When Gambling (Love and Warfare Series Book 2)

by Anne Garboczi Evans

  Which tale of Greek or Roman legend was this? “Eric – ” She looked at him and the question died on her lips. She’d forgotten; he hated her now.

  Back turned to her, in the triclinium, which only a few marble columns separated from the atrium, Eric smashed a crate down by a pile of others. Seizing a crowbar, he ripped the wood open. Then he nearly tore the cabinet behind him in two. As the cabinet’s doors fell back, gold glinted and crystal shone.

  Ripping a tablecloth out of a bottom drawer, Eric threw that in the crate and bashed plates and goblets down inside. He threw spoons and knives willy-nilly on top of those. Grabbing another sheet, he slammed that in and more crystal on it, muttering words like “stulte”, “my father”, and “self-righteous Cretan”.

  Cara ran the tip of her tongue across her lip. He’d break all that crystal and scratch the goblets, yet he looked in no mood for correction. Why? Probably because she’d ruined his life.

  Throwing the crate’s lid on, Eric slammed the nails back in place with heavy blows.

  Dirty water droplets clung to Cara’s hands as she crossed the damp atrium floor, her bare feet cold against the tile. The columns separating the triclinium from the atrium loomed large in front of her. She rested her hand on one. The chiseled rose blossoms dug into her skin, cold as winter. “Eric.”

  “What?” With a grunt, he kicked the box out of the way. The box’s contents clattered against each other as he ripped open the lid to another crate.

  “I….”

  “What?” He slammed more things into the next crate, even faster, and with less care.

  She dropped her gaze to the dirty tile. “Nothing.”

  Several hours later, she’d scrubbed the atrium until it shone. Eric had hauled two wagons into the courtyard. Abandoning filthy cleaning rags, she walked outside, her bare feet crunching dried leaves.

  The overcast sky allowed only the faint glow of failing daylight into the little courtyard. He had the first wagon full of furniture and crates. Heaving a couch up into the narrow space left at the back, he cinched it down with rope. Then he seized a massive crate. Veins popping, he heaved it up on top of the couch and let go.

  With a smash even Eric couldn’t ignore, the contents of the box cracked.

  He hauled the crate back out, slammed it on the courtyard, and ripped the lid open. Broken crystal reflected off a deep blue tablecloth.

  Cara stifled a groan. He stood only a few paces in front of her, so he’d hear her if she groaned, but that much crystal must have cost a small fortune. What remained should be repacked. With care.

  Eric kicked the crate, probably breaking more ornate tableware. “Splendid. Now my father can blame me for this as well.”

  Resting her hand on the villa’s brick wall, Cara hesitated. “If they are wrapped individually in linens, or even dry leaves, they won’t break.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that at first?” Whipping a knife out, he slit the ropes binding the furniture. With two hands, he yanked down a massive oak table, smashed it on the courtyard, grabbed a couch off, threw it down, and hauled up another crate from where it had rested beneath them.

  She touched her gaze to the cobblestones, her voice a whisper. “I tried to.”

  Sturdy sandal crashing against the cobblestones, he halted. He stared at her, crate suspended in midair.

  Her hands trembled, heart racing.

  A look of wonder in his eyes, Eric shook his head. “You are so different than the women in my family.”

  The autumn wind blew hair tendrils across her face. Different, as in not good enough?

  “You should hear Gwen and my mother sear my ears off.”

  “So?” Her voice was a whisper.

  He thudded the box to the ground and slammed his body down on it. “Reveal how this is done before I break every piece of crystal in my father’s villa.” Gaze on her, he quirked one eyebrow up.

  She stared at him.

  He laughed at her, his brown eyes lighting with the rumble. “You should say things when you want to.”

  Ha! She’d seared Conan’s ears once, and hadn’t liked the results. She wasn’t about to attempt the experiment with a Hercules-sized patrician who could divorce her as easily as he married her, or make her wish he’d divorced her.

  A few days later, the trunk of a walnut tree made a sliver of shade between the two of them as they sat in the villa’s courtyard, five wagons now completely loaded, house clean. Cara rubbed the oily skin of a walnut between her thumb and forefinger. “What’s next?”

