“His burden?” I sputtered. “What about mine? A wife with no husband, abandoned in a—a den of sin!” Surely that would move him? Priests were always going on about dens of sin.

“Even through this screen, I can see you have the curse of beauty,” the priest continued, clicking his tongue. “Beautiful women are traps laid by the devil to snare the vows of men. Sheathe yourself in modesty and self-effacement, madonna, and do not add to the burden of this man of God by tempting him with your body.”

“I don’t want to tempt him with my body!”

“All women are thirsty for admiration. Has this man of God laid a finger upon you?”

“No,” I admitted. “But he wants to.” He’d visited once more, just a week ago, and I’d refused to say a word to him—I told the priest as much. “I sat there with my hands folded in my lap. I didn’t give him any encouragement.”

But it hadn’t really made the impression I’d hoped. “Ah,” Cardinal Borgia had said, amusement lacing his deep voice. “Disdainful silence. Well, if you’re content with wordlessness, I shall be as well. Who needs conversation, with something as lovely as you to gaze at?” And he’d put his chin into his hand and gazed at me with slow-burning appreciation for a solid hour.

“I was twitching by the end,” I told the priest. “You know what it’s like to just sit in silence being stared at? You wouldn’t believe how my nose itched, and all he says through the whole hour is ‘Would you mind sulking with your head turned the other way? I would be grateful for the chance to admire that perfect profile.’ What do you do with a man like that? No matter what I say, he just doesn’t get offended.”

“Then his will is stronger than your vanity. Three Acts of Contrition—”

The priest rattled off a list of penitential prayers that would have me on my knees until Candlemas, but I closed my ears, mutinous. These priests, they always stuck to their own kind. Everybody was at fault but them. When I was twelve and just starting to strain the lacing of my bodices, my confessor was a friar who breathed communion wine on my neck and whispered that he’d absolve me of the sin if I would just let him get a look at my ripening apples. That was the word he used, “apples.” I told his superior everything, and somehow it had all ended up being my fault: the budding little temptress swishing about, unsettling the poor men of God. I’d never really trusted priests since. And I’m not very fond of apples, either.