Mistress of Rome

by Kate Quinn

  A lovely evening, Paulinus,” Lepida yawned as they climbed out of the litter. “Have a drink before you head back to your barracks.”

  “I’ll just look in on Sabina.”

  “As you like.”

  Sabina was fast asleep, curled around a straw-stuffed horse, eyes tight shut. Smiling, Paulinus smoothed the hair out of her eyes and then slipped back into the hall.

  The house was dark and quiet, the slaves long gone to bed. The smell of jasmine drifted up from the atrium on the hot summer night. Paulinus felt his way down the back stairs, down the hall, past the library. And as he passed the last room—his stepmother’s room—the door eased open. He reached out to close it, and stopped.

  His stepmother stood by the bed, her back to the door. A pile of discarded sapphires gleamed on the bedside table, and her hair was a loose black sheet down her back. He hadn’t realized what beautiful hair she had.

  She stretched languidly, and the light from the single lamp played over her white arms. Her blue silk robe had slipped off one shoulder, and as she gave a little ripple of her back it slipped off the other and drifted down to settle over the floor.

  Paulinus closed the door. And his eyes. He took a step back, stumbled into a vase, grabbed it hastily to keep it from falling, and knocked over a statue of a bathing Aphrodite. The crash was appallingly loud. He took off down the hall.

  He went to see her the next day. Only the proper thing to do. Hadn’t his father asked him to look after her? He was just following orders.

  “Paulinus!” She stretched out a soft hand. “To what do I owe the honor?” She wore Nile-green silk with a single massive pearl at her forehead and another on her hand.

  He found himself stuttering.

  “Nervous?” She led him into the atrium, sinking down into the cushions of her couch. “Why? Going to visit that singer, maybe?”

  He reddened. “No—I—well, that is—”

  “Really, I don’t know what you see in her.” Gesturing him to sit. “Years ago she used to be my personal slave.”

  “But—you said that you’d never met her.”

  “I lied.” Lepida rang for wine and refreshments. “She’s cleaned up since those days, but she’s still the same little whore. Wine?”

  “Um. Thank you.” He looked at his stepmother as she leaned forward to pour him a goblet. He had never imagined Lepida’s soft mouth saying words like that.

  “Oh, yes,” Lepida continued casually, stretching a pale arm along the cushions. “She serviced every man in the house, including my father. Including your father. Sweetmeats,” she added to the slave who appeared in the doorway.

  “My father?” Paulinus choked on his wine. “But—he never—he doesn’t—not slaves. It’s not his way. He wouldn’t think it was fair.” How had he gotten himself into this conversation? It wasn’t fitting.

  “Oh, I imagine it was her idea. A few smiles, a few sidelong glances—the same way she hooked you, I imagine.” Lepida dropped her pointed little chin into the palm of her hand. “ Just think, Paulinus. You and your father have shared the same girl . . .”

  He stared at his stepmother. Her perfume wove through his nose. Some strong musky scent. Her fingertips glided along his knee.

  He jumped to his feet. “I should go.” His voice sounded hoarse in his own ears.

  She tilted her head to look up at him, her blue eyes calm. “Guard duty?” she said, and the husky note in her voice was gone. If it had ever been there at all. “What a pity. Do say good-bye to Sabina before you go, or she’ll mewl all day.”

  Lepida stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against his cheek. A step-motherly kiss.

  He still flinched.

  LEPIDA

  OH, excellent! He was nervous already. Wondering just what was going on. Let him wonder.

  He really was handsome. Tall and straight and sun-browned, a direct gaze, black hair that curled vigorously no matter how hard he tried to flatten it down. He’d look like Marcus when he was old, but he was young now. Young and strong, and there was no hump on his shoulder. Yes, quite handsome. I’d never noticed before, until I saw Thea draped all over him . . . and it had all given me the most marvelous idea.

  Paulinus didn’t come see me for nearly a week. Dull days. The slaves were irritable. The shops were closed due to some dreary holiday. The skies clouded over in the first hint of fall, turning the famous blue harbor into gray slate. Sabina moped, running to the window every time she heard a horse outside. “’Linus promised he’d play with me,” she sighed.

