I returned her smile, though irritation was pricking at me. Is this what everyone thinks of me? I wondered. Even the people who know me well? That because I am beautiful, I expect to be the center of everyone’s attention, at all times?
Or perhaps it does not matter what I do, what I say or how I act. Perhaps people see what they expect to see, what they wish to see when they look at me, and that is all. That is all they have ever seen.
Just then, a commotion drew my attention to the doorway of the now-crowded room as Giuliano and his entourage burst in triumphantly. Everyone present ceased their conversations and began to applaud. Giuliano and the young men with him bowed in appreciation, all of them smiling widely, all of them looking as though this was the happiest moment of their lives.
Their ovation ended, the youths began to mingle through the crowd, finding their wives, parents, friends, and being given glasses of wine.
Marco drifted rather aimlessly through the room, until he saw me. I excused myself from Lucrezia and went to his side at once. “Marco, marito,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. “I am glad to see you.”
He smiled. “And I you, Simonetta. Did you enjoy yourself?”
Here, at last, was one person I could be honest with. “Well enough,” I said. I rolled my eyes. “The whole thing was rather overwrought. And I did not expect so much to be made of me.”
There it was again—the same glance at the floor, the same avoidance of my eyes. “Giuliano thought only to please you,” he mumbled.
“It was a lovely gesture, but I wish I had known, so that I might not have been so taken aback,” I said. “Why did you not warn me, Marco?”
He shrugged, still not looking at me. “Giuliano told me not to,” he said. “He wished it to be a surprise.”
That same uncomfortable feeling that had come upon me when I first beheld the banner with my likeness slithered through my stomach once again. Something was wrong here, and no one would tell me what it was. “Does he not know there are no secrets between husband and wife?” I asked lightly.
Yet I knew by the look Marco gave me that this was the wrong thing to say. He finally met my eyes again, his expression heavy with warning and reproach and guilt—for the secrets he had kept from me in the past, for the ones he seemed to know I was keeping, and for whatever this was, now, in the air between us.
I should no doubt have apologized for not choosing my words more carefully, but I could not just then. “What is it, Marco?” I whispered. “What is wrong?”
He shook his head and pasted a false smile on his face. “Nothing at all,” he said. “This is naught but a joyous day, Simonetta. All is well.” He took a glass of wine from the tray of a passing servant and downed half of it in one gulp.
I decided not to press the issue. Whatever was troubling Marco was not something he was going to speak of just then, if ever, and it would do me no good to beg my own husband to confide in me.
Despite the celebratory feel of the whole day, I found that I could not wait for it to be over. Once dinner commenced, I was seated beside Giuliano, as though I were the guest of honor, and before the meal began he proposed a toast to me, saying that my beauty and grace had blessed his joust that day. I smiled as though I was pleased beyond anything to accept such a tribute, but my sense of discomfort and wariness only increased.
When finally—finally—dinner was at an end, everyone adjourned back to the receiving room, and I began to look about for Marco, to let him know that I was ready to leave. Somehow we had become separated in the short trip from the dining room to the receiving room, and I could not see him.
As I was peering about for him, I heard a familiar deep voice speak my name. “Simonetta.”
I turned to see Giuliano, still wearing the costume he had worn beneath his armor, similar to those his entourage had worn, but with a different brocade pattern still, to set him apart. “Giuliano,” I said, smiling. “My congratulations on your triumph this day.”
“Ahh, but it was all due to your favor, dear lady,” he said.
I laughed, warming up slightly as I always did when he and I spoke—and were not observed by a crowd of thousands, anyway. “I think your own skill in the lists was of more use to you than my favor.”
He smiled but did not respond. “I crave a word with you,” he said.
“You are having one now.”
He laughed. “As witty as you are beautiful. I meant a private word.” He lowered his voice slightly. “Alone.”
“Now?” I asked. My wariness returned.
“I insist, mia bella donna.”
“Very well,” I said. If he heard the reluctance in my voice, it did not deter him. He led me from the receiving room and down the hall, to a small, private parlor where I had visited with Clarice and Lucrezia many times in the past.
“Please, be seated,” he said, closing the door behind us.
I did as he said, albeit uneasily. “This is most irregular,” I said. “And, dare I say, improper.”
He laughed, and in one bound had crossed the room to me, kneeling at my feet and taking my hand in his. “Ahh, but it need not be, Simonetta mia,” he said. “It need be neither of those things.”
I remained motionless, neither pulling my hand away from his nor clasping it in return. “Whatever do you mean?”
“It is why I wished to speak to you,” he said. “Why I have arranged this day so much in your honor. That you might know the high esteem and regard in which I hold you.”
“You are too kind, signore,” I said. “And you know that I hold you in the utmost regard as well, as a friend of mine and of my husband’s. But this, surely, you could have said to me in the presence of others.”
“Indeed I could have,” he said. “But that is not all that I wish to say.” His fingers tightened around mine.
“Then what more do you wish to say?” I said, unable to disguise the nervousness in my voice. “Speak plainly, I beg of you.”
“Your wish is my command, mia donna dell’amore,” he said.
His words caused an unpleasant twist in my stomach. My lady love.
“My feelings for you can come as no surprise,” he said. “You know that my love for you has only blossomed over these past years of our acquaintance. And so the time has come when I must ask you—nay, beg you—to allow that love to be consummated.”
A part of me had managed to remain in denial as to what he was really asking until that last word. Consummated.
This, then, was what it had all been about. He had created an entire spectacle—beginning with the banner with my image and ending here, in this room—to seduce me. And while a part of me could only be astonished at the lengths to which he had gone, the rest of me was disgusted.
He had planned all along to seduce me. And Sandro had helped him.