He smiled again. Oh, that smile! It so easily overcame her anger and fear.
"There is no harm in my telling you. It goes to my sultan, by carrier pigeon and ship." He must be proud, she thought, of his swift and secret courier system.
"And do you get messages back in the same way?"
"It takes over a month each way, so I have received but one message from the sultan since coming to Italy."
"Does the cardinal keep the pigeons?"
He had taken a tiny leather capsule out of his belt purse and was inserting the message into it now. "Madama Tilia keeps the pigeons."
"Then are you going to her house?" Sophia remembered with a feeling of guilt that she had not thought of Rachel in some time. "Please, David, will you see how Rachel is while you are there?"
David looked at her quickly and glanced away. She felt a coldness in her chest.
"What has happened to her?" she demanded. She seized David's arm, lest he turn away from her.
He did not try to pull free. "She is well. She is already wealthy, in fact." His eyes did not meet hers at all now.