Status Updates From The Second Duchess

I haven’t read Historial Fiction in SO long. Let’s see How this goes!

"Some of my Ferrarese ladies were paid spies. Or were they? My sisters-in-law had disliked my predecessor. But did they like me any better?
My husband’s mad old nursemaid pressed potions upon me. Were they always—had they always been—as harmless as they seemed?
And the Florentine ambassador looked at the duke, and at me—me? Why me?—with eyes as cold as the deepest circle of Messer Dante’s hell."

I like this but it's been slow going. I need to find a chunk of time where I can really dive in.

"He was proud and vainglorious, true, and immoderately attentive to detail; all in all he gave me an uneasy impression of a glittering surface, like a calm sea, with ferocious serpents and dragons swimming in ritualized patterns beneath."