II. She truly hadn't known he would come, but she was not surprised when he showed up. Ippolita was just helping her with her hair, and she was just about to pick up a necklace, when Ester slipped into the room and told her the Lord Borgia was downstairs. Whether or not she should tell him that the Lady was asleep.

'Hm. No, leave him. Leave me,' she said, and then she perfumed her hair, oiled her lips, ran her fingertips over her nipples and ignored the evening robe that Ippolita had laid out on her bed.

She positioned herself at the top of the stairs and watched him pass into her and Alfonso's separate rooms, before turning around to look up at her.

He was wearing all black: black brocade doublet, black fur cloak, black leather gloves, black eyes. But they adored her. His eyes, that is. Even before they lingered on her chest and noticed the little round tips of her nipples pinching through the fabric of her shift.

She let him put his cold glove on her arm and put his prickly cheek against hers, and then guided him to the antechamber of the main bedroom, where she'd had some desserts and wines set up earlier.

He said little, but kept his eyes trained on her. She saw him passing some sort of silent judgement when she chose the seat opposite him. He wanted to know if she was mocking him.

'You have done nothing with my heart but toy with it,' he said, and even though he sounded humble about it, even though it was, almost definitely, a joke, it hit a nerve.

She said that he sounded like her husband, which was hardly an example to emanate. His features rearranged themselves when she went on and told him how her husband would come home (drunk more often than not) and kiss her. He didn't object to either piece of information, though, he was too careful for that, and besides, he probably knew already. The guards were his, after all, the palazzo was his, and she supposed her husband was his, too, for as long as he could stand him.

She wasn't going to torture herself by wondering if she was his.

'Why have you come?' She asked.

He looked at Ippolita, who looked at nothing. The girl was tapping her foot a little, rhythmically and soundlessly.

'Hubris,' he said, finally.

Of course. For there wasn't a single Greek myth involving hubris and a happy ending. She hated that he said that, and had difficulty hiding her distaste.

'Does it keep you up at night?' He asked her, and she, fool that she was, wanting badly to find those words that would make him feel the way she did, replied: 'You keep me up at night.'

She realized it was too much and stood up to order Ippolita out the room and talk to him privately.

He asked where her husband was, and she lied. He mistook guilt for misery and asked her if she was, by any chance, happy.

'My heart', she said honestly, 'is lonely.'

'Your husband neglects it.'

'My husband is not the issue.'

(Had she said that out loud?)

There, he recoiled, even went through the trouble of standing up and walking away from her, so he'd heard her even if she hadn't said it out loud.

She breathed in and he said "Don't".

'You would have rather found me asleep,' she said, and stalked closer to him. 'You prefer to feast your eyes on me, and not bother with words, with the company, with me. You, brother, take advantage of me and of my heart, so do not accuse me of toying with yours.'

He apologized, but he still couldn't look at her. She reached out, but he said: 'I can't.'

'Love me?'

He turned around at last, so she was sure to feel the mean sting of his words. 'Not the way you want to be loved.'

Bastard. Liar. Hypocrite. I hate you I hate you I hate you and still every part of her flowed out to him, even now.

She couldn't stay in the same room and fled to the bedroom beyond. She was shuddering with anger, and slipped into her nightrobe to have some sort of protective layer around her.

She sat down at her vanity and found her necklace, a small golden cross with a pearl string. She picked it up, put it on and looked at herself in the mirror. Her neck had been paler and more slender once, and her fingers more nimble, surely. Her face younger. Easier to love.

Hate you hate you hate you

She heard a flat bang in the other room, perhaps something falling off the table. He was still here and acting on some childish, violent impulse. It made her even angrier, and as an even pettier reaction, she picked up her hairbrush and slammed it against the mirror before her. It only created an ugly dent, twisting up her image even more, so she hit it again and again until the pieces came out.

It took a while, but finally Ippolita entered and asked her if she was alright. She said she was, and Ippolita, who was hardly more than a child, gave a sigh of relief and said: 'Good, my Lady, I will tell him.'

'Tell him?'

'He asked to see if you were alright. He said he heard something,' Ippolita explained, and then saw the mirror. 'Oh. Oh, no, did you fall?'

'How would I have-' Lucrezia started, then cut herself of. She was done with this nonsense, very absolutely done. 'Alfonso will be here,' she said, so abruptly that Ippolita looked around as if he were already in the room.

Lucrezia stood up and marched out of the bedroom to the antechamber, where she was incensed to find her brother sitting on the same chair as before, his legs stretched out, his feet on the table and the front two legs of the chair lifted a few inches off the ground. He had various dinner knifes in his left hand and was throwing them at the furthest wall. There was one knife sticking into the wall, two lying on the ground.

He didn't get up or put the knifes away when she came in, but she saw the legs of his chair come down to the ground.

'It is late. You should leave,' she said to him.

'No,' he said calmly, and he inspected her face. She was grateful that she hadn't been crying.

He seemed to come to that conclusion, because he looked away, chose a knife from his left hand and starting angling it at the far wall.

She was about to ask what that wall had done to him, but he was quicker. 'What did you do to that mirror,' he asked.

'Hated the way it was staring at me,' she said.

He didn't laugh. Instead, he lowered the arm with which he was angling the knife and gave her a second critical appraisal. Then he put all the knifes away, took his feet off the table and stood up.

'What do you have there?'

Her heart caught in her throat and she tightened her hand around the shard of mirror. He pried it from her hand easily, probably by accepting a few cuts that she wasn't as willing to get.

She regretted bringing the shard and wasn't sure why she had picked it up at all, since she never would have used it on anyone; she wasn't like him.

It was as if he sensed that, because he gave her a wry smile and then put the shard against his own cheek. 'You asked me to leave and I said no,' he said, and tapped against the shard.

I asked you if you could love me and you said no, she thought.

'Please, don't,' she said. 'It'll hurt. It hurts.'

'I know, my love,' he replied.

He lowered the shard and she breathed out.

'Know what?' Her husband wanted to know.

Cesare turned around so they could both see him standing in the open doorway, with his gloves in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. He'd picked them himself.