“I’m sorry.” Sabina shook her head ruefully at Titus. “I invite you to a dinner party, and instead of a good meal all you get is a few stilted words and a lot of agonized silence.”

“One of the more memorable dinner parties of my career, Sabina—long on scandal, if short on conversation.”

She smiled. Hadrian stood rigid in the atrium, ushering out the last of his gleeful guests as Plotina murmured tortured courtesies at his side—but Sabina had seized Titus by the hand as he made motions toward leaving and dragged him out to the garden. “Let’s at least say a proper good-bye. I know you’re not in a rush to head out and tell everyone in Rome about my degenerate morals.”

“Isn’t that what you had in mind?” He eyed the dress, which she’d draped modestly with a shawl as soon as the dinner party limped to its conclusion and the rest of the guests were out of sight. “What are you up to, Vibia Sabina?”

She shrugged, turning to lean her elbows on the balustrade overlooking the moon-silvered garden. The marble was cold through the shawl on her bare breast, and she longed to get out of the tight Antiochene dress. Did being degenerate have to be so uncomfortable? “This is good-bye, isn’t it?” she asked Titus. “I’m off to Antioch so soon, and you’re staying here in Rome.”

“I’ve got a bathhouse to finish,” he said lightly. “And my quaestor duties, of course.”

“You could have come on the invasion. Trajan wanted you for a post on his staff. Plotina and her pet legates pushed him into taking Hadrian, but the Emperor had his eye on you all along. Said he wanted to drag you along on campaign, give you a bit more taste for warfare. Why didn’t you take him up on it?”

“Sand,” Titus said. “Bugs. Tribesmen trying to kill me. No, thank you. I’ll stick to my city payrolls and my architectural oversight.”

“You’re wasted as a quaestor. Trajan told me that too, you know. You didn’t take the staff post, but he’s still got plans for you.”

“I can’t think why. I was the least enthusiastic tribune on his staff in Dacia, and now I’m the most plodding quaestor in the city.”

“He says you have a good head on your shoulders. He also says you’re one of the few men in Rome outside the legions who gives him a straight answer when he wants one.” Sabina looked over her shoulder at Titus. “Maybe you’ll end up consul someday.”

“Gods forbid.” Titus leaned on the railing at her side, looking across the banks of night-furled flowers. “What a muck I’d make of it.”