“And you wonder why I look down on you? A mouth like a common dockside whore; anyone can see you’ve got slave blood! Someday you’ll realize what a slut you are.”

The slave dealer stared cautiously from his door. Two patrician women shrieking at each other like fishwives in the middle of his atrium.

“You’d better hope that fertility charm works, Cornelia.” Lollia’s eyes narrowed. “No emperor wants a barren wife, you know. Your precious husband will divorce you for some pretty little thing who will pump him out lots of sons, and then the most perfect wife in Rome won’t be looking down at me anymore.”

Cornelia slapped her. Lollia slapped her back.

They stood a moment, glaring at each other.

Cornelia stamped away, before Lollia could see the tears spill out onto her stinging face.

WELL, Diana thought, it finally happened.

She twirled a lunatic circle in the grass, smiling a new and dreamy smile: utterly, madly, and completely in love at long last.

“So, who’s this Briton you keep talking about?” Diana had asked the faction director for the Reds as the hired litter turned down a smaller lane. “I thought I knew every horse breeder in Rome.”

“Used to be a rebel in Britannia somewhere, now he breeds horses. Doesn’t sell many, but they’re good. He might have something that will do for the Reds.” Xerxes looked at her irritably as the litter swayed down the muddy lane. “Why did I bring you, anyway?”

“Because I’m getting my noble relatives to help pay for this new team of yours.” Diana twined a finger through one of the racing medallions about her neck. Two horses lost in the first race of the year, before the running had even begun—the Reds team had tangled badly when the hateful Derricus snapped his blue-beaded whip over their heads, and two horses had panicked in their traces. Both inside runners had walked away hobbling. “And if I’m helping to pay, I’m helping to pick.”

Xerxes grumbled. Diana knew he didn’t like her, but that didn’t bother her a bit. He had just enough respect for her family’s patronage to keep from kicking her out of the Reds stable, and that was all that mattered.

The farm where they finally disembarked was broad and sprawling, orderly pastures running down a long slope crowned at the top with a small, columned villa. All the best breeding farms lay outside city walls. Diana climbed out of the litter, sniffing delightedly at the cold clean air. So different from the smoke and stench inside Rome’s city walls. If not for the Circus Maximus, she’d quit the city altogether and stay out here where the air smelled clean to the nose.