  Evening air clung to the last of the day’s warmth.

  “Next?” From his seat on the courtyard’s stone wall, Eric leaned back against raised earth and smiled at her.

  His smile lent her courage for the question she’d pondered for days, ever since she’d seen the legate tear his pen through those marriage papers. “Will we go back to your familia in Camulodunum?”

  “My father and I aren’t on speaking terms, so no.”

  Speaking terms? Surely that didn’t mean disinherited because Conan had said thousands would starve this winter.

  “I’ll find work.”

  “Your father will help you then, secure you a political post?” Plebeian-born men learned trades. Patricians did not. Patrician men either invested the hordes of money they inherited from fathers or took political positions gained through fathers’ influence.

  Eric snorted. “Ha! If none of the military or political positions will look at me without his backing, though, I can always turn my hand to the plebeian jobs. Might be more interesting work anyway.”

  “That’s impossible. There’s no work to be had this year.” Fear shook through Cara’s hands. The legate had disinherited Eric, and they had a baby coming.

  “Says who?”

  “Conan.” And Victor, and that woman with the little girl, and everyone. Her blood ran as cold as the autumn air.

  “Your almost-betrothed?” Eric clenched his fingers around the stone wall.

  Oh, maybe she shouldn’t have said his name. Conan also said bodies would line the street this winter. She shivered. “Your father – ”

  “I’ve no wish to speak of him.”

  “My father – ”

  “Or him.”

  No wonder Eric hated her. She’d lost him his inheritance because he defied his father’s wishes to marry her. If he starved, it’d be her fault. “I’m sorry that I created all this.”

  “It’s not your fault. You were drunk. Me, too.”

  Drunk? He hadn’t seemed drunk. He’d spoken clearly, and he’d only tasted faintly of wine. Then again, she had very little experience kissing drunken men. Is that why he’d been so rough?

  Drunk. If he used drunkenness as an excuse, did that mean he hadn’t planned to do it? She turned her gaze to him. “If you were sober, would you have, well, you know?”

  “Of course not. It’s wrong.”

  Wrong? The cold air pierced her lungs. He couldn’t mean this was the first time. “Victor said you had before, with another girl.”

  “Victor’s a liar.”

  Eric had moral convictions and she’d violated them when he’d been drunk and she sober. Cara gripped the cold granite wall. She really was a harlot.

  “Anyway, despite the fact that drunkenness is no excuse to my father, it is to me.”

  She chafed her chapped palms against each other. “I wasn’t – ”

  He touched her hand, gently, his skin warm against hers.

  Now that she knew the manhandling of last time came from drunkenness, she’d gladly accept the offer her Adonis husband made in that muddy field earlier this week.

  “Let it rest. It’s not as if I think you purposed to seduce me and entrap me in marriage.”

  Her heart pounded in her chest. “And if you did think I purposed it?” She wanted to tell him the whole truth, but should she?

  He brushed the hair from her cheek. “Don’t speak lunacy. You were almost betrothed. You’re not a harlot.”
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  She recoiled from his touch. That was the kind of person who did what she had done? All Camulodunum agreed. She herself, too, and now she could never tell him. She ran her finger over granite. “You think you’ll be able to find work without your familia’s aid?”

  “Just because I’m not your carpenter, doesn’t mean I’m incompetent.” Eric’s tone rose so fiercely, she jerked her gaze up to his face. The lines of Eric’s cheekbones stretched taut, his jaw hard.

  “I never meant to imply you were.”

  Flinging himself off the wall, Eric strode inside.

  The downpour outside scarcely looked brighter than night, but morning must have arrived because her stomach screamed for food. Cara rolled out of bed and a wax tablet fell to the tile below. She picked it up.

  Fresh letters scrawled across the wax. There was a P. That was an A. There was a T. Paterculi. She’d memorized how to read his name back in Maius. A note from Eric then, and she didn’t know how to read.