  “He’s playing with me now,” I explained. “Grown men like Paulinus don’t play with little girls.”

  “But he promised.”

  “Men are liars, Sabina. Now go away.” I gave her a swift clip around the ear, and she fled wailing. Children really are tiresome.

  Boring days, but I survived. All part of the plan. I counted four days, then made sure to bump into Paulinus just outside his barracks.

  He was bare-chested and sweaty in a training kilt, just come from exercising. When he saw me, he halted as if he’d hit a wall. “What are you doing here?”

  “How rude, but I’ll overlook it. I’m going to Senator Halco’s banquet tomorrow—the last good party of the season, and I need an escort. Pick me up tonight.”

  “I—”

  Drifting closer, I wiped his forehead with my bare hand and surveyed the film of perspiration on my fingertips. “Goodness. All sweaty.”

  I left him standing there, looking after me. Stunned, no doubt, and wondering how it all happened.

  ALL dressed up,” Verus whistled when Paulinus emerged in white lawn synthesis and signet ring. “Who’s the lucky lady? Athena?” “Lepida.” It popped out of his mouth before he could stop it.

  “That is, my stepmother asked me—I’m escorting her to a banquet this evening. That’s what I meant.”

  Had Verus given him an odd look as he backed out the door?

  “Paulinus,” Lepida greeted him, gliding across the marble floor. Scarlet silk draped against every curve of her body, and a single massive ruby gleamed at her throat. Her eyes were outlined in kohl, her lips colored carmine. He wondered how he could ever have seen her as childlike.

  The banquet was all bright lights and bright gowns, loud voices and louder music. Hired dancers and acrobats, a blur to his eyes. Roast flamingo and dormice rolled in honeyed poppy seeds; all ashes in his mouth. Lepida shared his dining couch, laughing and flirting and talking with everyone except him. But under cover of her stola, under cover of her conversation, her foot caressed his.

  “Senator, how delightful! Do show me—” She reached across Paulinus’s back to examine Senator Halco’s sapphire ring, and her breath whispered across his neck.

  “Lady Cornelia, your hair! However did you manage those curls—” She turned over for a better look, and the tips of her breasts brushed his shoulder.

  He remembered nothing about the banquet. Nothing but his father’s wife making love to him in a thousand tiny ways.

  “A delightful party,” she enthused as they streamed out of the house with the other guests. Dawn lurked around the corner, but, she was still bright-eyed. “To think I thought Brundisium was going to be boring. I haven’t had so much fun in years.” Her fingers kneaded his arm.

  He handed her up into the litter. She arranged the folds of her stola, allowing him a glimpse of bare white ankle, and he was helplessly certain that she wore nothing at all under the clinging silk.

  She shot him a glance under black lashes. “You’ll take me home, of course.”

  “I’ve got guard duty in two hours.”

  “Skip it.”

  “I can’t. My centurion—”

  “You’d leave me alone in the small hours of the night, just to avoid a scolding from your centurion?” Blinking innocently. “Whatever would your father say?”

  Father.

  His father, bent and quiet and kind-eyed. Lepida may look lovely and worldly, but she’s still very yo
ung . . . watch over her for me.

  Paulinus wanted to die.

  “Climb in.” Lepida flung herself back against the cushions. “I’m getting cold.”

  He climbed in.

  She tapped the side of the litter. It swayed like a ship as the bearers rose and lurched out into the street. She twitched the green silk curtains shut, cutting off the light from the streetlamps and turning the litter into a dim shadowed box. Paulinus crammed himself into the far corner, blood pounding in his own ears.

  “So silent, Paulinus.” Her voice had an even greater effect in the dark. “Too much wine?”

  “No,” he managed. “Against the rules, before guard duty.”

  “Do you always follow the rules?” Her sharp-nailed little hand found his wrist.

  “Yes,” he clipped. “It’s safer.”

  “Oh, but safe is so boring. Safe is so . . . safe.” Her painted mouth found his.

