She turned just once at the gate of the Cornelii house as the slaves opened the door, seeing Densus back at the foot of the slope, waiting to make sure she got home safely. His concern meant nothing, nothing at all.

Cornelia looked down at her stained dress and back up at the steward. “An accident with the gutters,” she told him. “Please inform Lady Tullia I am going to the bathhouse at once.”

Vitellius’s brother would want to hear the latest news that she had gotten from the Prefect.

YOU’RE late,” Llyn ap Caradoc greeted Diana.

“You said midday.” She blinked.

“Midday yesterday.”

“It was raining yesterday.”

“Chariots run in the rain.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

She made the journey every day, learning to bless the rain that had once more descended on Rome. With the skies opening again, though much more gently than before, her father shut himself up in his workroom all day with chisels and blocks of marble, and everyone else was far too busy to track Diana’s comings and goings. The Emperor and his army were gone, and Marcella with them; Tullia obsessed endlessly about the mud on her floors; Cornelia shut herself up writing letters all day. Diana was free.

She bribed one of her father’s slaves to take her every afternoon to the horse farm just outside the city, dashing up the muddy slope on foot so she arrived warm and breathless and soaked. She grinned as she came striding into the stables, slicking her wet hair back from her face with both hands, and Llyn would be waiting to toss her four bridles.

He taught her to drive with a quartet of placid mismatched geldings. “They’re slow,” Diana objected the first time she saw them.

“You’ll graduate up to something faster.” Llyn tossed her a battered leather helmet. “If you’re any good.” It took just one short afternoon before he dropped the courteous “Lady.” Cornelia would have been appalled, but Diana didn’t mind it. Polite titles weren’t necessary with Llyn—his oblique shell already kept everyone at a distance.

“I want to learn how to drive a chariot,” she’d told him frankly before he slipped out of the Emperor’s box at the games. “Will you teach me?”

“Why do you want to learn?” he’d asked, looking down at her. “You can’t race.”

“No.” Diana had corrected him. “I won’t race, because women aren’t allowed to. But that doesn’t mean I can’t. I’ll know I can do it, even if no one else does.” She folded her arms across her breasts, peering up at him determinedly. “Look, I’ll sleep with you if you’ll teach me.”

“No need to go that far,” he said mildly. “Come tomorrow.” She didn’t know why he agreed, and she didn’t care. She was learning to drive at last, like a proper charioteer.