“Maybe I can help.” She climbed the marble steps of the pool, water shedding off her shoulders and dripping from the edge of her linen tunic: Venus rising from the waves. Of course Venus was usually naked, but Faustina’s tunic had been soaked into such clinging transparency that it didn’t really hide… anything. Titus coughed, keeping his eyes firmly on the ground as she strode unselfconsciously before him into the house. The little girl he’d carried home from Sabina’s wedding at age five had done quite a lot of growing up. He felt more comfortable when she picked up her discarded palla and swathed herself in it.

“So what have you got there?” Faustina sank into a chair in the atrium, indicating his armload of scrolls. “Let’s have a look.”

“I wouldn’t dream of boring a lovely girl with dull financial matters.”

“If not dull financial matters, it’ll be suitors with dull poetry,” Faustina warned. “I know which of the two I’d rather have.”

“I thought most girls liked being courted.”

“You’d think so.” Faustina sent a slave into the house for drinks. “I thought I’d love it. I remember all the men hanging around after Sabina, and I couldn’t wait till it was my turn. Now it is, and I find it’s boring. The old men drone politics at me, the young men drone war stories at me, and they all try to look down my dress.”

“You could try not to look quite so lovely,” Titus suggested. “Though that would take rather a lot of effort. Cut off your hair? Wear hemp tunics and soot? Black out a tooth?” He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid it’s useless.”

“That’s why I like you, Titus.” Faustina tilted her head, delighted. “Any man can tell a woman she’s beautiful, but you’re clever enough to do it when her hair looks like a wet mop. Here, have some mulsum”—she tugged the nearest scroll out of his hand and replaced it with a cup of hot honeyed wine from the slave—“and I’ll have a look at your papers.”

Titus gave up and sat beside her. He didn’t have any other duties today, after all. And besides, Sabina’s last letter from Antioch had asked him to keep an eye on her little sister. According to my father she’s got more suitors now than Helen of Troy, and I’d hate to see her follow in my footsteps and lose her head over someone impossible. No danger there, from the look of things.

Faustina pulled her chair up beside Titus’s, pointing to a line of the scroll in her hand. “I assume there are receipts to match all these entries.”

“Yes, right here.” Titus pointed in turn, taking a sip of the warm honeyed wine. “Where did you get so good at numbers?”