“Hmph.” Plotina closed her eyes. Her temples were pounding now—the room was loud—and the guests were streaming into the triclinium to eat. “Take me in to dine,” she told Dear Publius, who at once offered his arm. “I must do my duty, even if I can’t eat a bite. I have such a headache.”

TITUS

Some discreet elbowing went on, Titus noticed, as the guests took their places on the dining couches to eat. Everyone wanted to be at the Emperor’s side on the couch of honor, heaped with silk pillows and draped with ivy. No one, on the other hand, seemed quite so eager to share cushions with the Empress. And a whole cluster of young men were jostling to eat beside Vibia Sabina. Tribune Hadrian claimed the place on her left, but Titus (by stepping firmly on a young aedile’s foot) managed to stake out the couch on her right. “Hello,” he said to her. “You look quite wonderful.” The girl he saw on his periodic shy visits, usually flopped in the library in a careless braid and a plain tunic, had given way to a very sophisticated creature indeed: a gleaming nymph reclining on a silk-cushioned couch, her dress narrow and silvery and short enough to show her ankles, her hair brushed up very high and sleek. No jewels, not like the other girls decked out to glitter for the suitors—just one earring like the Egyptians wore, an elaborate silver earring that reached her shoulder and winked garnets. “I’m glad you didn’t look like this when I proposed to you,” Titus told her frankly. “I’d never have gotten the words out.”

Sabina laughed, but Tribune Hadrian on her other side just frowned. The first stream of slaves were entering with silver dishes, and the smells of roast pork and smoked oysters uncoiled in tantalizing whiffs. “Who are you, young man?”

“Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius—”

“Yes, I’ve heard of you. Of your father, rather. Shouldn’t you still be in school?” Tribune Hadrian turned his attention on Sabina, dismissing Titus altogether. “I’d hoped to continue our discussion on the architectural studies of Apollodorus, Vibia Sabina. I don’t care for his domes at all—”

Titus never got another word in after that. Hadrian claimed Sabina with an ease Titus envied. Oh, to be twenty-six instead of sixteen. To be charming instead of shy. To be a man of the world reclining easily at Sabina’s side like this; speaking with just the right blend of intelligence and humor; offering her the choice bites from each dish with just the right air of insouciance; knowing exactly how often to touch her wrist with one finger to draw a bubble of intimacy around their conversation. Oh, to be Tribune Hadrian instead of Titus who should still be in school.