I flicked the long ribbon of apple peel away with a final flourish, tossing the naked apple at Bartolomeo and rummaging for the tender shoots of asparagus I’d already set aside to blanch. If I were telling the truth (and that was something I kept strictly for Santa Marta and my own conscience), it wasn’t Marco himself that I missed, but the presence of a man in my bed. Smooth male warmth stretched over me, kisses and laughter and the sharper smell of masculine sweat . . . One or two of the guardsmen here in Capodimonte had given me the eye, but I hadn’t been tempted. I had standards, after all. Guardsmen stank of boiled leather and sour beer. The only two lovers I’d had since fleeing Venice had been a nobleman and a cook, and noblemen and cooks might not have a single other thing in common, but both kinds of men smelled wonderful. Sandalwood oil and leather and scent for Cesare Borgia; cloves and herbs and olive oil for Marco. I didn’t see myself bedding any more noblemen, but I could at least look about for another cook rather than just fill my bed with guardsmen because I was lonely. Cooks not only smell lovely, they have dexterous fingers. If you can peel an apple in one long curl, the ties and laces of a woman’s dress are nothing. Not to mention a cook’s discerning tongue when it came to the tastes of the body: the salt of sweat, the fragrance of soap, the musk of desire rising hot in the blood like oil rising to the top of a sauce . . . My hands slowed on the chopping board.

“I’ll bet I can peel an apple in one strip.” Bartolomeo eyed the bowl of fruit. “Can I try?”

“No.” I reached for more asparagus. “Keep chopping those onions for the bread. Then I’ll show you how to cut out the dough in diamond patterns. Presentation is as important as flavor, you know.”

“Yes, signorina.” He sounded faintly mutinous, but he obeyed me. “Is Madonna Giulia’s husband staying for cena as well?”

I laid a double handful of slender green asparagus shoots in to cook with a few slices of prosciutto. “He is.”

Bartolomeo let out a long whistle, and I slanted an eyebrow. “No gossiping about your employers, now!”

“I didn’t say a word.” But my apprentice shook his head, and truth be told the whole household was shaking its head ever since Orsino Orsini had arrived two days earlier. I think Madonna Giulia’s brother was tempted to deny entrance at all, for fear he might just take his wife with him when he left. God forbid the Farnese family lose that stream of papal privileges from the sister they were so quick to call a harlot!

“I heard Orsini is going to drag her to Bassanello,” one of the maids had confided. “By the hair!”