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tightened for an instant around Verity’s foot in a grip that was just short of painful. “Christ, that feels good, boss lady.”
    She wasn’t sure if he was referring to the way she was stroking his leg or the way her foot felt to him. Verity intensified her grip and deepened the massage. For a few moments they worked in silence, eventually switching feet. Verity was beginning to feel more relaxed than she had in a long while. Her eyes half-closed as she concentrated dreamily on the innocently sensual sensations of giving and getting a massage.
    “I wish you wouldn’t call me boss lady,” she finally said after a while. She took one hand off his leg to help herself to another swallow of beer.
    There was a moment of silence while Jonas did the same and then he said softly, “I don’t really think of you as a boss.”
    “No?”
    “You want to know the truth? I think of you as a full-fledged tyrant.”
    “I had no idea I’d made such an impact on you.” Verity squeezed his calf a bit harder than she had intended.
    Jonas winced. “I can just see you back in the Renaissance presiding over a Medici court salon. You’d have the courtiers falling all over themselves trying to please you. They’d call you their flame-haired lady tyrant.”
    Verity thought about that for a moment. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t most Renaissance court salons run by professional courtesans?”
    Jonas chuckled. “You did pick up a well-rounded education, didn’t you?”
    “My father didn’t believe in the formal educational process but he insisted I do one hell of a lot of reading,” Verity said reminiscently.
    “You’re right about some of the ladies who ran the salons. Think you’d like the life of a courtesan?” His eyes glittered teasingly between narrowed lids.
    “That career path has lost some of its luster these days, but it would certainly have been a viable option for a woman back in the sixteenth century. It was either that or the convent. Either avenue gave a smart, savvy woman a path to power, and either choice sounds better than the only other job available.”
    “I take it you’re referring to marriage?”
    “Uh-huh. Marriage doesn’t have a whole lot to offer a woman now, but back then it offered even less. Just the chance to die in childbirth and the opportunity to be some man’s personal, unpaid slave.” Verity paused thoughtfully. “I think, on the whole, I would have chosen the career of courtesan. Sounds like more fun than running a convent. I think I might have enjoyed presiding over glitzy soirees full of intelligent, refined men and women. They used to sit around in gorgeous clothes and discuss politics and philosophy and poetry, didn’t they?”
    “Among other things. The definition of social refinement was a little different back in those days. It was considered the height of sophisticated elegance if a man remembered not to scratch his crotch in public. Besides philosophy and poetry, the salon groups spent a lot of time talking about how to conduct love affairs. They thrived on romantic intrigue. The Renaissance was big on intrigue, remember. Any kind of intrigue. Political, social, or sexual.”
    Verity sighed blissfully as the images danced through her mind. “Sounds fascinating. I’ll assume the courtiers in my salons were sophisticated enough to remember not to scratch their privates in public. I can just see me now wearing a satin gown with huge, slashed sleeves. I would have worn a ring that had a secret chamber for poison, of course, just like Lucrezia Borgia.”
    Jonas groaned. “Figures. I’ve got news for you: Lucrezia wasn’t the witch that legend labeled her, just a lady who had a lot of bad luck when it came to marriage. And Renaissance poisons weren’t nearly as reliable or as deadly as history implies, either. People worked hard on creating and testing them, but they lacked our twentieth-century knowledge of chemistry. Poisoning was a chancy business. When it