“My dear new sister!” Otho raised Lollia from her curtsy and kissed her on both cheeks. “I feel you’ve been part of the family forever. And Senator Norbanus, yes—wasn’t your father one of old Augustus’s little indiscretions? We shall have to talk about that someday soon.” Another smile, just as dazzling, but somehow it held a cue for Marcus to bow and take his leave. Young Domitian, Marcella noticed, gave another black scowl as Otho turned and kissed her hand extravagantly. “Delightful as ever, my dear.”

“Caesar.” Marcella curtsied but lost her grip on the writing tablet.

“Taking notes?” He retrieved it for her. “How studious.”

“I have a love for histories, Caesar—I even write my own.”

“Do you?” He looked faintly surprised.

“Contrary to popular belief,” Marcella said tartly, “breasts do not preclude a brain.”

Otho burst out laughing. “You have a tongue on you,” he said as he slid into the seat at her side. “But I like it. Carry on,” he called to the flustered Quintus Numerius, still clutching his notes uncertainly at the head of the room. “I’ve been fearfully rude, interrupting you this way. Do carry on!”

Numerius cleared his throat, faltered over a few lines as the Emperor’s glittering party flopped into chairs all around the study and called for wine, and at last stuttered back into his presentation. The Emperor listened a few moments, nodding at intervals. “Very interesting,” he said, and held his goblet to be refilled.

“Not really,” Marcella replied. “I could do better.”

“Could you, by Jove!” His smile encompassed her with warm intimacy, shutting out the rest of the room. “I’d like to see that.”

He can look at anyone like that, Marcella thought, amused. Like they’re the only person in a roomful of guests whom he really wants to see. I suppose it’s as useful for an emperor as yawning with a closed mouth is to a senator.

“Though I am disconcerted to see you outside your customary band of four,” Otho continued. “I just left the little Diana at the races—she won a bet for me this morning on those red stallions she loves so much. A charming little thing, that one.”

“She’s a child,” Marcella said. “No matter how many suitors pant over her.”

“Never fear,” Otho laughed, and his entourage tittered with him, though they could not possibly have overheard the joke. “I don’t fancy children, no matter how pretty.”

“Nero would have wanted her.”

“Indeed he would have. Fortunate I’m not Nero, isn’t it?” Otho applauded the latest stammering quotation, and Numerius gave a timid smile. The reading had certainly livened up; the Emperor’s entourage had brought their own wine, flowing freely between courtiers and scholars alike, and more than one solemn-faced historian was drinking appreciatively.