“Marcella must conduct herself properly while under our roof,” Gaius’s new wife had been quick to decree in that voice of hers that sounded like a cart grating over flagstones. “A young wife with her husband gone so long is a swarm for butterfly boys and rakes. And since that incident a few months ago with Emperor Nero—!”

“Tullia,” Gaius had given a quick glance at his sister’s face. “Perhaps we shouldn’t—”

“Gaius, of course we should. It is your duty to guard the reputation of your sisters, and Marcella’s duty to obey you!”

“I’m a married woman,” Marcella protested. “My only duty is to my husband.”

“Who isn’t here. So who else should step in for his authority but your brother?”

Absolutely no one. That had been the beauty of it, all those days when Lucius was traveling and her father waging wars. No one had been around to object to the hours Marcella spent writing and making notes at her desk. For months at a time, Marcella had managed to forget she had a husband or a father at all . . . but here was Tullia, giving her a beady predator’s stare. “Lucius Aelius Lamia trusted you to our care. And in my house, when you’re eating my food, you’ll follow my rules!”

“Your house?” Marcella shot back. “Gaius is master here, not you.”

Tullia smirked. “And if husband and wife speak together as one?”

“I’ve hardly heard Gaius speak at all since you married, Tullia. Is he even capable of speech anymore?”

If it had just been Gaius, Marcella knew she could have beaten down any arguments in ten minutes flat. Paterfamilias or not, legal rights or not, he’s no match for me. But if Gaius was the silk glove, Tullia was definitely the iron fist, and together they had the laws of Rome on their side. Money, duty, tradition: the trifold clamp forcing Marcella into whatever role they chose.

“When Lucius gets back from Judaea, I’m going to make him get a house of his own,” she’d told Cornelia wrathfully, just last week. “I’ll nag until I get what I want this time. That stingy stick owes me!”

“Try honey instead of vinegar,” her sister advised. “Much more effective when it comes to wheedling husbands. If you’d just apply yourself to Lucius a little—set yourself to advancing his career, have a child or two—”

“You’re the one who wants babies, not me. I’d rather get the pox than get pregnant.”

Cornelia dropped the subject then, and so did Marcella. She might tweak her sister about her dimples, her lectures, the particular queenly tone she got when she was angry, but never about children. Not when Cornelia spent more hours praying for a child with every year that passed.

Not me, Marcella thought. But I’ll even promise Lucius a baby, if he’ll just get me my own household.