“Ambitious mothers.” Faustina nodded. “Mother warned me about them when I started getting suitors. Pick a husband without a mother, she told me.”

“Empress Plotina isn’t even his mother.”

“That makes it worse, doesn’t it?” Faustina sounded worldly. “A mother has to work with what she’s given birth to, but these childless women just pick out some young man they can drive around like a chariot. Don’t you get the feeling they’d really like to take lovers, but instead they just take protégés?”

“When did you get so worldly-wise?”

“Have I impressed you? Oh, good. I mean to be tremendously sophisticated and all-knowing, just as soon as I can manage it.” Faustina swung her feet, pleased. “What I want to know is—can Empress Plotina possibly be as well-behaved as she seems? Surely no one could manage to hold that pose for so long without falling off the pedestal once or twice.”

“No sign of a fall yet,” Sabina said, regretful. “Certainly Plotina is very virtuous. So is Hadrian, now. She expects it of him.” Only now he hunted every day instead of once a week, and reproved his wife for being indecorous but set her to seduce his rivals…

“I don’t really see your problem,” Faustina was saying decisively. “You don’t like Hadrian anymore? Divorce him. The Emperor’s so fond of you, he’d surely give permission. You could come live back home with us again. Help me pick my husband.”

Sabina hesitated, tempted. Stay in her old bedchamber again, gossip with her sister, get to know the three tumbling half-brothers Calpurnia had produced after Faustina and Linus. Discuss books every evening over dinner with her father, who was getting a trifle frail now, though he was still a force to be reckoned with in the Senate. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Why?” Faustina looked around for eavesdroppers, then leaned close. “Is it a lover?” she whispered.

Sabina cocked her head, amused. “What rumors have you been listening to?”

“According to gossip, either you’re a Vestal Virgin or you’ve slept with a whole legion,” Faustina said frankly. “I can’t wait till they start making up juicy rumors about me.”

“A whole legion?” Sabina wondered. “When do they think I have the time? There haven’t been very many men outside Hadrian, really.”

“You have to tell me now, you know.” Faustina held up a hand in promise. “I vow never to tell Mother and Father.”

“Good. There are some things one’s parents should not know.” Sabina looked up at the ceiling. “Let’s see. There was a praetor with a lovely gift for declaiming poetry. The poetry he wrote wasn’t quite so good, but he could certainly recite other poets to perfection. He had a beautiful voice. Then there was a certain very intelligent colleague of Father’s in the Senate, whom I won’t name—”