  Her arms twined around his neck like snakes, and her teeth drew blood from his lip. But when he leaned in toward her she tugged back, teasing his lips with her tongue, working her belly against his. He kissed her with a stifled groan, ripping the silk away from her breasts with shaking fingers. She wrenched his tunic up, her legs twining around his hips as her musky scent twined through his brain, and as he fell into her he felt her smile.

  Afterward he turned his back. He wanted to die.

  “Well, I do believe we’re home.” Lepida pulled her red stola around her naked body and slipped down out of the litter. “Coming, Paulinus?”

  “Don’t,” he said dully. “Don’t.”

  “Coming?”

  He looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed pink, her eyes sparkling, her milky throat rising out of the torn stola like a flower stem. She grinned, tongue flickering over her lips, and he felt a dull ache on his shoulder where she had left bite marks.

  “Yes.” The word was as heavy as lead in his mouth. “I’m coming.”

  He followed her into the house like a dog.

  Eleven

  THERE was a boat, Paulinus knew, that carried the souls of the dead to the underworld. A dark boat rowed by a grinning, skull-faced ferryman. Paulinus’s own boat was a bed, white and airy and beautiful as a cloud, and the lovely black-haired girl who stroked the oars in it was carrying him to hell faster than any skeletal ferryman.

  “You know how many men I’ve had?” Lepida rippled her back under Paulinus’s hands. “I started with a gladiator when I was fifteen, so I wouldn’t have to go to your father a virgin bride. I told your father the bruises came from falling down the bathhouse steps, and he believed me. What a fool!”

  “Don’t say that,” Paulinus muttered. “He’s not a fool. He’s brilliant—and he’s honorable—and he’s everything I’ve ever wanted to be, so don’t—”

  “You want to be an ugly hunchback?”

  “Don’t insult him.” Paulinus was shaking. “Don’t you dare—”

  “Oh, the dutiful son rears his ugly head. Well, dutiful son, if you love your father that much, then get out of my bed.”

  She was sprawled on her side, the sheets pushed down around her hips, her hair half-covering and half-revealing her breasts, her mouth parted in a smile. He couldn’t move.

  “I didn’t think so.” She slid down onto her back and crooked a finger at him. “Come.”

  He came.

  LEPIDA

  I could make Paulinus come to me just by twitching an eyebrow. I could sink my nails into his back and watch him arch up in agony and ecstasy. I could bite him and caress him, and whether it was pleasure or pain he came back for more. Paulinus the immaculate, the good; Paulinus the soldier, the saint; Paulinus my stepson: enmeshed and enslaved and utterly under my spell.

  How wonderful.

  What fun it was, making him dance to my tune. I made him brush my hair and oil my back, I made him run my errands and carry my parcels. I kept him waiting in uncomfortable places, summoned him and sent him away again, pouted when he shouted at me and giggled when he wept. I made a tryst with one of his friends at the Praetorian barracks and summoned Paulinus to catch us in the act, feeling his eyes behind the crack of the door hating me as I moaned and writhed under another man—and that night he still came crawling back. Who would have thought that men tortured by guilt could be so much fun?

  “Skip guard duty,” I commanded when he pulled away and reached for his breastplate.

  “I can’t.”

  “I said, skip guard duty.” I spider-walked my fingers up his spine and laughed as he came back to bed with a groan. He missed quite a few of his Praetorian duties, thanks to me. And then he missed his punishment details.

  “This has to stop,” he muttered thickly. “It’s wrong—shameful—”

  “Oh, but that’s what makes it fun. If you want someone tame, run back to that sticklike singer of yours and see if she can squeeze you into her busy, busy schedule.”

  He glowered at me helplessly, but he didn’t run back to Thea. Oh, no. I was better than Thea. Finally someone had realized that.

  NOT here!” Paulinus pushed me away as I drew him off behind a garden statue at a dinner party.

  “Why not?” I flexed my fingers along his chest.

