“I don’t understand it.” She contemplated the sullen lump of dough on the slab. “I used to supervise the baking every week in my household. I was known for my bread!”

“Ahh.” Drusus rubbed his jaw. “And did you actually bake the bread yourself, or did you just watch the slaves do it?”

“Well, of course the slaves did the actual mixing and kneading, but I know how it’s done.” She poked at the grimy lump of dough. “How hard could it be?”

The bread never rose, and the fish Cornelia purchased for their dinner proved difficult to bone. “I can cook,” she said defensively as Drusus grinned at the raw flayed mess that had once been a salmon. “I set one of the best tables in Rome! My husband always praised me for my sauces!”

“My love”—Drusus kissed her eyebrow—“I’m sure you’re perfect in every other way. But you’re useless in the kitchen.”

After that he tugged on his tunic and sandals in the mornings and padded down to the street vendors for bread and sausage, fresh fruit, and slabs of fish. They ate on the terrace every day, watching the galleys pass by in the harbor below with their oar banks flashing in the sun.

“What’s that?” Drusus asked as Cornelia surveyed a lengthy scroll.

“A list of household tasks Tullia wants me to see to. First there was just the broken hypocaust, but she thought of a few other little things.” Producing a second scroll.

“Well, I can help if you need—”

“No need.” Cornelia tossed both scrolls off the balcony into the sea. The bathhouse never did get fixed. They bathed every day in the gentle waves, where a small rocky crescent of beach kept them private from spying eyes. Cornelia shrieked in dismay, looking in the glass afterward. “As if a snub nose weren’t bad enough. Now it’s a freckled snub nose!”

Drusus took to padding about the cliff-top garden in a decrepit old tunic, redesigning the flower beds. “All you’ve got here is flowers,” he complained. “Don’t you want grapevines, a few nut trees—something useful?”

“Flowers are useful. They’re beautiful to look at.” Cornelia sat cross-legged on a marble bench in one of Drusus’s old tunics, hair loose down her back, eating a pear. “Isn’t beauty useful?”

“You shouldn’t even be growing lilies up so high on a cliff,” Drusus said critically. “The soil’s too sandy.”

“You’re a gardener now?” she teased.

“My grandfather owned a vineyard. I wouldn’t mind having a vineyard.” He looked around the garden as if seeing rows of orderly vines. “Making my own wine, tending the vines, watching the women climb into tubs full of grapes at pressing time—”