‘I wish you would wear a cloak, at the very least,’ he whispered to her as she followed him up onto the top platform at the porta decumana at the back of the fort.

Claudia Enica’s expression was one of supreme innocence. ‘Some of the men have no breeches under their tunics.’

‘It’s not the same,’ he hissed, as Sabinus appeared through the open trap door, his face somewhat red.

After that Ferox made sure that she went first up any ladder in front of him and came down last. There would still be plenty of interested bystanders, but at least he spared his senior staff both embarrassment and enjoyment. Vindex was not impressed whenever he joined the party.

‘Jealous, eh?’ he leered. ‘Or just desperate?’

Ferox ignored him, for in truth the repeated views up his wife’s tunic as she climbed were reminders of his failure as a husband and his surging desire. Having her here, but still unreachable, was a lot harder to bear than when she had been so far away, especially when he tried and failed to stop himself from staring up at her wondrous rear and the little pants she favoured. She knew it too, and Ferox was sure that she was deliberately stopping part way up and even wriggling more than necessary each time she got onto a platform. Yet still he slept alone, in one of the smallest rooms in the praetorium.

Sulpicia Lepidina was sympathetic, at least to a point. ‘Claudia will come around. Be patient and play her games. It is all your fault in the first place for losing her. Sometimes you are too much the barbarian, aren’t you?’ Her face had a wistful look, and he wondered whether she was thinking back to their own affair. ‘I would like you both to be happy,’ she said. ‘And while I wonder about Claudia’s talk of magic and fate, I do suspect that you are meant for each other, while also guessing that it will be the rockiest of roads.’

Although she had been disappointed when the letter arrived from Cerialis telling her to stay at Piroboridava for the moment, Sulpicia Lepidina had got on with things as she always did, running the household since Claudia had little interest in such matters when there were warriors to supervise. Remarkably, she took over without making Philo resent the new, far tighter oversight. The praetorium bustled, and often echoed to the cries of the children. Ferox remembered reading that Cicero felt his new villa had gained a soul when a library was created, but nothing made a place a home faster than children. It was all so comfortable that he wondered whether he was ready for a quiet life, even a dull life, if only Claudia would take him back. Then he would remember where they were, and think of Dacians swarming over the ramparts of the fort. They were ruthless in war and could be cruel to captives. He had heard too many stories of what the local women had done to captured Romans in past wars to doubt that there was a lot of truth in them, and the allies in any Dacian army could be even less predictable. If his fears were right then that meant captivity or death for everyone here, perhaps with many cruelties along the way and such thoughts chilled him to the very bone.