And a good thing, really. I’d had one or two girls get moony over me before, and it just made things uncomfortable. Moony girls always started pressing to see how you felt back, and usually the result was floods of tears for her and a slapped face for me. Nothing moony about Sabina, and that was good. I might not be able to get enough of her, but I certainly wasn’t moony about her myself. To be honest, I didn’t know what I felt about Sabina. So, good thing she was sensible.

Very good thing.

CHAPTER 6

PLOTINA

Sometimes Plotina despaired, she truly did. Nearly five years now her husband had been Emperor of Rome, and would he ever learn to act like it?

“So pleased to see you,” Plotina murmured to Senator Norbanus and his wife as they entered the atrium, but Trajan’s shout of greeting drowned her out.

“Marcus! You limping brilliant bastard, happy Saturnalia!”

Plotina cast her eyes to the heavens as her husband enveloped Senator Norbanus in a bear hug. The senator just looked amused as the Emperor of Rome set him back on his feet.

“Gods’ bones, Calpurnia, you look ready to drop that foal any minute.” Trajan kissed his hostess’s cheeks soundly. “If it’s a boy, name it after me and I’ll do something nice for it. Better yet, name it after his big brother—Paulinus was the best man I ever knew, far better than I—”

Plotina lifted a hand to signal their entourage. Quite a crowd had joined them at Senator Norbanus’s dinner party that evening: senators and their coiffed wives, giggling girls and laughing young men, sleek pretty page boys, red-and-gold Praetorians, and Trajan’s ever-present tail of blunt-spoken legates and legionary officers. “You cannot always travel in a cloud of soldiers,” Plotina had protested many times.

“Why not? Ensures I never get bored.”

And of course so many of his retinue of soldiers were handsome men. Really, her husband’s private arrangements were none of her business, but why couldn’t he just bed pliant little slave boys as most men of his tastes did? Then she wouldn’t have all these hulking figures with their armor and their rough accents cluttering up her parties.

“Empress Plotina,” Lady Calpurnia was exclaiming. “How lovely you look. You’d put Juno to shame in those emeralds.”

“I care nothing for jewels.” Plotina bent her head to brush cheeks with Marcus’s little wife in her blue silks. “I had none at all until I entered the palace. I never saw how a truly thrifty wife could stomach the ostentation.”

“Well, I find jewelry very comforting during these late months.” Calpurnia rubbed her rounded stomach, sapphires at her ears and throat winking like blue eyes in the lamplight. “None of my gowns fit anymore, but at least my necklaces still do.”