Do you really think I spend all my time bedding other men? Sabina thought in exasperation. She’d gone back to Vindobona in Pannonia to check on the hospital she’d gotten funded there while Hadrian was governor; she’d spent a month tramping about the work site arguing about the need for more physicians—and did anyone believe her? No; all they wanted to hear about was her lovers. But she just said lightly, “I think I’ve had my fill of orgies for a while. Perversion is so dull, don’t you think?”

They had entered the hall together, Sabina’s fingertips barely brushing her husband’s arm and dropping away the minute they were through the carved double doors. Syria, she reminded herself, swirling the wine in her cup as she watched Hadrian disappear into a cloud of well-wishers. She’d never been to Syria before; surely it would be a fascinating journey… but somehow, Sabina found her thoughts turning more and more toward home lately. Her sister Faustina would be getting married soon: “Hopefully I can bring the man I want up to scratch before I turn a hundred. Gods, he’s thick!” Faustina’s choice of suitors wasn’t the only drama in the family; their brother Linus was begging to join the legions as a tribune, though he wasn’t even seventeen. And of course Father was getting frail these days—Calpurnia had finally persuaded him to retire from the Senate, and his latest letter had told of the treatise he had just completed on the financial reorganization of Rome’s temples. Titus’s letters spoke of the splendid new baths, his supervision of the alimenta scheme and how it had pleased the Emperor…

“I believe I’m homesick,” Sabina mused aloud. After years of wandering too—how strange. Somehow, the thought of Syria held no charm at all.

“Talking to yourself?” A voice sounded behind her, so familiar it went straight to the pit of her stomach and resonated there warmly before she even thought of its owner’s name. “I always knew you were crazy, Lady Sabina.”

“You’re not the one to make accusations, Vercingetorix.” Sabina turned, smiling. “I heard about that night attack you made on Osrhoene. Eighty men taking on two hundred in the guard tower, in the pitch dark. Now that would be the act of a madman.”

“Worked, didn’t it?” The row of campaign tokens strung across his belt jingled, and his eyes flicked to her head. “Where’d your hair go?”

“I razored it all off in Egypt.” Sabina ruffled the short velvety brush of her hair, lopped from the middle of her back to within an inch of her scalp. “It’s so hot there, everyone shaves their heads and just wears wigs for formal occasions. After a while I decided I’d forgo the wigs too.”

“I like it.”

“Hadrian despises it.”