Sara Poole quotes:

If his Holiness asks for me, tell him I am - I was what? What excuse would be sufficient to hold off Borgia the Bull when he wanted, nay demanded attention?'Tell him I am attending to a gynecological matter but will return shortly.

The thick murmur of my name on his tongue was almost enough to push me over the edge as I clung to the sweetly strange need to hold him safe within my arms. Even, dare I say, within my body. Is it the conceit of every woman that she can provide such a haven? Is it the dream of every man to find it?

He was a handsome man, not in the way of mercurial Cesare or the false angel, Morozzi, but with a calm steadiness that sat well upon him and shown in everything he did. The creations he drew from fire and air were possessed of great delicacy, but I was coming to realize that the man himself was as an oak, unshakable in the greatest storm."