There was something wrong with him though, even if it wasn’t Thea. Oh, he still came despairingly to my bed whenever I called him, but . . . little things. Last time I’d twined my arms around his neck in the garden of some senator’s dinner party, he’d tried to push me away for a moment before succumbing with a groan. His gaze held a sort of straight dislike that unsettled me. Of course he hated me. Naturally. But hatred had always been the other side of the coin that was desire. This look of flat distaste was something new. Something very like Marcus.

If it wasn’t Thea, did he have another? Surely not the bovine Calpurnia: for all they’d been betrothed forever, no date was set and he’d hardly met with her all year. Well, no use worrying too much about Paulinus. No matter what kind of look I’d been seeing in his eyes lately, I’d always be able to bring him to heel. Thea—she was my little problem.

I gazed into the mirror a little longer, and then beckoned my cowed maid. “You must have friends among the Imperial slaves,” I said, nailing her with a glance. “If you don’t, make some. For any information they bring me about Lady Athena, there’ll be a rich reward. For you, too. Now get out.”

Let’s see what comes of that.

PAULINUS.” Flavia’s voice was curt. “Don’t you have anything better to do than spy on Thea?”

“I’m not spying.” Paulinus felt mulish.

“You’ve been staring out that window at her for the past hour!”

“It is my duty as Prefect to extend my eye to all suspicious activity.”

“ ‘Suspicious activity?’ She’s just talking to her son’s father! And it’s the first time they’ve met at all since they found each other. Three weeks she waited to come back here—”

“I shouldn’t allow it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. Have they touched once in all the time you’ve watched?”

“They don’t have to touch,” Paulinus muttered. Athena and her gardener, sitting a decorous twelve inches apart on a marble atrium bench, generated enough heat between them to burn bread. But Flavia’s face hardened.

“You sound like a jealous lover, Paulinus. I do hope you’re not falling in love with Thea yourself. That would put a nice wrench in your loyalties, wouldn’t it?”

He reddened. “I am not—”

“Then let her alone. She’s given you her word that she won’t betray the Emperor. Or is her word not worth anything because she’s a Jew and a slave?”

“I’m sure she has every intention of keeping her word.” Stiffly. “But my duty lies with the Emperor, and the Emperor would want to know about this.”

“Tell my uncle, and you sign her death warrant.”

“. . . No . . .”

“You don’t believe me?”

“He’s a man of honor—”

“No, he’s not!” she said witheringly.

“Lady Flavia, you don’t know what you’re saying.”