  “They’ll—they’ll see!” Not so far off were the sounds of well-bred laughter and soft joking, footsteps and rustling gowns. “If they catch us—”

  “Isn’t that part of the fun? Doesn’t it . . . excite you?”

  He opened his mouth in horror, but I snaked upward to suck on his lip and draw his hand inside my stola, and there was no more argument.

  We weren’t caught. But we could have been, and what a scandal it would be! A senator’s wife and her stepson? The laughter would follow Marcus all the way into the Senate. “Did you hear about Norbanus’s wife? Yes, the fool left her alone in Brundisium and now the son is doing his father’s work for him!”

  Oh, yes, that was exactly what they’d say. As I never hesitated to tell Paulinus.

  “You’ll ruin him, you know.” I leaned back on my elbows, tracing my toes over the small of Paulinus’s back as he pulled away from me. “His career. His writing. His standing in Rome. All gone.” I snapped my fingers. “Marcus Norbanus, cuckolded by his own son. It would destroy him.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” His voice was muffled.

  “I think you do. Fascinating, isn’t it? You won’t give me up for your own father.” I coiled myself against his back, reaching around to smooth my hands over his chest. “What if he walked in right now? What if he saw the two of us together like this?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Imagine his face.” I put my lips very close to Paulinus’s ear. “He limps in, tired from a long day. All he wants is to kiss his lovely wife and invite his beloved son over to dinner. And what does he find? His beloved son riding his lovely wife, rutting with her, right in his own bed, so close he can hear them both moan—”

  Paulinus wrenched away, knocking me back against the sheets, and swung around with his fist raised.

  “Are you going to hit me?” I murmured. “Oh, do. I might enjoy it.”

  He faltered. I threw my head back and laughed. He fell on me with a strangled curse. I wound my body around his and branded him with my teeth.

  HE hated her. He hated the leap of triumph in her blue eyes every time his feet dragged him unwillingly toward her bed. He hated her little pink tongue flicking catlike over her lips. He hated the cruel, casual words that fell so easily out of her lovely mouth.

  He couldn’t stay away.

  “You all right, Norbanus?” Verus tossed out at him one evening at the barracks. “You don’t seem yourself these days. That singer giving you hell?”

  Athena. He hadn’t gone to visit her in a month. She seemed cool and colorless beside Lepida’s fiery insolent dash.

  Sabina was wistful. “You never play with me anymore.”

  Centurion Densus was more blunt. “Snap out of it, Norbanus. Or I’ll have you on punishment
detail till Saturnalia.” Centurion Densus was a legend among the Praetorians; graying but still vigorous, a hero who had once fought off a mob in the terrible Year of Four Emperors and saved the life of a young Empress-to-be. Paulinus had looked up to him like a god. Now he couldn’t even meet the centurion’s eyes.

  In his sleep he heard Lepida’s sly whispers. He saw her demure and shy on her wedding day under the red veil; saw her shameless and hopelessly tempting on his father’s bed. She lived under his skin like a thorn.

  “You hate me, don’t you?” she asked suddenly one evening after he’d finished in sweat and despair.

  He turned his face away.

  “Yes, you do. Whatever for?” She propped her chin on her hand. “Because I’ve cost you your honor? What a bore. Why is it always the woman’s fault if a man loses his honor?”

  “No,” he jerked. “My fault.”

  “Well, at least you’re honest.” She curled her finger around his ear.

  “So if it’s your fault you’ve lost your honor—such a quaint phrase!—then why hate me?”

  “Because you don’t care,” he said baldly.

  “Neither do you, darling.” She pinched his earlobe between her lacquered nails. “Or else you’d leave me right now. And you can’t, can you?”

  He opened his mouth—and paused. The pause stretched out into minutes.

  “Didn’t think so.” She crooked a slender white ankle around his chin. “Kiss my foot, Paulinus.”

  He bent his head, pressed his lips against her instep—and saw his father’s eyes. Her skin tasted like honey and betrayal.

  THE letter fluttered from his hand, and his stomach rushed into his mouth. He barely made it to the lavatorium, throwing up again and again.