Page 195 - The Grotesque Children's Book

That evening, when the box appeared at her doorstep, she saw it was affixed with a seal:
the Medici seal. Her handsome stranger was the Medici she had been prepared to reject. That
she already loved him, had loved him from the first moment their eyes had met, that alone would
not have been enough for her to leave Pietro. She was not unkind, and Pietro had, in fact,
rescued her, so she had no desire to leave him and her pleasant-but-lukewarm feelings for him,
merely in order to satisfy a romantic girlish flutter. But the fact that he was a Medici...that
changed things.

Inside the box was 20 florins and a note with his name. Admiringly. Francesco de’
Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany.

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