She turned as trumpets announced the beginning of the wild beast hunt and rose petals showered down on the stands. How long will it all take? A tall man blocked her view, his head tilted down toward Diana at his side. Of course, Diana had no difficulty getting any man’s attention if she wanted it.

“—still don’t know what a horse trainer is doing in the Emperor’s box,” Diana was saying frankly.

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

His voice was low and even, whoever he was, and Marcella took a closer look. Not in the usual mode for Diana’s suitors—a tall man of thirty-five or forty, with broad arms and iron-gray hair he’d let grow shaggy. And breeches, of all things. “A new suitor, Diana?” Marcella broke in, curious.

“What? Oh, not him.” Diana waved a casual hand at the man in breeches. “This is Llyn. Llyn ap Caradoc.”

Marcella burst out laughing. “You’re not serious?”

Diana blinked. “What? He breeds horses.”

The gray-haired man took a swallow from his cup, noncommittal. Common beer in the cup instead of wine, Marcella noted—and a scar on his neck that might have been a graze from a spear or arrow, and a torc of wrought bronze about his neck, in the tribal fashion. “Llyn ap Caradoc—you mean Caratacus? The Caratacus?”

“My father,” he said. Below, a trained leopard had been released into the arena by his handler: the opening display.

“I remember seeing your father about the city now and then,” Marcella said. Time was, every hostess in Rome counted it a coup to have Rome’s greatest enemy at her table: the man who had united the tribes of Britannia, fought Rome to a gallant standstill for nearly a decade, and was finally captured and brought to Rome to be paraded through the city in chains—only to be given an Imperial pardon in reward for his bravery, allowed to live in luxury within Rome’s walls with his remaining family, under oath and under guard never to try to escape. “I wish I’d had the pleasure of meeting him.”

“He died last year, Lady.”

“Yes, I think I heard that somewhere. I’m sorry for it—Llyn, you said your name was?”

“Yes.”

He looked very much like his father, from what Marcella could remember: the same quiet carved face and silent way of moving.

Diana still looked baffled, and Marcella finally leaned forward to whisper briefly into her ear. Diana listened, then cocked her head up at Llyn. “You were a rebel too?”

“As most would define it. Killing Romans since before I was your age, at any rate.”