Of course he remembers Diana. Marcella stamped down her irritation again, seeing how stiffly the centurion moved as he bowed. “Are you on duty already?” He wore his red-and-gold Praetorian armor, awkwardly formal for a party.

“No, I’m a guest.”

“Since when do guests come armed?” Domitian blurted.

“If I’m in armor, they know how to look at me.” Densus nodded out over his wine cup at Otho’s beautiful butterfly crowd. “I put on a tunic and perfume, and they laugh at me for trying to be like them. Armor’s safe.”

So the centurion was another of Otho’s oddities. A former rebel who breeds horses, a girl who loves racing, and the only loyal soldier in Rome, Marcella thought. All just curiosities for the Emperor’s parties. “Do you march with the army against Vitellius?”

“Yes. After that—” A restless movement of the burly armored shoulders. “Perhaps I’ll retire from the Praetorians.”

“Why? You’ve no cause for shame.”

“I failed, Lady. Your sister, Lady Cornelia—she made that clear.”

“The Imperium needs men like you.”

“What good is it? Every friend I had in the Guard turned traitor for Otho’s coin. I don’t blame him for buying them—but they weren’t supposed to be for sale. And now they ask me to play dice with them and go to the bathhouse and get whores at taverns. Like nothing happened.” He drained his wine cup—not the first he’d drunk tonight, Marcella saw. He looked at her, not seeing her at all, and his eyes were full of tears. “Gods, what a mess.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Marcella agreed.

“Go away,” Domitian said rudely. “She doesn’t talk to drunks.”

Densus moved off unsteadily. “Did you have to do that?” Marcella demanded.

“Why were you talking to him? He’s just a common soldier!”

“Well, he did save my life.”

“I’d have saved your life if I’d been there,” Domitian muttered.

The highlight of my evening, Marcella thought. Being panted over by an eighteen-year-old boy.

She couldn’t help looking at Lollia, laughing with her friends; Diana, swinging her feet from the back of her marble horse; Cornelia, standing in rigid dignity by her pillar and looking icily past any Othonian who attempted an introduction. They can get away with anything, all of them. But not me. “The Cornelia in limbo,” Marcella said aloud. Not a privileged wife like Lollia, not a pampered daughter like Diana, not even a weeping widow like Cornelia—just an unwanted wife living on her brother’s charity. Of course, things would be different if she were as beautiful as Diana, or as rich as Lollia, or as grief-stricken as Cornelia—money and beauty and unhappiness bought exceptions to anything. But if I started bedding slaves or throwing vases at the door or climbing on statues at parties, I’d be raked over the fire.