When Gambling (Love and Warfare Series Book 2)

by Anne Garboczi Evans

  “Never was, but you can be, son. If you have the ambition for it.”

  “I’ve no lack of ambition. I want to rise to the point where we can make demands of the Viri rather than them order us.” Victor stood straighter as he imagined it, the Ocelli name awash with fame and fortune as great as the Paterculis, greater even.

  “You’ll never do all that unless you develop a taste for bloodshed.”

  Victor squirmed inside his tunic.

  Father pushed graying hair out of his eyes. “Coward. Go pay a visit to the Paterculis. Eric’s familia will know where he is.”

  The Nones of Novembris

  The porter, a Celt who barely spoke the Latin tongue, let alone understood patrician politics, showed Victor through the Paterculi gate.

  Parting from the man, Victor slid noiselessly into the atrium. The sound of voices came from the tablinum beyond.

  Hand on the plaster wall, Victor strained his ears.

  A skirt swished inside the room and he saw the profile of a woman with Celtic blond hair. The legate’s wife. “Over a month has passed and no news from Eric or Cara. You shouldn’t have galled him into leaving by threatening to turn him on the streets if he didn’t apologize.”

  No word from Eric? Victor shoved back against the doorway. Could highway bandits have killed him?

  “I didn’t mean it.” The legate’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Eric just infuriated me. I’d not actually deprive my son or his wife and child of aid, no matter how wretched his actions.”

  “Did you offer him any other position than tribune?” The Celtic woman reached out and touched the legate’s hand. “Eric doesn’t have to turn his hand to soldiering or politics.”

  The legate stood stiff. “He’s a Paterculi.”

  “Aquilus.” The Celtic woman’s voice went shrill. “We talked about this. You said, give him one more chance in Dacia and if he still hates it, you’d let him explore other options.”

  “He didn’t hate it.” The legate picked up a scroll. “He wrote a treatise about Dacian war strategy. A remarkably good one I might add. I found it in his room a fortnight ago. He doesn’t have the same natural head for strategy that Wryn does, but he’s much better with people. Earning the loyalty of your soldiers is how you win battles and Eric’s excellent at that.”

  “Which does no one any good because our son could be lying dead on a road somewhere and we’d never know because you threw him out on the streets!” The legate’s wife raised her voice to a tone more befitting the barbaric hordes’ shrieks than a proper domina.

  With a grunt, the legate dropped the scroll into a crate. “Eric’s not going to let himself or Cara get knifed by highway bandits. I’ll say that much for his obsession with physical endurance. Besides, what would you have had me do? Compliment his unjustifiable actions?”

  True, any highway bandit that took on Eric would have met his match. Victor massaged the top of his shoulder, which no longer ached now that Eric and his wrestling bouts had disappeared.

  “You’re right.” The legate’s wife sighed. “Eric did deserve the lecture, but winter’s upon us and they have no money.”

  The legate shrugged. “I instructed my stewards to watch for them. All Eric has to do is make an appearance at any of my properties across this province and ask.”

  The legate’s wife turned her gaze toward her husband. “What if he doesn’t ask?”

  “He’ll ask.”

  Someone touched Victor’s shoulder. “Salve, Victor.”

  Hand leaping to his knife, Victor spun.

  Eric’s sister stood behind him. She had the same curved eyebrows and angled nose as Eric, only more delicate in feminine form. No hairpins bound her raven black hair up as propriety demanded in the presence of an unrelated male. Instead, her hair tumbled free down her back in glistening curls. “I heard you took second at the pentathlon and won first at the footrace.”

  Victor shifted his stance. Of all his siblings, Eric had spoken of Gwen most. She’d not act so congenial if she knew what he intended toward Eric. Why did all Father’s plans hinge on the Paterculis? He’d much rather kidnap a different patrician, but he wanted that position in Rome, and he needed Father’s political sway for it.

  Gwen tilted her chin, the alabaster skin of her neck contrasting with the rich red of her tunica. From the look of her figure, she’d reached marrying age quite a few years ago. The legate should have married her off for political connections years ago, most likely, but the Paterculis never did follow custom. Take the legate’s Celtic wife, or that insanity of a marriage Eric entered into with Cara while ruining his kidnapping plans.

  He’d seen the start of the events that caused that wedding while drowning guilt about his father’s plans for Eric in an amphora of wine. He hadn’t taken the blacksmith’s daughter for that much of a harlot until he’d seen how hard she’d worked to arouse Eric’s interest. If he’d any idea Eric would prove fool enough to marry the girl, he would have put a stop to that until the drug wore off and Eric possessed the capacity to make decisions again.

  “Have you seen Marcellus recently?” Gwen turned her red lips up.

  Yes, two nights ago when Marcellus helped smuggle the largest shipment of the month. The legate’s soldiers had arrived, but a half-hour too late. Marcellus had secured the shipment, but the legionaries held the ship captain for questioning. They had to stop these raids.

  “Have you?”

  Victor shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  “Tell Marcellus I looked for him at the Corneli dinner two nights ago. He promised he’d attend, but he didn’t.”

  Victor nodded. After the backstabbing treachery he intended toward Eric, he could at least relay a message for Eric’s sister. Though, now he considered it, if he wished to do Eric a favor, perhaps he should refuse to pass his sister’s message on.

  “Give Marcellus this, too.” The girl pressed a piece of parchment into his hands.

  With his forefinger, Victor flicked the folded parchment open.

  “Don’t read it!”

