Sabina wasn’t so sure. Titus had a quiet authority now, a gentle unflinching presence to go with his alert bearing and attentive gaze. Trajan thought a good deal of the rising young Titus Aurelius, and so did other notable men in Rome. Like her father.

“I’ll miss you when I go to Antioch.” Sabina felt a pang as she realized just how much. Titus had been such a constant friend since the day he’d walked into her life with a bunch of violets and a stammered marriage proposal. In Rome, in Dacia, in his letters during her time in Pannonia; he’d always been there. “I’ll write you, of course—I hope you won’t be too busy to dash out a line to me now and then? With all your new building expertise, I was hoping to get your advice on some cheap ways to shore up tenement buildings—the slums in Antioch are supposed to be even worse than the Subura in Rome, and if I’m going to be wintering there I might as well take a look about and see what I can do to help.”

“Write me as soon as you get your facts and figures, and we’ll put our heads together.”

They straightened, trading rueful looks, and Titus cast another glance over her. “I must say, you look stunning.”

“It’s not really an Antiochene dress,” she confessed. “I just had the dressmaker stitch up the most shocking thing I could think of.” She pulled her shawl closer about herself, feeling a self-consciousness that hadn’t touched her before Hadrian and Plotina.

“No, no.” Titus caught the edge of her shawl, tugging it back until it slipped off her shoulders to the floor. “Put yourself on display like that, and people have a right to look.”

“Do they?”

“Well, I intend to look my fill. Did you know that I love you?”

She cocked her head. “What?”

He leaned down and kissed her, his mouth gentle, parting her lips with unhurried care. His hand cupped the back of her neck, and he took his time.

“Oh, no,” Sabina said when he lifted his head.

“Not the response I was hoping for,” Titus murmured.

“Not the kiss. That was lovely. The other part.”

“The part where I said I loved you?” For all the weight behind them, his words came lightly. “Since the day we met, if you want to know. You were everything a sixteen-year-old boy could ever dream of, and he has seen nothing better yet.”

“I never guessed.” Sabina remembered all the nights in Dacia that she’d spent curled up in Vix’s lap and talking to Titus, and cringed inside. “Why me? I’m not really very lovable.”

“Vix loved you.”

“Hated me too, quite a lot of the time. I’m not very easy on the people who love me.”