“And they say patrician women take hours to get dressed.” Drusus grinned, watching her fly around the little room. Cornelia made a face at him, twisting her hair into a knot at the back of her neck, hopping on one foot to lace her sandal.

“Tomorrow—” She collected her palla, holding one hand out for a quick squeeze. “I’ll be back tomorrow; I’ve begged off a family banquet.”

“Tomorrow.” His fingers squeezed hers, warm and hard. Cornelia looked at him, sitting on the edge of the bed with his chestnut hair mussed, his eyes warm and steady, and she dropped her palla on the floor and climbed into his lap and made love to him again, fierce and silent, before running back to the Palatine Hill and coming home far later than she had any right to be. She looked in the glass that night, hastily tidying herself, and didn’t know her own face. These flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes and wild hair couldn’t possibly belong to the cool and elegant Cornelia Prima, the impeccable matron who never did anything unseemly or incorrect, who would have wrinkled her nose at the very idea of taking a common soldier for a lover. This was someone else entirely.

They’ll notice, she thought in dread. Juno’s mercy, someone’s bound to notice. But to her astonishment, no one noticed. Gaius was out from dawn until dusk trying to curry favor with Vitellius or at least keep up with his frantic pace of feasting. Marcella was obsessed with Vespasian’s whispered march on Rome. Lollia could normally be counted on to pick up the slightest hint of any love affair; Cornelia waited with an inward wince for her laughing wink and her whispered, “Well, who is he?” But even Lollia seemed wrapped in her own somber thoughts. The rest of the family, Tullia in the lead, were so diverted by Diana’s new status as the Emperor’s pet that they had no time for anything else.

“If Diana could get a provincial governorship for Gaius,” Tullia breathed. “Lower Germania—the Emperor did say he would need a new governor there . . .”

“I don’t know if I really want to govern Lower Germania,” Gaius ventured. “Nasty cold place.”

“Gaius, don’t be ridiculous! Of course you want to! Or maybe Pannonia . . .”

“No one has time for me in all this fuss over Diana,” Cornelia told Drusus. “The family’s after her day and night to get Imperial posts and appointments and favors out of Vitellius for them. Even more, they want her to marry someone very grand. But she keeps turning down all the suitors, and the family keeps going into spasms.”

“Turning them down?”