Soon I was directing the flow of work as the undercooks packed up the dishes they had brought for the wedding feast’s preparation. No hot flood of excitement and wonderful smells this time to keep me whirling through the hours, just sheer exhausted discipline. But being a cook isn’t all wafts of warmed honey, and pastry rolling out sweet and flaky under your hands. It’s shouting and sweeping and scouring and scrubbing as well, and I’d been raised to know it. I had Madonna Adriana’s every last spoon and servant packed into the wagons by the time the sun rose—and it was when I ran back to the Cardinal’s dark cramped kitchens to take a last look around that my wayward cousin returned.

“Sweet God in heaven,” I heard a man breathe behind me.

I turned, fists on hips, and looked at my cousin leaning in the doorway between the kitchens and the courtyard. All six and a half slightly ashamed feet of him. “Hello, Marco.”

His eyes traveled over me, puzzled at first. He hadn’t seen me for at least five years, after all, and even when we’d shared the same kitchen under my father’s tutelage, Marco hadn’t paid me any attention. Why would he? A favored apprentice with his eye on a master cook’s status had no time for his skinny broom-handle of a distant cousin, even if she was always underfoot with her loud opinions about what should go in the sauce. “Carmelina?” he said at last.

“The very same,” I said, and marched past him to yell into the courtyard for the wagons to proceed on to the Palazzo Montegiordano without me. “Sit down, Marco. We have a lot to discuss.”

* * *

I n the end I didn’t see any point in tact. I told him everything (or almost everything), and by the time I was done he was pale and shaking.

“Oh, sweet Jesu,” my cousin groaned. “Sweet Jesu, Holy Mother, and Santa Marta, help us.”

I could have told him Santa Marta had already helped me considerably, but matters were dicey enough without bringing a mummified hand into the mix. I patted the little bundle under my skirt. “Marco—”

“What have you done?” He stared at me across the trestle table where we’d both collapsed. The cramped little kitchens were sunny, scrubbed, and eerily quiet after yesterday’s bustle—Madonna Adriana’s staff had risen early to pack and go home, but the rest of the Cardinal’s household was bound to be sleeping late after the festivities. I reckoned we had a good hour of solitude here before we’d have to be gone.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said honestly. “But I won’t go back there.”

“You have to go back! You know what will happen to you if you don’t? To me if I help you?”