“Then why have the little one taken away?”

“Better safe than sorry.” The second cupboard was full, and Lollia closed it up. If looters did break into the house, at least some of her grandfather’s favorite pieces would be saved.

“You should have guards, Domina.” Thrax sounded stubborn.

“I’ll hire some.”

He hesitated. “Let me stay with you.”

“No. You need to stay with Flavia.” His face was stormy. “Please, Thrax.”

He looked away. Lollia drank in the sight of his fair hair, his wide shoulders, his broad Gallic face and blue eyes, memorizing everything. They hadn’t touched or spoken alone since she’d transferred him to her grandfather’s house with his back a sheet of lash marks . . .

“Let me ask you something, Thrax.” She looked down at an ivory bowl, turning it over in her hands. “Fabius got sick, just before he was supposed to march north.”

“Yes, Domina?” He looked suddenly cautious.

“Food poisoning, everyone said. From that banquet my grandfather threw in this house for Vitellius. And really, who wouldn’t get food poisoning, eating fifty courses and throwing them up and eating fifty more? But Fabius has—had—a stomach like an ox. He never got sick before, eating red mullet.”

Thrax wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“You tried to poison him, didn’t you?”

A long silence.

“I won’t tell,” she sighed. “I just want to know.”

“The first time I see him since you sent me away,” Thrax said softly. “And he’s laughing. And you look so sad next to him, the sad with your eyes and not your mouth. And—and I just go to the cupboard where the cook keeps nightshade to kill rats . . . but he didn’t get enough, not with the way they all throw up their food between courses. Not enough.” A sigh. “I wasn’t thinking. I should not have tried—my Lord, he doesn’t like murder.”

“I think he’d have forgiven you, Thrax.” But Lollia shivered, thinking of the penalties for slaves who attacked their masters. Public execution in the Forum, disembowelment in the arena—no punishment was too harsh. He’d risked the lives of the other slaves too, who would have been put to death for his crime, and even the life of her grandfather, who had lived in panic of being accused of killing the Emperor’s right-hand man. “Gods, Thrax, why? Why did you risk it? Because he had you flogged?”

Thrax blinked, surprised. “Because he hurt you.” Fingers brushed her throat, light as butterflies where Fabius had struck her after she came to Thrax’s defense.

“But I’m not worth it!” she cried. “I’m a stupid girl who gets married too much and drinks more wine than she should and spends too much money—”

“You were kind to me,” he said.