The Lion and the Rose by Kate Quinn Read Free Book Online

starting to get just a bit plump again—some women might be able to stay wand-slim no matter what they ate, but my dresses got tight if I even
looked
at a plate of
tourtes
. So very unfair. At least food like this was easy to push away.
    “So you’re to be
Gonfalonier
?” Sancha was bubbling now at Juan. “Our bold leader against the French! I see bravery in the Borgias isn’t limited to just one brother!”
    “One might doubt that,” Cesare murmured.
    “My husband wanted to lead the papal forces, you know.” Lucrezia laughed. “Can you imagine? He has trouble enough with those Pesarese captains of his, and now he wants papal soldiers! He thinks he’s Alexander the Great, you know; too ridiculous—”
    Sancha tittered and Juan guffawed; even Rodrigo had a chuckle at his son-in-law’s expense, and I couldn’t blame him either because Lord Sforza had gotten very sour this past year and spent most of his last visit pestering my Pope for money. But I couldn’t help looking at Lucrezia—sixteen years old now but as poised as a woman of twice as many years, wearing a purple-and-crimson gown cut as low as Sancha’s, rubies in her ears and rouge patted on her cheeks and a ring on every finger. She looked eager and glittering, greedy for every eye to be on her, and I thought back to the gently glowing girl who had first blushed at her new husband over my
cena
table.
    Well, such girls grew up. And Lucrezia had acted alongside me as her father’s hostess this past winter, finally old enough to take her place as the star of the papal court—perhaps it had gone to her head just a little. It certainly would have gone to mine at her age. I had only twenty-two years to my name, but sometimes I felt distinctly world-weary.
    They were talking of that mad priest Fra Savonarola now, the one preaching and frothing at the mouth in Florence and getting everyone to give up their cards and their fine clothes and all their other luxuries. “Only in Florence,” Juan snickered. “That would never happen in Rome!”
    “My Giulia might give up cards,” Rodrigo said, giving my cheek an affectionate tweak. “But never her pearls!”
    “As if anyone would go about in sackcloth just because one sour old man said puffed sleeves were heretical!” Lucrezia laughed.
    “I don’t know about heretical,” I said, sipping my sour wine. The vintage wasn’t up to Carmelina’s standards, either. “But puffed sleeves are certainly unflattering. And really, what’s more heretical than that?”
    Sancha plucked at her puffed sleeves, shooting me a nasty look.
    “You’d be the only one safe under Savonarola, eh, brother?” Juan cast an eye over the unadorned black that Cesare usually wore instead of his red cardinal’s robes. “Maybe you should have been a Dominican! I’ll fight the French and you’ll preach hellfire.”
    “Careful, brother,” said Cesare. “Or you might taste it.”
    Juan just beckoned in invitation, laughing. The two brothers should have looked alike—both tall and lean, both auburn-haired, both handsome—but they didn’t. Not at all, and Juan’s jittering overbright eyes met Cesare’s still, black-steel gaze like a cross of swords. Sancha looked between them with parted lips, and Lucrezia cast her eyes up to the ceiling and said, “Really, you’re both such
children
!” But I felt a twinge of disquiet.
    “You’ll have seen the new frescoes, Juan,” I jumped in brightly. “But surely not examined them yet? Perhaps we can take a closer look, before the
biscotti
are brought in. Your figure shows to great advantage . . .”
    I took my wine cup in one hand, tucking the other into Rodrigo’s broad arm, and we all rose from the
cena
table and flocked to the walls with our painted images. “I
love
me as Santa Caterina,” Lucrezia sighed over her own beseeching golden-haired figure. “I still have that dress . . .”
    “I don’t see why Joffre and I were just figures in the crowd,” Sancha pouted.