gone so long, and the thought did not make me jealous in the slightest.

No, Marco could get along well enough without me in his bed, but in his kitchens? That was a different matter. My cousin was a lazy soul, and my presence meant he didn’t have to work near as hard. He wouldn’t be happy if I moved on to greener fields and he had to do his own dawn shopping at the fish-market again. And I still owed him for taking me in when I first arrived in Rome.