He didn’t bother begging me not to do it. He just looked at me, and his eyes were wondering. “What is it you want?”

“Your cooperation. Your compliance. Your silence. That’s all. We don’t even need to live together, or hardly at all. Just enough for appearances’ sake.” I rose, yawning. “Goodness, it’s late. I believe we’ve said everything there is to say, don’t you? If we’re leaving for Rome this week, I’ve got a lot of packing to do.”

He sat as still and silent as a catacomb, staring out in front of him with blind eyes. Yes, this was the way it should be—I was the Empress and he the insect. It was enough to make me feel positively benevolent. I stooped and brushed my lips carelessly across his cheek. “Don’t despair, darling. If you don’t sulk too loudly then perhaps I’ll slip back into your room now and then. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He caught my wrist as I drew a finger down the side of his face. “Madam,” he said formally, “I’d sooner bed a snake.”

I felt my smile slipping. He limped out.

THERE was just enough light from the half moon for Marcus to see his son riding through the stable gates. Riding north for Agrippinensis, far away in Germania. His breath showed in faint puffs on the cool night air, and the slump of his shoulders was visible even from the window.

Lappius will welcome him, Marcus thought. He’ll fill Paulinus’s days with parties, and his nights with hired courtesans. The matrons of Agrippinensis will throw their daughters in his path, and perhaps he’ll make a hasty marriage in hopes of forgetting. But he won’t forget. He’ll throw his window open on those freezing German nights and sit shivering till dawn, thinking of Lepida and wanting to fall on his sword. Oh, Paulinus—

The moonlit road was empty now, and the night was cold. Marcus closed the window.

“Do you require anything, Dominus?” The household steward hovered.

“The truth.” Marcus turned. “How long?”

“A few months.” The steward hesitated. He had been running the Norbanus household for twenty years, and Marcus knew his every expression. He gestured the man to go on. “I would have written, Dominus, but Lady Lepida threatened . . . the slaves are all afraid of her. She’s—not a kind mistress.”

One more thing he had not known about his wife.

“Good to have the young master in Germania, Dominus. He’ll get over it soon enough.”

Would he? “Thank you, that will be all.”

On the desk was the rough draft of Marcus’s new treatise, completed a week before he came home. Proposed improvements to the existing inheritance laws. Marcus unrolled the scroll until he reached the words he had proudly penned the night before.

To my wife.

A surprise for Lepida, who didn’t understand his treatises any better than Paulinus, but who had done a fine job pretending how much they meant to her.

Marcus reached stiffly for a pen. He cut the nib down to a fine point and uncorked the ink. He scratched out the dedication in two precise lines. No scribbling. Scholars didn’t scribble. Scholars didn’t scribble and senators didn’t weep, so he set the scroll aside to dry and folded his hands.