So popular, so charming, so dynamic. A much better prospect than reticent Marcus Norbanus. I might have made him an emperor, but now he’ll never amount to anything past a modest career in the Senate. But Titus, according to all reports, had the ambition and dash for an Imperial crown. Might the younger brother be a bridge to the older?

“Where are you going?” Domitian demanded as she slid out of bed.

“It’s time I went home. My sister’s wedding is very soon, you know.” Marcella held her arms out, and two obedient slaves came forward and started looping her stola about her shoulders.

“You’re staying with me!” Domitian sat up in bed.

“I can’t. I’ll be missed.”

“You won’t have to worry about your family anymore.” Domitian tossed the bedclothes aside, rising. “Gather your things. We’re leaving.”

“What are you up to, Lord?”

“Nothing that concerns you, yet.” He pulled his tunic over his head.

“Yet?”

“I’ll tell you when you need telling.”

“And until then I’m to know nothing?”

“Correct.”

He stalked out of the room and was waiting impatiently in the litter when Marcella gathered her few things and went to join him. Her hair was still hanging loose down her back as he liked it, but he hardly gave her a glance as she climbed into the litter. Tiring of me, perhaps? Well, she’d known it couldn’t last long at this heat. And really, who would want it to? One needed such stamina, dealing with jealous boys.

Domitian didn’t speak on the journey back from Aricia, and Marcella prepared to be left unceremoniously at her doorstep. But the litter-bearers kept their steady jog past the Cornelii house with its repaired pediments, and she raised her eyebrows. “Where—?”

“Sshh,” Domitian snapped, and the litter soon pulled up before the Domus Aurea.

“You might have told me you were taking me back to the palace,” Marcella said. “One more time in bed before sending me home?”

“You are home.”

“What do you mean?”

He locked his hand about Marcella’s wrist, jerking her from the litter. Before she could catch her breath he was hurrying up a flight of shallow marble steps, past a pair of curious slaves, down one pillared hall and up another as they left the public entertaining rooms behind for the private Imperial quarters. At last he flung open a set of doors, and Marcella saw an airy green-marbled chamber with an inlaid pool set in the floor, and a high corniced archway to a vista of other rooms.

“Your new quarters,” said Domitian. “Do you like them?”

“I can hardly live here,” Marcella said, amused.

“Yes, you can.” Domitian’s downy lip was beaded in sweat. “Your husband was informed this morning that you are no longer his wife.”

Marcella burst out laughing. “What?”