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“Is that what has happened?” he teased. “Have you put a love charm on me?”

“No! No, that’s not the sort of thing—I would never do that to you...”

He put his hands upon her waist. “It’s alright, even if you did, for I have never been so happy.”

Soon they were sneaking out in the gray dawn to make love against the walls of forgotten gardens. Ludovico wasn’t very good at it, but Ginevra didn’t know any better and luxuriated in his rough pressings, his eager hands. She did know, at least, how to avoid becoming pregnant. A mixture of pomegranate seed and alum, applied at the correct time. The compound must have made up half of Monna Vermilia’s business. Now the alum, bought from an alchemist who winked at her, took up more than half her meager salary.

“Taddea,” she asked her friend one day, “do you think you would like to have a husband and children?”

“No, I would not,” said Taddea without blinking.

“I think it might be nice.”

“Once you are married, you work like a slave cleaning up after your man while he lazes about waiting for you to cook him supper.”

“Of course—but—what if you married a rich man, who had his own cook?”

“That’s a foolish question—no rich man would ever marry me—or you, for that matter. They need to marry a woman who’s rich also, or at least one of noble family. Otherwise, they won’t stay rich. Is this to do with Ser Ludovico?”

“No,” Ginevra lied. “I was just wondering.”

“I know how often you go to the kitchens in his palazzo.”

“They are our best customers!” she retorted. “In fact, I am going there today, right now.” She shook her straw-filled basket in Taddea’s direction.

Her friend rolled her eyes. “And why do you think they’re such loyal customers? Do you know how many women come here, disgraced by the greedy men of that family? The Acciaiuoli buy from our hens as a favor for the many services rendered to them by the nuns of Sant’Elisabetta.”

“You are jealous, Taddea, that Ser Ludovico spoke more to me than to you.” She hated how awful she sounded, but could not help herself.

Taddea looked back at her, hurt. “Nothing good will come of it, I’m telling you.”

“And what would you know of such things, speaking only to nuns your whole life?”

“Yes, but before they were nuns, they were prostitutes.”

Ginevra hurried away from the conversation, toward Ludovico’s home, as if she could outrun the truth her friend had spoken. She knew Taddea was right, that for most women this would be a dangerous situation. But she was not most women. She was one of the lucky ones. Had she not been told since she was a child that she was privy to the wisdom of old? To knowledge not accessible to ordinary women? Besides, had she not dreamed up this very situation? For a man of Ludovico’s station to raise her up? If Taddea only understood how deeply Ludovico was devoted to her, she wouldn’t be so skeptical. So what if other men in his family were typical scoundrels? Ludo was different. He had given her a pet name, after all, and once, when they were up against the garden wall, he said he loved her with the gentle and spontaneous tone of one who truly means it.

“Beatrice?”

Startled, she saw the man himself in front of her. Lost in thought, she had already arrived at his doorstep.

“Is everything alright?”

She did not answer, for how could she say that it was his own hypothetical misdeeds that furrowed her brow. Ludovico took the basket from her hands.

“It will rain soon,” he said, looking up at the gray sky. “I know—I will take you somewhere to be dry, and there you will tell me what bothers you.”

He took Ginevra by the hand and guided her through a maze of alleyways she had never explored, until they arrived at what appeared to be a disused shop. Ludo opened the door with a key, and led her through the empty storefront, up a long staircase, and into the most beautifully appointed apartment she had ever seen. “We keep this place for business associates who are visiting from out of town,” Ludo said by way of explanation.

Ginevra looked around in wonder. The walls were dove gray, burnished to a satiny glow and accented with elaborate moldings of vermilion plaster. Beneath furniture in polished woods and soft peach velvets was a flocked carpet woven with flowers that bloomed in every color of nature’s palate. The ceiling was painted blue with gold stars, and the shutters were decorated with patterns of green parakeets that stood, jewellike, upon a gilt field. Above the shutters, round transoms paned with fine slices of alabaster bathed the room and the two lovers in an ethereal gold light. Ludo opened the shutters to a view of the rooftops of Florence. “Come stand by the window—I want to see all that is mine together, you and the city.”

“You are greedy,” she teased, obliging him and leaning on the sill.

“I am a rich man,” he said, placing his hands around her waist and pulling her close. “So I am greedy, but also I am generous.” Raindrops began to pat against the alabaster panes. Ginevra closed her eyes and they fell into each other, and when she opened them again, the gold light had faded into purple dusk.

After, as they lay intertwined upon the colorful carpets, he asked again, “What was it that troubled my Beatrice this afternoon?”

She thought for a long while, her head resting upon his chest, her mind replaying the conversation with Taddea.