“Oh, Holy Virgin!” I exploded, and found myself shouting. What a great relief it was, too. “We’ll never know, Orsino, we’ll never know and I’m sorry for that, but why does it matter by now? She’s Laura, that’s who she is. She’s the loveliest girl any man could ever hope to have as a daughter, so what is it with you men? Why do you and Rodrigo refuse to have anything to do with her unless you can prove she has your blood? Why is any of that her fault? You don’t either deserve to have fathered her!”

“I’m—I’m sorry—” Orsino stammered.

“You should be,” Adriana commented. “Really, Orsino. Laura’s a little love. And it’s not as though she’s your firstborn son and heir! There’s plenty of time for that later.”

I rounded on my mother-in-law. “So your plan is that I go back to the Pope until he’s tired of me, and then I settle down with your son and start birthing plenty of legitimate little heirs?”

Adriana’s voice was placid. “That seems entirely reasonable to me.”

I nearly heaved the altar cloth at her head. “What kind of mother are you?”

“The practical kind.” Her eyes met Orsino’s, and I might as well not have been in the room at all. “My dear boy, I only want what’s best for you. You’re like your father—sweet as clover honey, but he had no notion at all how to forge a path in this world, and neither do you.” Adriana looked momentarily sad, and Orsino reddened to the color of a pomegranate. “You’ll need assistance in your career, Orsino, assistance and patronage, and how are you to get that if you anger the Holy Father?”

“So you’ll just pack me off to the man who put horns on your son’s head,” I shouted, “and it’s all for his own good?”

“A mother does what she must to make sure her children succeed.”

“I’m sure you feel very proud of yourself!”

“Not very.” She shook her graying head. “But the world is not a place of blacks and whites, Giulia Farnese. As I think you know by now.”

I rounded away from her, toward Orsino, and took his hands in mine again. “You don’t have to listen to her. She’s wrong about you, she is. Tell her!”

His fingers were limp and cold in mine. He looked at me once, and then he stared at his boots. “Maybe she’s right.”

“What?”

A tentative voice sounded through the door just then. “Madonna Giulia?”

I whirled, tearing my hands away from Orsino’s. “What?” I yelled all over again.