My lips parted, dry as parchment. “You can’t possibly—you never look up from your stupid scrolls—”

“Oh, I see a great deal over my scrolls. In fact, I’ve been amassing evidence for years. I have documents, witnesses, slaves who will talk—eagerly, I might add, and without threat of torture. You were never a kind mistress, Lepida. I also have a few of your former lovers as witnesses. Junius Clodius, for example, once I offered to pay his debts.”

“And what will their evidence do to you?” I rallied. “You’ll be the senator whose wife took on every man in Rome—”

“Oh, I think my reputation will survive.” A smile. “Will yours?”

Sabina brushed Calpurnia’s hands away from her ears, giggling.

“You!” I rounded on her. “If you think any man will want a cuckold’s daughter—once I’ve done there won’t be a man in the Empire who will touch you—”

“By law,” Marcus intoned the words as he did in the Senate, “a man is entitled to retain his former wife’s dowry if her adultery is sufficiently proved. Every aureus of your dowry will go to Sabina. Sufficient gold, I think, to catch her any husband she likes—even if she were not already a prize for any man.”

“I’ve still got a chance,” I hissed at him. “Courts are made up of men, remember? I can make any man believe me!”

“I’ll risk it.”

He sat there, Sabina and Calpurnia at his back; a triumvirate of judges with an ocean of slaughter behind them. The gladiators were done, the victors raising their arms winded and triumphant, the losers raked away to feed the lions. The gladiators were done and so was I.

It couldn’t have gotten this far; it couldn’t. I’d be an outcast, looking for any man to marry me—I cast around for a weapon, any weapon, and heard Paulinus laugh with Trajan behind me. “What about your son, Marcus? Who do you think he’ll side with? He loves me, in case you’ve forgotten. He’ll roll over and beg like a dog if I want, and if you think he’ll stand for this—”

“Then why don’t we ask him? Paulinus!” Before I could stop him, Marcus called politely over my shoulder to his son, who was tossing coins down from the box to a triumphant German in a wolf skin. “Paulinus, I am divorcing your stepmother. Have you any objection?”

Paulinus paused, his eyes flicking over my bare arms and enticing shoulders; the body he had once slavered over. “None,” he said, and his voice was so cold it hit me like a slap of wind from the north.

“Paulinus—” I leaned forward to offer him a glimpse of my breasts. “Paulinus, he’s vindictive, he’ll shame me—I’m counting on you—”

He turned his back. Simply turned his back on me and began speaking again to a puzzled Trajan. “I think you’re right about the legionnaire training. Too focused on conformity—”

This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t be happening.

“Lepida.” Marcus’s voice again.