I awoke slowly the next morning, as though surfacing from a deep dream that had held me captive all night. When I was finally awake, I saw Maddalena asleep beside me, her red-tinted hair spread out over the pillow.
As I had fallen asleep the night before, I had expected to regret this in the morning. I was distraught over Sancia’s betrayal, and so I went and debauched my sister’s maid? What way was that for a nobleman to act?
But Maddalena had been forthright; I had not taken her virginity, and she had come willingly. I had given her a choice. And she had certainly seemed to enjoy herself in my bed.
I smiled at the memory of what she’d said, that she’d never known such pleasure with her husband. Poor woman. Well, now she knew of the pleasures of the flesh that she’d been denied in her marriage bed. I grew hard again as I recalled how she’d gasped when I entered her, how her hips had met mine …
I had no regrets. None. I had done what I had done, and I would do it again.
She stirred beside me and opened her eyes. They widened in something like surprised happiness when her gaze fell on me. “It was not a dream, then?” she said, her voice raspy from sleep.
“No, my Maddalena.”
She smiled. “For I have dreamed of such a thing before.”
That startled me. “You had dreamed of … me? Of this?”
She blushed but nodded. “I knew it was wrong,” she said. “But I … could not help my thoughts where you were concerned.”
To think, all the times I had seen her in Lucrezia’s rooms, admired her beauty—above that of many noble ladies in Rome—and mused idly of what it would be like to bed her, she had been thinking the same. “And was it as good as you dreamt?”
“Better.”
I grinned. No guile, no flirtation; she was as unlike Sancia as it was possible to be.
The thought of Sancia pierced like a blade, yet a slightly duller blade than the day before. The rage was still there—leashed, but there—but the place where my love for her had been had begun to harden. And why waste my thoughts on such things when I had a beautiful woman in bed with me? “Well,” I said, reaching a hand between her legs. “Perhaps we had better make absolutely certain I compare favorably to your dreams.”
We made love again, and it was just as satisfying as the night before. When we finished, I directed her to get dressed. “My sister will no doubt be looking for you soon,” I said, kissing her as she looked about for her clothes. “And I can no longer hide from my duties.”
She gave me a quizzical look at that, but I did not want to elaborate on Sancia’s betrayal, and how I had wasted the day before. I dressed and sent her back in the direction of the tunnel. “I shall no doubt see you soon, my Maddalena,” I said, kissing her one last time at the door.
And surely I would, I thought as I watched her walk away. She was a willing bedmate, beautiful, eager to please. I would send for her again.