Free What Remains of the Fair Simonetta by Laura T. Emery Page B

it was more than I could handle, and I had to set it down.
    “ La Bella , I did not expect to see you here!” he bellowed, seemingly unaffected by my defensiveness. As I rose up, I looked more closely at his face, noting the long eyelashes that framed sparkling brown eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and a slightly cleft chin. He resembled Lorenzo, only a substantially upgraded version.
    “I didn’t expect to see you either,” I muttered, still trying to figure out who in the hell he was.
    “But I live here!” he said through his handsome smile.
    “I have brought Simonetta here so she might pose with the halberd,” Sandro calmly interrupted.
    “Interesting,” the enthusiastic man replied, rubbing his chin and nodding.
    “I have decided to paint your banner with Simonetta representing the Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom.”
    “Why would a woman need to be wise?” the man chuckled. “You should paint her as Venus, goddess of beauty!”
    His attitude seemed much more boorish than any of the other well-educated guests with whom I had come into contact at the palazzo .
    “But Giuliano, there is so much more to her…”
    Of course. How could I be so stupid? Giuliano de’ Medici, the playboy brother of Lorenzo.
    Giuliano approached me and lifted my chin with one finger. He tilted his head to one side while leering at me. “I will soon find out how much more there is.” His sinister smile gave me chills up my spine. Before I could seek a reaction from Sandro or even have one myself, Giuliano pivoted to walk away. “Are you not coming to sup with us?” he tossed over his shoulder, and didn’t wait for an answer from either of us before retreating into another part of the palazzo .
    “What was that about?” I asked Sandro, disgusted by the whole thing.
    “I was under the impression that you and Giuliano were of mutual affection, Signora, ” Sandro replied, slightly bewildered.
    “I think not,” I retorted, as I grabbed one of the swords and lunged at the air, conjuring the smug face of Giuliano in my mind as the recipient of my awkward blow. How could I have affection for such a man? Particularly when he’d treated me like a barfly he wished to bed.
    “Most Florentine women would be honored to win the heart of Giuliano de’ Medici,” Sandro replied with slightly downtrodden eyes, but I couldn’t quite tell if he was for or against my hooking up with Giuliano.
    “I don’t think that display had anything to do with his heart.”
    “Perhaps Giuliano is simply poor at conveying his affections.”
    “I suppose we all are,” I agreed, not wanting to bash his apparent friend too much.
    “Words are the most difficult way to express oneself,” Sandro replied. “That is why I paint. Although Giuliano is correct about one thing…”
    “What’s that?”
    “You would make a fantastic Venus. A Venus Pudica of course.”
    “Pudica ?”
    “The modest Venus. Pure and chaste.”

Chapter 14
    Sandro apparently mistook my rejection of Giuliano’s affections as chastity. Although I hadn’t exactly been a trollop in my heyday, having had only three sexual partners during my life, I certainly wasn’t ‘pure’ and ‘chaste.’ I had, in fact, allowed several impure thoughts about Sandro to cross my mind since I’d first met him in the flesh. My lustful impulses caused me a certain amount of guilt since I’d been lucky enough in my life to have that one true love. And while I’d always loved Sandro simultaneously from afar, he was hardly a threat to my relationship with Wilbur in the twenty-first century. He was merely a face staring out from a frame—a series of painstakingly placed brush strokes left in his self-portrait. I felt greedy for wanting anything from Sandro other than his well-known platonic admiration of the woman whose body I now inhabited.
    With no further reaction to Giuliano’s intrusion, Sandro was soon completely engrossed in his drawing once again. He was so hard to read. It seemed as