“You…” I found that I could barely speak from shock and betrayal. Shock that he had the gall to ask for it so plainly, so unashamedly. And the betrayal, ah, God, it was as great as when I had learned of Marco’s whore. Greater. “You wish for me to be your mistress.”
He looked somewhat uncomfortable now—at my choice of words or at my tone, or both. “I ask for you to be my one and only love,” he said, recovering somewhat and retreating again into the language of courtly love. Flowery language that I had once thought masked a lack of meaning. A courtship I had always believed was a game.
Yet it appeared that neither of those things was true where Giuliano de’ Medici and I were concerned.
“I beg you,” he went on, “to end my torment, and to allow us to be together. I beg you to allow me to worship you as a goddess should be worshipped.”
“You flatter me,” I said—and indeed, a small, disgraceful part of me was flattered, that Giuliano should have gone to so much trouble to please me this day, that he desired me enough to make a cuckold of one of his friends. I did not like this part of myself, but it was there all the same. “But, as you well know, I am a married woman.”
“I do know it well,” he said. “Otherwise this would be a very different kind of proposal.”
“So because you cannot have me honorably, you would have me dishonorably?” I asked. “Perhaps it is all the same to you, signore, but what of my honor?”
He did not speak, yet I could hear the words as loudly as if he had spoken them: A woman has no honor.
Perhaps not. Perhaps not in the way that men did, but I would be damned if I would not live my life as seemed best to me, to the extent that I could. If that was not honor, then I did not know what to call it.
“You … flatter me with your offer,” I said again, trying not to let anger seep into my tone. “But I could not cast aside my marriage in such a way, not when my vows were sworn before God.” I paused. “And not when my husband is a good friend of yours, signore—or so I thought. It would be wrong.”
His grip on my hand tightened further. “Is not love the holiest of gifts God can give us?” he asked. “God forgives worse sinners all the time, and when a couple loves one another…”
I wrenched my hand from his grasp. “You presume too much, signore,” I said. “I have not spoken words of love to you, nor will I. I do not speak what I do not feel.”
“Simonetta,” he said, and there was a touch of a whine in his wheedling tone—that of a spoiled young man who had never been denied anything he asked for. “Please. I am besotted with you. My every thought is of you. My loins ache for you. I can make love to you such as—”
I rose from my chair. “This interview is at an end,” I said. “I do not wish to cause you pain, Giuliano. Truly. As I said, I consider you a friend, and a fine man, but that is all. That is all that can be between us.”
He remained motionless on his knees, then slowly rose to face me. He gave a half-hearted smile. “You are loyal to your husband, I see,” he said. “I suppose I cannot fault you for that, though you will rip out my heart.” He stepped closer to me and kissed me on the lips; I moved neither to encourage nor dissuade him. “Farewell, Simonetta,” he said. He went to the door, but stopped, his hand on the latch, and looked back at me. “Will you not even consider it?”
Inwardly I laughed at his persistence, even as I shook my head. “My answer will not change, I am afraid.”
“Would that it might, someday,” he said. “Ah, God!” he burst out. “Would that I had found you before that fool Marco Vespucci!” With that, he left the room, shutting the door behind him.
I stayed where I was for a moment, standing alone in the now empty room. I let out a sound that was half sob, half laugh.
Yet the truth was, my refusal had less to do with my marriage vows and more to do with the fact that I did not wish to lie with any man but the one I loved. Even my husband, God forgive me. My illness had meant that Marco came far less often to my bed, and, sinful as it was, I could not help but be relieved. Even if it meant he found his pleasure with some French whore.
Collecting myself, I left the room and meant to return to the party, to find Marco and bid him take me home at once. Yet before I reached it, I encountered in the—blessedly empty—hallway the one man for whom I would betray my marriage vows. And the very sight of him threw me into a blinding rage.
“You!” I hissed, slamming my hands against Sandro’s shoulders.
He grasped my wrists in his hands, gently. “Simonetta! Whatever is the matter?”
“How could you?” I all but shrieked.
“Simonetta, what has happened?”
I pulled away from him, beginning to laugh. “You know what has happened. You helped him in the whole sordid scheme.”
His body tensed. “Dio mio,” he whispered. “Giuliano. What has he done?”
“What he has done,” I spat, “is ask me to become his mistress. To cast aside my marriage and my reputation and … and fornicate with him.” I glared at him. “And you assisted him in his attempts to seduce me. You painted that banner he carried today with my likeness upon it. Why, my God…” I could feel the color drain from my face as a new thought occurred to me. “No doubt all of Florence thinks I am already his mistress, after that spectacle today.”
“So you … you refused him?” Sandro asked hesitantly.
I wanted to slap him. “Of course I refused him!” I cried. “What do I look like to you? A common harlot who can be bought with poetry and pretty words and a painted banner? Am I thought to have no more virtue than—”
Sandro drew me into his arms, holding me against his chest as I shook in sorrow, in fear, in rage at this world that sought to use me as it saw fit. “Oh, Simonetta,” he murmured. “I am so sorry. He asked—commanded—me to paint the banner for him. His family are my greatest patrons; I could not refuse, even though I wanted to. I had feared that he would want something like this. I know he has loved you long.”
I drew back so that Sandro could see my face, now stained with tears. “I do not love him,” I said quickly. I needed him to know that, more than anything. “I do not love him, Sandro. Not at all. Not in the least.”
“I … I did not think you did,” he said. I could hear the relief in his voice, and it was a balm to my worn and battered heart.
“I would not lie with a man I do not love,” I said, lying my head against his shoulder again.
Sandro was silent, likely puzzling through my words. I, too, was puzzling through them. What, exactly, was I saying to him?
I drew away, suddenly cognizant of what this scene would look like if we were happened upon by anyone else—especially after I had just spurned the advances of a member of the ruling family of Florence.
If someone had happened upon us like that, they would have seen the truth. And that was the one thing that could not be known.