I looked at my cousin, sitting there with his big hands lying helpless on the scrubbed trestle table. I’d been in love with him when I was twelve, and who wouldn’t be? Tall, broad-shouldered, arms corded with muscle from hours of whipping eggs and shouldering huge joints of meat onto spits; springing black curls and an easy smile; and if that weren’t enough, real talent in the kitchen. Marco’s big hands could whip up the most delicate of pastry shells, the airiest of sugar confections, the subtlest of sauces, and I’d loved him for that as much as his broad shoulders and his white gleam of a smile. But I hadn’t hankered after him long before realizing that for all his other gifts, Marco Santini had not one drop of common sense.

“No one’s going to catch me,” I said in as soothing a tone as I could muster. “Who looks for a runaway Venetian girl clear down in Rome?”

“How did you get so far south on your own?” His eyes ran over my cropped head. I’d finally stripped off the flour-and-egg-smeared rag I’d kept tied about my head, and my chopped hair had no doubt fluffed up in hundreds of frizzy little unbecoming black curls.

“I traveled as a boy,” I confessed, running a hand over my mangled head. “I bought a doublet and hose secondhand in Venice, and a mask. It was Carnival, so everyone was in masks.” Not much of a disguise, really, but I was tall and skinny enough to pass for a lanky boy, and the mask had helped. Half the revelers on the road those long weeks had been japed up in hilarious disguise and outlandish beaked masks for the pre-Lenten revelries. What a nightmare of a journey it had been. Sleeping in inns where the rats ran squeaking and scampering over my legs at night; choking down the stale bread and rock-hard meat that were all I could afford; the achingly slow boats that stopped at every village port and turned a journey of weeks into more than a month.

“Where’d you get the money for travel?” Marco was demanding. “I know you didn’t have any coin!”

“I got my hands on enough to get here,” I hedged. Never mind how; that was none of Marco’s business. Besides, if he knew I had any left over, he’d just want to borrow it for a sure bet on a cockfight. Marco always had a sure bet on a cockfight.

“Well, I don’t know why you came to me, but I can’t help you.” He slumped in his chair, running a hand through his curly hair. “I don’t even have a post anymore. Madonna Adriana, if she hasn’t dismissed me already—”

“Yes, your post. Tell me, Marco, where were you yesterday? When you should have been applying yourself to Madonna Giulia Farnese’s wedding banquet?”