“What do you mean, a tragic love?” Marcella held out her arms so the maids could drape the pale yellow silk about her. “Nothing tragic about it, except the ending. She and Piso were very happy.”

“I’m sure they were. But an emperor needs heirs.” Lollia stepped out of the oyster silk, strolling naked over to her dressing table. “Mark my words, a year or two after taking the purple, Piso would have divorced Cornelia and married some fresh-faced little thing who could push out plenty of sons.”

“No, he wouldn’t. He could have adopted an heir, like Galba. None of our Emperors have passed their throne to their sons.”

“Yes, and look where that’s getting us. Murders and coups everywhere.” Lollia frowned in the mirror at her naked self: pink and smooth-skinned as ever, her riotous red curls standing out in wiry disarray. Marcella saw her own reflection in the glass over Lollia’s shoulder, a tall column in yellow silk, a line showing between her brows. A line placed there by Lucius and Tullia, she thought resentfully.

“I tell you,” Lollia was saying, oblivious, “Cornelia might have been a perfect empress, but she wouldn’t have kept the position for long. A year or two of senators whispering how an emperor with sons brings stability to the Empire, droning about all the jostling that goes on when an emperor adopts an heir, intoning platitudes about the sacrifices an emperor must make for the good of Rome—do you think Piso would have refused?”

“Well, we’ll never know.” Marcella looked down at the seamstress tacking up her pale-yellow hem. “A little white embroidery around the bottom, I think—”

“Oh, Cornelia knows,” said Lollia. “But now Piso’s dead, so she can pretend it never would have happened; that Piso would have been an emperor to rival Augustus and she would have been his Augusta for all time. When really he was just a bland bore, and she had all the ambition for both of them.” Lollia gave a hard shrug as the maids came forward and began draping her in bright-green silk embroidered in tiny golden flowers and vines. “What she needs is a good hump.”

Marcella looked at her cousin as another maid pinched the yellow silk folds into place at the shoulders. “You’re very hard on Cornelia.”