“How can you bear to leave Sabina?” Marcus asked me, hanging besotted over the cradle after our daughter was born.

“I don’t want to smother her, darling.” And off I went in jade silk or sapphire, revealing more of my shoulders than ever—thank goodness the baby hadn’t thickened my figure!—to meet with senators and soldiers and tribunes, because a married woman with a child indisputably her husband’s can do whatever she pleases.

“I’ve waited so long for you,” Lucius Marcellus groaned, and Aulus Didianus, and that rather marvelous African trident fighter who never spoke much but was more than ready to handle me. I was quite put out when Arius killed him in the arena.

Marcus never suspected a thing. That was another lesson I learned. And how wonderful it all was, the parties and the jewels and the banquets and the men. Lepida Pollia, the toast of Rome. I’d always known it would be that way. Always. No less than I deserved.

And then—over. All of it. Stuck in Brundisium, a pretty little seaside town with airy summer villas and a sapphire-blue harbor and far too many exotic languages reverberating around its docks; a hundred leagues from Rome. And Marcus—ever-amiable, ever-obliging Marcus—suddenly a stone wall.

Iris’s voice broke in on my thoughts. “Your sleeping robe, Domina?”

“Yes.” Suddenly I was sick of the red stola. Red the bridal color, the color I’d worn when I’d married Marcus. Marcus, whose fault it was that I was stuck here.

Iris clumped away, and I contemplated my reflection in the polished steel. I looked utterly enticing. My hair had even grown out again, down toward my waist in a shining blue-black cascade. How could my husband refuse me anything?

WHAT happened then?” Sabina murmured, yawning. “We’ll finish the story tomorrow, sweetheart. You’re half asleep.”

“No’m not . . .” She yawned again, and Marcus stroked the feather-brown hair. It was as silky as Lepida’s. He smiled, thanking his wife silently for giving him Sabina. His first wife hadn’t wanted children; Paulinus had been an accident for which she’d heaped blame on Marcus. “Well, I hope it’s my fault, Tullia,” he had said, trying to make a joke of it, and she had grabbed up a marble bust of his father and heaved it at him.

“Well, I’m not Tullia,” Lepida had teased in her rich voice. And in the first year of their marriage: Vibia Sabina.

“Good night,” he told his daughter softly, and withdrew.

“Marcus?” Lepida called as she heard his footfall outside. “Darling, do come in. It’s cold in that corridor.”

What warmed him was her smile of welcome as she turned from her mirror, her black hair loosed down her back and the dimple winking in her cheek. “Sit down, Marcus. I’ve heated some wine.”

He smiled back, and let her draw him into the warmth.

Nine

THE bout was a Thracian with a net and trident, famed in Silicia but shaking with nerves to be facing the Barbarian in the Colosseum. Arius killed him fast and indifferently with a blade through the shelf of the jaw and stalked out through the Gate of Life. The fans cheered, and the demon went yawning to sleep at the back of Arius’s mind.