“I intend to pick the whole dish.” Sabina scooped into the oysters.

“I meant if you picked a suitor. As you well know.”

“Who are you going to choose, Sabina?” Calpurnia took a little silver knife to split the skin on another pomegranate.

“I wonder,” Sabina said placidly.

“You are leaving it rather late, you know. Eighteen years old—there’s plenty who have a baby already by your age.”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“Nonsense,” her father protested. “I’ve never been in favor of these young marriages. Eighteen is young enough.”

“Not too much longer before I choose.” Sabina cracked another oyster. “But I would like another month or two of peace. Tribune Hadrian has been very persistent.”

“I thought you liked Hadrian now. You talk for hours every time he visits.”

“He talks for hours, anyway,” Marcus shook his head, amused. “He does love the sound of his own voice.”

“I don’t mind,” Sabina said. “He’s quite interesting if I can get him talking about his travels. He’s been all over Hispania and Gaul—Father, can’t you just accept the next provincial governorship you get offered, so I could go somewhere interesting like Hispania or Gaul? Or Egypt—”

“I don’t know about Hadrian,” Calpurnia said doubtfully. “He’s very charming, to be sure—”

“Of course he’s charming to you,” Sabina said. “He thinks you’re the pearl of Roman womanhood.”

“Yes, and very nice of him to say so. I like a man who has a way with pretty compliments—”

“Do I sense a reproof?” Marcus wondered.

“—and Hadrian’s distinguished as well as charming, so he’s sure to have a fine career ahead of him. But—” Calpurnia held up a pink-stained finger, just like her husband when he pounced in the Senate with a legal loophole. “Hadrian comes with a mother-in-law.”

“His mother’s dead,” Sabina objected.

“But the Empress isn’t,” Calpurnia said ominously. “And she had the raising of him, more than his own mother did. Believe me, you do not want Empress Plotina for a mother-in-law.”

“So that’s why you married me?” Marcus laughed. “Not for pretty compliments, but because my mother was safely in her grave?”

“Oh, be serious, both of you.” Calpurnia captured little Linus’s plump fist and waved it for attention. “The last thing any young wife needs, Vibia Sabina, is her mother-in-law’s nose poked over her shoulder criticizing her housekeeping, her character, and her children.” Shuddering. “And Empress Plotina has a very long nose.”

“So, an interfering mother-in-law,” Sabina agreed. “Any other objections to Hadrian?”

“He has a far from spotless reputation. He’s keeping a singer in very luxurious lodgings on the Aventine, and—well, not in front of the children.” Calpurnia raised her eyebrows. “Not to mention that he’s eight years older than you.”

“You’re one to talk!” Sabina laughed. “How old was Father when you married him, Calpurnia? Sixty-three?”