  Tugging on her shoes, Cara crossed the atrium to Eric’s room. It lay empty, the wool coverlet shoved down to the bottom of the bed, his cloak and sandals gone.

  She straightened the coverlet and glanced around. Eric’s short sword and scabbard, which had leaned against the wall just yesterday, were absent. She hadn’t seen him since he strode away from the courtyard, furious.

  Fear pierced to her marrow. What if Eric had left her? Her boots made a clapping sound as she ran through the empty atrium, no scrap of furniture or tapestry left.

  “Eric.” No answer.

  She slipped on the fields’ chaff and stubble. Rain poured around her, drenching her.

  Her gaze darted to the creek where they had sat. Raindrops splattered against the running water. A deer ambled across the far edge of the field and bent its neck to the stream. Her heart pounded as she ran through the line of apple trees to the fields beyond them. Puddles sloshed up around her ankles, soaking her boots.

  “Eric!” No answer. Her limbs shook.

  What about the stables? She dashed across abandoned fields to the wood structure.

  The door swung open at her touch. On either side of the stables, horses bent down over full managers, gripping straw between their big lips.

  She glanced at the first stall on the left. Straw stared back at her. Hadn’t a black stallion stood in that stall yesterday? Cold chills ran underneath her sopping clothes.

  Something rustled in the back of the building. Cara ran forward.

  Blue face markings and a spiraled tattoo confronted her. A man in barbaric trousers, one of those guards who’d sat by the fire on the day they arrived, leaned over a horse trough.

  “Where’s Eric?”

  The guttural sound of Celtic words came from his tongue. He pointed out the door to the rusted gate.

  Her gaze followed his finger past the locked gate to the structure beyond it.

  The guard shack! “Gratias.” She could have thrown her arms around the man. Turning, she tore toward the glow of the firelight. Eric would have had to tell the leader of the guards his plans.

  Rain poured down around her as the locked gate refused to budge. Gripping the cold metal, she dug her boots between the iron curlicues. Skin soaked now, she swung her left leg over the topmost slat and jumped. Her hem caught on a nail above as she fell.

  Mud splashed up against her body, her hair cascading down, but she struggled up and ran.

  Four men crouched around a fire in the center of the guard shack. A bronze torque circled one man’s neck. Two others wore only barbaric trousers and strange tattoos mingled with the jagged scars on their bare chests, marking years in the life of a sword-for-hire.

  Hand on the doorframe now, Cara coughed.

  The rough men turned to her. She looked down at herself, mud splattered across her drenched dress, her hair falling in pieces down her shoulders, the skirt of her dress torn.

  The broken-nosed leader of the guards walked toward her. “Domina.”

  Domina? That was the name for a married woman, and not just any married woman, but an elite one.

  “You need – ” the leader looked to his guards. They spoke in rapid Celtic. “Help?”

  She nodded. “Where’s Eric?”

  More rapid Celtic words interspersed by Latin here or there as one man would nod and another shake his head. The leader’s broken nose caught the firelight as the downpour outside obscured all sunlight. “Latin tongue, no speak.”

  Out beyond the villa’s fields, some wild creature howled. Cara clenched her fingers, her body shaking as the spell took a grip on her.

  If Eric had abandoned her, she had no one.

  Chapter 16

  Five days. Five days and five sleepless nights since Eric left. Cara paced the villa courtyard.

  Her arms shook, breath coming in gasps as she peered beyond the rusted gate to where morning sunshine lit the dirt road.

  Cold sweat soaked her dress.

  What if he’d divorced her?

  The thoughts beat against her. Of course he left you. He never wanted you. As if anyone would want you now.

  No! Eric had to come back. Soon. In two more days, new owners would claim this villa. What would she do then?

  They’d kick her out.

  She’d starve in these abandoned woods!

  It wasn’t as if she could ever show her face in Camulodunum again after this.

  The shame, oh the shame.

  Father’s shop would bear the price of it, too. If a not-yet-born baby had destroyed Father’s profits, what would a patrician’s divorce and ill-will do?

  Chaff blew up in the wind as she pounded toward the stables. She glanced into the foremost stall. Still no horse.

