Flavia moved first. “Oh, goodness.” She clapped her hands. “All right, everyone. Boys, into the house. Paulinus, go home. Vix, go stab something. I imagine your mother and father want some time alone.”

“Father?” The word broke simultaneously from Vix and Paulinus.

“Well, I assume that’s what he is.” She looked at Vix consideringly. “I knew you reminded me of somebody. And here he was, on my villa the whole time. I am dense.”

Vix looked from his mother to the gardener and back again. He looked suddenly very young and uncertain.

“Into the house,” Flavia said kindly.

He went in like a sleepwalker. The Emperor’s niece turned to Paulinus. “Well? Haven’t you got anything to do?”

“I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on her!” He pointed at Thea, murmuring what looked like rapid explanations against the gardener’s mouth. “Who’s he?”

“Vix’s father, I think. Don’t they look alike? Amazing none of us noticed before.” She shooed at him. “Go away, Paulinus. Come back in a few hours.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I serve the Emperor. Always. I can’t let his woman take up with some other—”

“Moving a little fast, aren’t we? Five minutes of reunion and you’re assuming a full-blown liaison?”

“What else am I supposed to make of it?” The gardener had his hands tangled deep into Thea’s hair, his forehead leaned against hers.

“Oh, shut up, Paulinus,” Flavia snapped. “Make anything out of it that you want. You were a prig when you were five, and now you’re even worse.” She marched into the house.

He looked irresolutely back and forth.

“Paulinus.” Thea came toward him in short tremulous steps. “Paulinus, give me an hour.”

“I won’t help you betray the Emperor!”

“In the name of everything that’s holy, I swear I’ll betray no one. Just give me an hour to explain. For the love of God, give me an hour.”

She looked open and joyful and young. The gardener, waiting behind her with folded arms and a smile splitting his face like the sun, could have been any lover of fifteen instead of a work-bowed man of nearly forty.

Something about his face . . . under the beard and the dark hair . . . ?

Oh, never mind. He was a slave. A common slave, who had loved the Emperor’s mistress back in the days when she had been a common slave girl. Thea ran back as lightly as a girl, her hand slipping instantly into the gardener’s, her head touching his shoulder.

In an hour she was ready, standing barefoot and alone in the doorway of the villa. There was no sign of either her son or his father, and she stepped back into the litter with perfect calm. Paulinus threw the reins of his horse to one of the Praetorians, and settled in opposite her.

“So?” he said.

“I told him I have a jealous lover.”

“Did you say who?”

“No. I couldn’t even say the name. They aren’t two names that belong on the same breath.” She fiddled with the litter’s silk cushions.