An itch started to scratch between my shoulder blades, and I had to control the urge to twitch. Twitching looked guilty.

“Sabina tells me you ran into a spot of trouble outside the Circus Maximus a few weeks ago.”

Damn it. I should have known that girl wouldn’t be able to hold her tongue. “No trouble, sir,” I lied. “Nothing at all.”

“She said you handily saw off a pack of drunken thieves.”

“She exaggerates.”

“Rarely.”

His dark eyes regarded me, thoughtful, and I had the feeling he was seeing clear through to the inside of my skull. A good many aristocrats could do that look, but his took the prize. He knew about the thugs, he knew about me kissing his daughter; he knew all the things I would have liked to do to his daughter given a little more time and a flat spot, and Hell’s gates, Vercingetorix, this is not the time for any of those thoughts to be invading your thick head. I averted my eyes over the senator’s ear, fastening them on a bust of somebody who might have been an emperor or maybe just a philosopher, and hoped my face wasn’t reddening. Red faces looked guilty.

“I would like to offer you a place in my household guards.” The offer came so abruptly, I just blinked. “This is a quiet household, but we have occasional need of a guard at the gate. You would have a room here at the villa, your meals, three new tunics a year. And a salary.” He quoted it—a generous one.

I breathed easier. He’d hardly be making me any sort of offer if he knew—“Why, Senator? Must be plenty of old soldiers who’d serve you better. I’ve never done any bodyguarding.”

“I remember a twelve-year-old boy who stabbed an emperor in defense of his mother,” said Senator Norbanus. “What was that, if not bodyguarding?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Six years. Endless, indeed.” His ink-stained fingers drummed the desk. “Bring a little of that verve to protecting my household, and I’ll be well pleased. I have an enemy or two who might be troublesome—not to kill me perhaps, but to prevent me from reaching the Senate house on the morning of some important vote. And my eldest daughter has a habit of wandering off to odd places. A strong arm at her back might be useful.”

“Did she put you up to this?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Hiring me?”

“No, Sabina’s gone to Baiae with her stepmother and the children.”