“Perhaps you could get posh boy to take you back to Greece in that case,” Felix says, his tone brisk. “Though not before you’ve paid me.”

“Would you pursue me over the sea?”

“I would pursue you anywhere. When did I ever forget what I’m owed?”

“Then it’s as well I have a rich patron to pay you off.” Amara shrugs, not wanting him to see that he has unsettled her. “Rufus says Victoria has a delightful singing voice. She performed for him and his friends at dinner the other night.”

“Is that supposed to make me jealous?” Felix laughs. “You think I’m going to care if other men fuck a woman I rented out to all comers as a whore? They’re welcome to her. Especially since I got twice what she’s worth.”

Amara thinks of Victoria breaking her heart over this man. If her own recklessness achieves nothing else, she will at least have spared Victoria from untold brutality. “You don’t deserve her. You never did.”

“I could say the same. Why posh boy decided to pay over the odds for you, I cannot imagine.”

“It was the admiral who bought me,” Amara says, answering too quickly and betraying more emotion than she intended.

Felix raises his eyebrows. “And then he left you here for another man. Or will Pliny be sending for you one day, to join him and the fleet in Misenum? No? I didn’t think so.” Amara says nothing. She has seen Felix with his clients, the way he unspools their lives, tugging at threads, groping his way to the weak points. No doubt he can sense her vulnerability now, even if the exact cause eludes him. “You told me posh boy was violent. What a little liar you are.”

“Perhaps he is.”

“He will be if he’s wise. It’s the only way to control a woman.”

The hatred Amara feels is searing. “Rufus is not a man like you,” she says, even though she is no longer sure if that is wholly true.

“Let’s hope not,” Felix replies. “And I don’t begrudge you keeping Victoria. I know she’s not the one you really wanted.”

Amara has been waiting for him to mention Dido, to strike where it hurts the most, and forces herself to stay calm. “Where did you bury her ashes?”

“What makes you think I buried her?”

“Because even you cannot have left her on the town rubbish dump. You can’t have done. Not after what Pliny had just paid you for me.”