  Cold wind blew through her uncovered hair. Cara tugged down her sleeves, but the gusts slithered up over the hen-flesh bumps on her arms.

  Hoofbeats thundered in the distance. She whipped around. As a cloud of dust moved toward her from the south, a single horse and rider emerged from it.

  She squinted. She knew those sturdy shoulders, the cut of that brown hair, the color of that cloak. Eric.

  Back. No divorce. Her thundering heart flopped to rest, but if she’d enraged him enough to leave, what words would he have for her at his return?

  A Celtic guard bounded from the guard shack and swung the gate open. Eric thundered through.

  Cara pressed back against the stable wall, gaze lowered.

  A pace from her, he yanked the stallion’s reins. The horse reared to a halt. Eric gripped the saddle pommel and flung himself off the horse on her side.

  The dust of a journey collected on his tunic, his short sword hanging from his belt, his cheekbones grime-smeared. He looked at her.

  Cara held her breath. Would he yell at her like Conan had? Worse? She wasn’t quite sure her infraction, but he must have considered it grievous since he’d stormed away that evening after they spoke, then left for five days.

  “I did the impossible.”

  Cara dug her elbows into her waist as she shrunk back against the rough wood. “Did what?”

  Bending, Eric snagged the clasp connecting the saddle’s girth. He yanked the saddle off and slung the heavy leather over his shoulder. “Found work.”

  That’s why he’d left? Not anger at her, but to find work? Her arms sagged as she drew in a breath. “Where?”

  “Londinium.” Eric closed his big hand over the reins and led the steed inside the stable. Sunshine poured through the open door behind him. Eric threw the saddle over the stable door and led the horse into the first stall.

  Her boots scuffed across the ground as she followed him. A bale of hay sat on Eric’s side of the horse. Avoiding the horse’s legs, she entered the other side of the stall, the horse’s high back separating her from Eric. She fingered the slick wood of the stable wall as she looked over the horse’s withers.

  Rounding the stall in front of the stallion’s head, Eric walked between her and the horse. He grabbed a horsecloth off a hook above her.<
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  As he passed back between her and the horse, he skimmed his palm across her cheek. “You’re comely.”

  She jerked her gaze up, but he passed underneath the horse’s head and ran the cloth down the stallion’s sweat-caked neck.

  Comely, scarcely the word of an enraged man. Cara tangled her fingers around each other. Her nails pressed into her flesh. “Are you angry with me?”

  As Eric ran the cloth down the stallion’s moist sides, his brown-eyed gaze met hers. He shook his head. “Why?”

  Oh, thank heaven. She ducked under the horse’s head and slid her hand into his free one. His wind-chapped skin rubbed against her hand, the warmth of his body seeping into hers. He clasped his fingers around hers. She opened her mouth.

  Eric dropped the cloth and slid his other arm around her waist, drawing her in front of him. His dark lips parted in a smile. “What, Cara, champion of tabula?”

  The muscles of his arm felt warm against her back. His fingers wove between hers. A smile trembled on her lips. “I missed you.”

  Leaning forward, Eric brushed his mouth against hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him.

  Cold wind blew through the stable door as sunlight turned to shadows. Eric parted his mouth from hers and she shuddered.

  He sank down on the hay bale. Reaching for her hand, he tugged her down next to him. Her knees felt weak as she followed the pressure of his arm. Did he wish to talk? If only she could tell him the truth about how she’d been sober that night. If he brought that up again, she’d have to lie or else Eric would rage and leave.

  They sat so close her dress flapped against his knee and she shivered.

  With a tug at the clasp of his cloak, Eric spread the cloth around her. The fabric billowed around her legs as he slid his arm around her back. She tilted her gaze up to his. For the first time since she’d stopped him on that festival street, his eyes looked at peace.

  Arm still around her, he leaned back against the wood and looked at her.

  His arm felt solid as it crossed from her shoulder blades to her waist, lending his warmth to her, but as much as she wished to, she didn’t quite dare lean back. With her thumb, she rubbed a crease out of her skirt. “What kind of work?”