The Marriage Portrait(15)

But Lucrezia could not hold in her words. At any moment, the marriage contract might be finalised and sealed and sent back to the Ferrarese court; if she didn’t speak out now, it would soon be too late.

“Babbo,” she said, employing Isabella’s affectionate name for their father, trying to recall the lines she had rehearsed in her room. “I do not wish to marry this man. I am sorry if this disappoints you but…”

Keeping his finger on the page, her father murmured something inaudible to Vitelli, and only then did he turn towards her.

“My dear,” he said, and moved away from his desk, towards her, his head on one side, as if considering the unprecedented sight of her, here, in his private offices. She saw at once that his wandering eye, on the right side of his face, was more than usually off-centre, which meant that he was either tired or angry. Which could it be?

“Come,” he curled his finger at her, “come here.”

She stepped towards him, unsure if he was about to embrace or castigate her, and he regarded her approach with one eye that never left her and another that roamed around the walls, as if his attention could be in several places at once.

When she was right in front of him, he placed first one then the other hand on her shoulders, so that she was enclosed on both sides by the sweep of his cloak.

“Lucrè,” he said, dipping his head so that he was looking right into her face, inside the private space he had created, “I understand. Marriage is a big step for a young woman. It’s a daunting prospect, no? I know this, I see this. But you must not worry. Your mother will prepare you fittingly for every aspect. And I? I would only ever choose the best type of man for you. How else could I ever part with you?”

He gave her chin a gentle tweak, his eyes coming together for a fleeting moment.

“You trust your papa, don’t you?” he asked.

Lucrezia nodded. “Of course, I—”

“Have I not always taken care of you, very good care?”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, then! All this worry is for nothing. Alfonso is an excellent man. He will one day be a duke, he is cultured and—”

“He is so old!” Lucrezia burst out. “And he—”

“He is not yet thirty. This is your idea of old? What am I, then, by this standard?” Her father removed his hands from her shoulders, mock-offended. “An ancient old man ready for the grave?” His tone was playful, and the aides and secretaries around him gave dutiful laughs, but Lucrezia was not fooled: his gaze was serious and watchful.

“You should worry no more,” he said, drawing her arm through his, and beginning to steer her towards the door, “because this is going to be a most successful marriage. Of that I am certain. Look at your mother and me. We had hardly met, as you know, yet we—”

Lucrezia cut across her father, blurting out the plan she had formed as she sat in her chamber that morning: “Couldn’t we marry him to my cousin instead?”

Cosimo paused, his face becoming still, as if he was only now realising the size and depth of her resistance.

“Your cousin?” Cosimo repeated, very much in the manner that he might have said, Your dog?

“We could say that I am unwell or sickly. Or—or anything. Dianora is of marriageable age and she is beautiful. I’m sure Alfonso and his father would like her, if they saw her. Could she not be offered as—?”

“Dianora,” her father said, enunciating each syllable, “will marry your brother Pietro.”

“Pietro?” Lucrezia was startled by this news. The lovely Dianora and the irascible boy-child Pietro? It seemed an impossible pairing. “But what if we—?”

“It has already been decided,” Cosimo said, both eyes looking past her now, giving some indecipherable signal to a person she could not see.

“Then perhaps…” Lucrezia sensed her escape route narrowing, a door being slammed and locked. She tried quickly to think of an alternative plan, another idea. What would Sofia do? What would she suggest? If Dianora was really to marry Pietro, then—

“Look at your sister,” her father said, giving her hand a firm pat. “Isabella was also nervous before her marriage, was she not? And has she not thrived?”

“I suppose,” Lucrezia said, with reluctance, thinking that Isabella had been far from nervous, and that marriage had in fact changed her life very little: she had been allowed to live in Florence while her husband returned to Rome, the couple seeing each other only several times a year. Yet she, Lucrezia, was expected to leave and go to Ferrara, a place she had never been, with a man she did not know. But Cosimo, like most adults, was working from his own version of events, so pointing this out would do little to further her cause.

“Is she not happy with the match I made for her?”

“She is, but—”

“And so will you be, Lucrè. I promise you that.” Cosimo smiled, giving a nod, as if the argument had been satisfactorily resolved. “Alfonso’s father and I have corresponded a great deal and we are both certain that this will be a celebrated marriage. In time, you will look back on this conversation and—”

“Papa,” Lucrezia said, and her voice cracked. She felt the sudden dangerous proximity of tears. “I don’t want to marry him. Please don’t give me to him.”