“Of course,” she says, and perhaps she means it. In spite of all he has done to her, all she suspects he might be capable of doing, it is impossible not to remember that if it were not for Rufus, she would still be in the brothel. She reaches across the table impulsively and takes his hand. “Let’s just enjoy the evening. Maybe I was a little nervous that night.”

“I wasn’t saying it like it was a bad thing,” Rufus replies, giving her hand an answering squeeze. “You’ve always been such a perplexing girl. Sometimes, it feels like I really did meet you at your father’s house. I remember that very first time I saw you . . .” He trails off, no doubt thinking of Amara sitting modestly in the garden beside Pliny who introduced them.

“I promise you there was nothing between us,” she says, knowing what he’s imagining.

“Even if there were,” Rufus says, with a tight smile. “If he was paying, who am I to complain? My father tells me I’m absurdly sensitive over it. It’s not like I didn’t know where you came from.”

The thought of Rufus being advised by his father Hortensius—with his hard, grasping hands and harder eyes—is not one that brings Amara much comfort. “There was nothing,” she repeats.

“Little bird,” Rufus says, affecting a knowing demeanour that does not yet suit him. “I walked past the place once. I know exactly where you used to live.”

“You walked past it? When?”

“When I first started seeing you.” He shudders. “I came home afterward and resolved never to send for you again, but then I kept imagining your funny, hopeful little face. How disappointed you might be.”

“You knew what the place was like,” Amara repeats stupidly, still unable to imagine how Rufus left her to suffer in the brothel for so many months after he had seen it.

He mistakes the cause of her confusion, and his face grows colder. “I’ve always known,” he says. “Did you think I wouldn’t be curious, after you went to such pains to hide where you lived? But I told myself the place hadn’t touched you. Which I now understand was too much to expect.”

It is, perhaps, the politest way a man has ever called a woman a whore. The waiter arrives before Amara has the chance to think of a reply. The man fusses, laying down more food, collecting dishes, but she is aware of Rufus’s eyes on her, not distracted by the movement going on between them. His judgment makes her angry. She imagines his reaction if she stood up and declared her love for Philos, if she told Rufus his slave is a hundred times more of a man than he will ever be. The words can never be said aloud, but even thinking them makes her feel better.