“I ask you,” she said sullenly, “to call on my brother, to welcome him to Rome.”
Cesare shrugged aside her request.
“If,” she went on, “he is to be your brother in very truth …”
“I never looked on Lucrezia’s first husband as my brother. Nor shall I on her second.”
“Jealous!” snapped Sanchia. “Insanely jealous of your sister’s lovers. It is small wonder that there is scandal concerning your family throughout Italy.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling slowly, “we are a scandalous family. I fancy, my dear Sanchia, that scandal has not grown less since you joined us.”
“I insist that you welcome my brother.”
“It is enough that my father sent for him and that he is here.”
“But Cesare, you must do him some small honor. You must show the people that you do so—if not because he is to be Lucrezia’s husband, then because he is my brother.”
“I do not understand,” said Cesare with cruel blankness.
“But if I am divorced … if I am free of Goffredo and we are married …”
Cesare laughed. “My dear Sanchia,” he said, “I am not going to marry you.”
“But … there is to be a divorce.”
“His Holiness is not eager for another divorce in the family. The Church deplores divorce, as you know. Nay, you shall stay married to your little Goffredo. Of what can you complain in him? Is he not a kind and complaisant husband? As for myself, when I am free of these garments, I shall seek me a wife elsewhere.”
Sanchia could not speak; it seemed to her that her fury was choking her.
“Moreover,” went on Cesare, savoring her efforts to keep that fury under control, “when I acquire my titles—and I can assure you they will be mighty titles—I must look farther than an illegitimate Princess, Sanchia. You will readily understand that.”
Still she could not speak. Her face was white, and he noticed her long slender fingers plucking at the skirt of her dress. He could still feel the sting of those fingers on his cheek; he could still see the mark of his on her wrist. Their relationship had always been a fiery one; they had inflicted their passion on one another, and many of their most satisfactory encounters had begun with a fight.
“My bride,” went on Cesare, flaying those wounds he had laid open with the whip of humiliation likely to cause most pain, “will doubtless be a near relative of yours: the daughter of your uncle, the King of Naples, his legitimate daughter, the Princess Carlotta.”
“My cousin Carlotta!” cried Sanchia. “You deceive yourself, Cardinal Borgia! Bastard Borgia! Do you think my uncle the King would allow you to marry his daughter?”
“His Holiness and I have very good reason to believe that he is eager for the match.”
“It is a lie.”
Cesare lifted his shoulders lightly. “You will see,” he said.
“See! I shall not see. It will never come to pass. Do you think you will have Carlotta? My uncle will want a prize for her.”
“It might be,” Cesare retorted, “that he will be wise enough to see in me what he seeks for her.”
In the ante-room her women, hearing Sanchia’s wild laughter, trembled. There was something different about this encounter. This was surely not one of those violent quarrels which ended in that fierce lovemaking which set their mistress purring like a contented cat while they combed her hair and she told them of Cesare’s virility.
“I can tell you,” screamed Sanchia, “that you will never have Carlotta.”
“I beg of you, do not scream. You will have your women thinking I am murdering you.”
“They could easily suspect it. What is one more murder in your life? Murderer! Liar! Bastard! Cardinal!”
He stood by the couch, laughing at her.
She sprang up and would have scratched his face, but he was ready for her; he had her by the wrist, and she spat at him.
“Is it the time for you to think of marriage?” she cried. “By the marks on your face I should think not.”
He shook her. “You should control your temper, Sanchia,” he warned her.
“Are you so calm, Cesare,” she demanded.
“Yes, for once I am.”
“Do not think you may come here and treat me as your mistress while you make these plans for Carlotta.”
“I had not thought of it,” he said. “You weary me, Sanchia. With your ambitions you weary me.”
“Get out of here,” she cried.
And to her astonishment he threw her back on to her couch and left her.
She stared after him. She was bitterly wounded for he had hurt her where she was