“You’re sad,” Faustina said suddenly as they rounded the corner of the street and Hadrian’s house disappeared from sight.

“I am?” Titus tried to smile.

“Yes.” The little girl’s frown was implacable. She was pretty even when she frowned—a little blond thing with a snub nose. Nothing like Sabina.

“Well, I am a little sad, Faustina.”

“Why?”

“Because I am in love with your big sister.” The first time I’ve said it, he thought with a twist. Even to himself. “Quite wildly in love with her, actually, and I have just watched her marry someone else.”

Faustina frowned again. “She could marry you.”

“I’d have liked that. But she wouldn’t. And she was right—we’re not suited, you see. Hadrian, he’s clever and handsome and he’s going to give her the world. I couldn’t give anybody the world. Just a dull little life here in Rome, married to a dull little plodder like me.”

“I’ll marry you,” Faustina offered.

He mussed her hair until she scowled. “You’ll marry a prince, Faustina. Or an emperor. Someone far better than me.”

She fell asleep on his shoulder shortly after that, and he carried her in the deepening darkness back to the Norbanus house. “See she gets put to bed,” he told the slave with the torch. “She wasn’t out at all, you understand.”

“Don’t worry, sir.” The slave smoothed Faustina’s fair head affectionately. “I won’t get the little mistress in trouble.”

“Little mistress no more.” Titus gave a lopsided twist of his mouth. “She’s the only daughter of the house now.”

“Right you are, sir. Gods, I remember when Mistress Sabina was this little.”

The slave vanished, Faustina waking enough to give Titus a sleepy little wave over his shoulder. Titus waved back, then turned slowly and ambled away. He felt like crying, but he felt like smiling too when he thought of Sabina lying on the library floor with her chin propped on her hand. Looking up at him and saying, “Oh, no, not another one.”

“You don’t love him,” he told her through the shadows. “And he doesn’t love you.” But what did that matter? Most marriages weren’t about love at all. They were about money, or family, or advancement, or need. In Hadrian and Sabina’s case—adventure. You would do it differently, Sabina, Titus thought. You’re always different.