“Hadn’t even got to the fornicating yet, you cow!” Vix yelled, but Sabina took his arm, shaking with giggles, and pulled him off into the night with the housewife still frothing behind them.

“Gods, how funny.” Sabina put a hand over her mouth and laughed through her fingers, feeling as giddy and high-sailing as a full moon. “Another first.”

“Kissing in a doorway?”

“Being shrieked at for a fornicating trollop. What fun.”

“Could be more fun.” Vix stepped close again, his eyes just black shadows now in the dusk, but Sabina stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“I’m afraid my father will be looking for me soon. He’ll worry now that it’s dark, and I don’t like to worry him. Besides, the house isn’t far.”

Vix scowled, but stepped back. “Told you I’d teach you something better than a whistle, didn’t I?”

“So you did.”

His face fell visibly when they came up to the house after another block of frustrated silence, and he saw that there were household slaves waiting at the gate. “Damn.”

Sabina laughed. “Hoping for a good-night kiss?”

“Or something,” he muttered.

Herself, Sabina had been pondering whether it would be wise to give him one… but the slaves were already hurrying out into the street to greet her. “Lady Sabina, you should have been back before dark!” She started toward them, pulling a fold of her palla up over her head and hoping Vix hadn’t left any marks on her neck that might need explaining. Behind her, she heard Vix’s footsteps turn back down the street.

On impulse, she shooed the slaves ahead and then turned. “Vix!”

He turned, tall and irritated in the torchlight. “What, Lady?”

“You kiss much better now than you did at thirteen.” Sabina grinned and disappeared into the house.

CHAPTER 3

PLOTINA

The Empress of Rome prided herself on laughing very seldom. Life was a solemn thing, after all, and her position in the world demanded every possible dignity. But she could not help laughing when she saw the look on Hadrian’s face.

“Dear Publius, don’t look so grim. It’s not a sentence of death, you know. Only a marriage.”

“Which is a sentence of a different kind.” He hesitated. “Vibia Sabina?”

“Yes, I’ve chosen her. You object?”

Hadrian moved his shoulders restlessly, pacing to the end of her study. Plotina looked up from her writing tablet, reveling in the sight of him: so tall and sturdy, the picture of Roman rectitude in his spotless toga, his head handsome in the wash of spring sunshine from the window. The gods had not seen fit to grant her children, but they had granted her Publius Aelius Hadrian: her husband’s ward from the age of ten, and when first she laid eyes on him she had seen his potential. Trajan had had little time to act the guardian, so his care had been hers. Her Publius.