A Roman matron should always do her own weaving,” Marcella had often heard her sister say. “It’s a sign of industry and virtue in women. Even the goddesses in the heavens sit at their looms.”

“Even the goddesses of heaven need a way to look busy while they scheme,” Marcella agreed.

“That wasn’t what I meant!”

It wasn’t what Marcella’s suitor meant either, as he sat gazing at her with unabashed admiration. “You don’t see many Roman matrons sitting at their looms anymore.” Governor Vespasian’s younger son, Domitian, fiddled with his wine cup, edging closer to her. “I approve.”

“I live for your approval.”

“Do you really?” he said hungrily.

Irony. So wasted on the young. Marcella felt very worldly under the burden of her twenty-one years, passing her shuttle back and forth. She didn’t sit at her loom much, not unless she had some problem to untangle—a good stretch of weaving always seemed to get the knots in her head smoothed out. She had a great many knots to think about today.

Did Otho mean it—that I gave him the idea to . . .

“Are you listening to me?” Domitian’s voice came insistently, and Marcella gave her shuttle a yank. Its use as a mental aid aside, weaving was usually a very good way to look busy and thus be shed of annoying visitors, but Domitian didn’t seem to be taking the hint. He’d already stayed an hour that morning.

“You’ll be happy to know I have a suitor,” Marcella had told Lollia. “Your former brother-in-law. Ever since that dreadful reading, Titus Flavius Domitianus has decided he wants to carry me away from Lucius on a white horse and marry me.”

“Domitian?” Lollia was startled out of her apathy. “I don’t think I’ve seen him since Titus and I divorced. Beastly boy. Always lurking around corners like a spider, eavesdropping on people.”

“Yes, well, now he’s in love with me. We first met the night of Piso’s short-lived accession to Imperial heir. Not a memorable meeting, but clearly Domitian thinks differently.”

“Why did you talk to the Emperor so long at the reading?” Domitian was demanding now. “He’s not so interesting—he writes down his jokes in advance, you know. And all that curly hair of his is a wig.”

“He wanted to thank me.”

“For what?” Domitian said suspiciously. “What did you do for him?”

Marcella smiled. “You’re very young, aren’t you?”

“Not so young,” he bristled. “Just a year younger than you.”

“Three years younger. And I really am very busy, so—”

“Good,” said Domitian, not taking the hint. “A wife should be busy. Idle wives get up to mischief.”

Marcella laughed. “According to your vast experience of wives?”

“Give me some experience,” he shot back. “Marry me.”

“My husband might object,” Marcella said, amused, and got a scowl.