Her answering smile was wan, and I smothered the spark of anger in my chest. Wasn’t I doing my best here? Wasn’t I trying? “We’ll have a proper wedding,” I said, watching the moon drift past the window carrying my last hours of rest with it. “With a feast and a red veil and everything.”

“But my people don’t wear red veils at weddings.”

“Whatever you like.” I leaned down and kissed her, edging her back toward the bed—it would be a long time marching, after all, and I would miss her smooth slim form in my bed, and maybe that would stop her crying—but there was another fuss and apparently the women of Bithynia didn’t make love while carrying children, and all in all I spent the night before my march east holding Demetra on the bed, fully clothed, making soothing noises whenever she stopped crying, which wasn’t often.

No wonder I was enjoying the march.

I thanked the clerk from the Sixth and headed back toward the rest of my contubernium with a water skin. Demetra had been very dignified when bidding me good-bye—the night’s worth of tears had just made her eyes enormous and hollow and appealing. Maybe I could marry her when I got back. Titus was right; I wasn’t going to find better than Demetra. If I married her, maybe she’d quit crying all the time. And there was no denying she was beautiful, docile, uncomplicated: all the things I liked. All the things Sabina wasn’t.

It hadn’t been hard to avoid my legate’s wife, after that odd night stumbling into her outside the principia. Officers’ wives didn’t cross paths with common soldiers in the ordinary scheme of things… damn her, she’d looked well. I’d have liked to see her pasty and unhappy, but she just swung along beside me in her gold sandals, sinuous and unconcerned as ever. I couldn’t help but wonder briefly if I might be able to bed her again—that would put a spike up Hadrian’s arse and no mistake. But if my legate already loathed me, then bedding his wife wasn’t the wisest move to make, and besides I’d already been burned once by that girl and I was damned if I’d do it again. Far better to just marry my Bithynian goddess and have done with it.