Densus cleared a path through the Campus Martius to the quieter street beyond. It had rained again that morning, and muddy puddles pooled everywhere. Cornelia hoped he would walk behind her, but he fell in at her side, the wind tugging at his red cloak.

“Looks like more rain.” Densus looked up at the sky as they crossed into the Forum Romanum. The thunderheads were piling in the west, gray as charcoal. “Maybe the floods aren’t done yet.”

“Centurion,” Cornelia said abruptly. “I owe you an apology.”

His profile was rigid. “Your dealings with Prefect Proculus are none of my concern, Lady.”

“No, they are not!” She came to a halt before the pillars of the Basilica Aemilia. “How dare you? That is not what I meant.”

“Lady, I—”

A cart came rattling past, the driver swearing at his mules. The wheels sent out a splash of mud, and they both leaped back. Densus let out a few soldier oaths before remembering himself. “I’m sorry, Lady.”

“It’s nothing.” She brushed a spatter of mud off her sleeve.

They continued through the Forum Romanum, past the Basilica Aemilia. A pair of prostitutes in saffron wigs and dark robes called giggling to Densus, but he glared them into silence.

“I owe you an apology for the way I spoke to you when I visited your sickbed.” Cornelia kept her eyes trained on the street ahead. “I should not have screamed like that. And I shouldn’t have ignored you at Otho’s banquet after the games, when you tried to address me. It was very wrong.”

“I failed to protect your husband.”

“That was not your fault.” Cornelia felt her cheeks heat, remembering how she’d screamed at him in his sickroom. She’d been shrill, shrill and graceless as any fishwife. In a way it was worse than having him see her get pawed by that drunken lout of a prefect. She had an excuse for that, even if Drusus Densus didn’t know it. But there was no excuse at all for a member of the Cornelii to behave like a pleb.

“You have no need to apologize, Lady.”

“Then we won’t speak of it again.”

They walked in silence. Densus offered his hand as help across a wide gutter. Cornelia dropped it as soon as she could. The sight of his red cloak and crested Praetorian helmet sickened her. She still couldn’t see a Praetorian without a pang of nausea rising in her throat.

That’s not his fault either.

The words meant nothing. She might have owed him the apology, but she couldn’t mean it.

“You’ve recovered from your wounds?” She kept her voice cordial, formal.

“Yes, Lady.”

“I am glad the Emperor rewarded your faithfulness.” She avoided his helping hand at her elbow as they crossed an overflowing gutter.

“I wish he hadn’t.”

“Centurion?”