“Yes, so I read. Care for some barley water?”

“No.” His feet took him across the room and back, across and back. “He’s coming back.”

“Will you stop repeating yourself?” She arranged herself among the couch cushions.

“Lepida, it’s got to stop. Now.” He could see the slaves clustered in the anteroom beyond the atrium, whispering behind their hands.

“Why?” She reached out and caught him by the wrist. “Won’t you miss me?” Her other hand found his knee.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t do this to me.”

“Do what?” Her fingers slid up his thigh, higher. “This?”

He closed his eyes with a groan, hearing the slaves scatter.

PAULINUS!” Marcus gave an open-handed wave out of his litter. “Give me your arm, boy. I’ve been riding in this contraption since dawn and I’m stiff as a board.”

Paulinus handed his father down before the gate and was enveloped in a one-armed hug. The familiar smells of unpressed linen and fresh ink enveloped him. He buried his burning eyes briefly in the humped shoulder. The gray morning was crisp and cool, but his face flamed.

“Good to see you, boy.” Dusty and beaming, Marcus looked him over. “You look tired. Are they working you too hard in those barracks?”

Paulinus felt his ears burning. He was spared an answer when an armload of scrolls fell out of the litter. “Did you bring a whole library, Father?”

“Not at all. Just Seneca’s meditations, a little Cato, some Pliny, Martial’s satiric verses—gods, there goes the rest of them. Here, take these. No, take them all while I give my daughter a kiss.”

Sabina skimmed out of the house like a bird. “Father, Father!” She swarmed up into his arms.

“Miss me, little one?” Marcus kissed her soundly. “I missed you, too. And I believe I’ve got a present with your name on it.”

“A pony?” she asked eagerly.

“No, I couldn’t fit one in the litter. Just a very pretty set of coral beads. Guaranteed to make you as beautiful as your mother.”

“Marcus.” Lepida floated down the stairs in green silk and her wedding pearls. “Home at last!”

Paulinus dropped his armload of scrolls and bent clumsily after them. He could see her cooing into his father’s ear, her face fi xed in a breathless smile . . . how could she do it? Less than an hour ago she had been writhing underneath him, limbs locked around his hips, nails leaving long cat-scratches in his back. How could she do all that, and still look his father in the eye and say, “Welcome back”?

“Welcome back.” She kissed her husband on the cheek, and her eyes slid over his shoulder to rest on Paulinus.

He didn’t think he could ever look at his father again.

At least it was finally over. It was over, and his father would never know. Not even Lepida would try anything with his father in the same house . . .

Her blue gaze locked with his over the dinner table that evening, and she ran her tongue around the rim of the wine cup.