No signature; just a big R with a trailing loop. I touched it. “Rodrigo,” I said aloud, experimentally. Hard to think of a cardinal as anything but Your Eminence. Hard to think that just a few months ago I hadn’t given any thought to Rodrigo Borgia except as just another flapping scarlet bat in a flock of red-robed churchmen at my wedding. And now, well, I hardly knew what I thought about him—except that I was spending far more time than was good for me remembering the way his thumb had flicked along the very tips of my fingers. It wasn’t a sin, strictly speaking. A man could touch a married woman’s hand in greeting with perfect propriety. But it was one of those not-sins that I’d decided not to take to my confessor. Somehow it would turn out to be a sin, then, and my fault to boot, and I’d be on my knees the next two weeks in penitential prayer for something that wasn’t my fault at all. And not telling my confessor about that touch on my fingertips seemed to make it more important than it should have been . . .

The mare lipped gently at my sleeve, ribbons fluttering in her mane. “I should give you back,” I told her, scratching the velvety nose, “but you’re a love, aren’t you?” She was beautiful: small and fine-boned, perfectly suited to a short rider like me, her dapple-gray coat brushed to a satin gleam and a lady’s hunting saddle of dark polished leather and wine-red velvet fitted to her back. I had no doubt that the stirrups were perfectly fitted to my height.