“All Rome gets drunk! Decent women don’t dare set foot outside.” Plotina frowned into the polished steel mirror, remembering the tipsy shopkeeper who had pinched her on the hip during a Vinalia celebration some twenty years ago when she had been an unwed girl. Pinched her. Her, Pompeia Plotina, who could have been a Vestal Virgin had she chosen. If she had not known even then that she was destined for Greater Things.

“Will you at least attend the races after the ceremony?” Her husband’s voice was coaxing. “People expect to see you.”

“I will stay through the first race,” Plotina allowed. “That is all. Green gown,” she told the slaves, who hastened forward with the folds of deep green silk. Silk; so ostentatious, but it was expected of a woman in her position. She held her arms out—decently swathed, of course, in a long-sleeved tunic. The women of Rome might mostly bare their arms like courtesans, even the women of great birth, but Plotina would never be one of them.

“Gods’ bones, will you leave your fussing?” Her husband swatted at his slaves as they draped the heavy purple-bordered folds of his toga. “It looks well enough!”

“Don’t be a child,” Plotina said without turning. A man of such power, such distinction, and he stood impatiently shifting and fidgeting like a boy of fifteen. In many ways he is still a boy of fifteen, she thought, tilting her head as the maid dabbed behind her ears with lavender water. Only whores wore perfume.

Does the girl wear perfume? Plotina wondered. If so, I shall have to rethink.

“Ready?” Her husband sounded amused. “If my wife is done primping, the priests await.”

“You know I don’t like jokes.” Plotina cast an eye over her reflection. Dark hair tidy and coiled, covered by a veil as was only proper. Pale oval face (no rouge or kohl, of course) and a suitably sober expression. Deep-set eyes, a nose like a furrow with a straight mouth to match it—and could that be a thread or two of gray just starting to come in by her temples? She leaned toward the mirror, pleased. She had not liked youth, and youth hadn’t liked her. A girl was nothing; a woman was powerful. A girl knew nothing; a woman knew all. As a girl Plotina had been lanky and awkward, but now at thirty-five they had begun to call her handsome. “I am ready.”

She rose, taking her husband’s arm. He stood tall, but she did not have to tilt her head to look into his face. Plotina could look eye to eye with all but the tallest men in Rome, and that pleased her. The goddesses of the heavens were always tall, weren’t they? And Plotina liked to model herself after only the highest and greatest of examples.