  Stepping back from her, he glanced at the rows of ink writing. One line of Sappho’s Greek poem, “Love Shook My Heart” blazed across the page with other words scrawled below. He shoved it back into Gwen’s hands. “Leave Marcellus alone. Trust me, if I’m telling you this, it means something.”

  Gwen opened her mouth, but he turned on his heel. Now he’d have to hunt through town and countryside to find Eric before the legate left for Rome and made blackmail cursedly inconvenient.

  Chapter 18

  “Stack those on their short ends. You can get eleven across instead of ten.” Eric pointed through the dark hold.

  A tattooed man swiped by. “Who made you the overseer?”

  “Or don’t, and make us all stay here until the evening star appears redoing it, again.” Eric shoved the foremost crate tight against the hull.

  Someone should have selected crates based on hull size. They wasted a good pace of barge space and this vessel had the buoyancy to carry at least another thousand libras down the Tamesis.

  The tattooed man muttered oaths but realigned the boxes.

  As the last rays of sunshine sank below the horizon, Eric walked down the gangway. The icy wind penetrated his too-fine cloak and tattered tunic.

  With his perpetual sneer, Atticus Orca held out the denarius that hours of backbreaking work had earned. “You lost me coin this afternoon, rich boy. I bet that ship’s captain last month,” he jerked his thumb toward the east where a ship bumped against the dock, “that you’d not be here when he returned to port.”

  Not last a month? The same words Father had spoken, and as of today, Father had lost that wager.

  “I need to give up gambling before I lose the roof over my head.” Given the gold rings on Atticus Orca’s fingers, that scarcely seemed an imminent danger.

  “Or,” Eric grabbed the denarius, “next time, don’t bet I’ll fail.” Turning on his heel, he headed down cold streets to a now fam
iliar hovel.

  Inside their house, Cara hung the laundry she washed for customers. The door creaked shut behind him.

  She looked up. “Sorry the porridge’s cold. I needed the cauldron to heat water.”

  “I didn’t have to cook it myself. That makes it good by me.” Eric dug a spoon into a bowl of the stuff and swallowed fast to avoid tasting. Cara could cook, but buying food worth eating cost more coin than he made. Still, weevil-laced, unsalted porridge filled the stomach.

  Cara rung out a tunic and hung it over the rope. Her cheeks shone a moist red from the cauldron’s mist. Underneath Cara’s dress, his child rounded her stomach ever so slightly now.

  Her deep brown eyes shone by firelight. She curved her pink lips up. What would she do if he kissed those lips? What if he pressed matters past the few kisses he’d stolen, most of them on the two days this month that he’d not done twelve hours of backbreaking labor?

  Did Cara still miss that blasted carpenter? He’d certainly not done much to recommend himself over the man. They hadn’t starved yet, but most days were a near thing.

  “How were the docks today?”

  Eric groaned. “I loathe this job with a passion I thought reserved for political treatises. I’d gladly read a political treatise right now. Especially for tribune’s pay.”

  Water spilled from a wool blanket as Cara twisted it.

  He sank back into the wall, taking care not to break the poorly-secured boards. He’d gotten the roof patched anyway. “I could have made five hundred denarii a month as a tribune. Five hundred. Do you know what I could do with five hundred denarii right now?”

  Cara dropped her hands from the blanket, her brown eyes tender by firelight. She smiled at him, a wistful smile as if to bring him cheer.

  When he’d translated a memorized section of Homer for her, she’d looked at him too, as enraptured as if he were some renowned scholar like Wryn. She seemed to admire him, Eric Paterculi. Him?

  She’d fallen into hysterics over starvation, then, when he’d said he wouldn’t let it happen, she’d turned her big eyes to him, full of trust, and she’d cried no more. She treated him as if he were invincible. It was a strange feeling. Father always thought him less capable than he was, and then this girl he’d married thought he could scale mountains.

  When she slipped her fingers into his hand and looked up into his eyes as if he could soar on eagle’s wings, he liked it. Would she still look at him like that if he kissed her, and more? Maybe she would turn her gaze away, as back in that villa field when she’d chosen scrubbing rather than him.

  A wave of exhaustion swept over him. Full moon tonight, which meant if he showed up four hours before dawn and stayed until sunset, he could get one-and-a-half pay. He might be able to make double if Atticus Orca was short men. The feast of Jupiter occurred today. At least half the men had left early because of it, which meant long nights at the tavern and many absent laborers tomorrow, and that he should get some sleep.

  As his eyelids slid shut, something flickered in his wits. That night, at the farmhouse, after Victor had thrust wine into his hand, a slave girl had walked in. Victor had grown angry.

  Eric strained his wits. No more images came. Ah well, Cara had already told him what transpired that night, though he did wish he could remember it.

  The next thing he knew, the rising moon penetrated the flimsy walls. Cara curled up beside him, her shoulders pressed to his chest. In sleep, she twisted, shifting her cloak. He tugged the cloth tighter around her.

  He traced her lips with a finger. He really would have done something about progressing beyond kissing her by now if he was half sure she’d like it. Though Cara kissed him many times, the only actual words she’d spoken on the matter were that the carpenter’s shop was better than here and how unpleasant that night when their baby came into existence was.

  Standing, Eric grabbed his cloak and headed for the docks.

  The overcast sky faded into the darkness of night as Eric strode down the streets on his way home from the docks. Bone-chilling blasts of dank air ripped through his cloak.

  Cara headed down the street toward him, a basket under her arm. When her gaze lit on him, she ran forward. “Eric!” She flung her arms around his neck.

  Odysseus, after twenty years abroad, had never received such homecoming jubilation as Cara showed him every night. She acted as if he were some Greek god, which she’d soon discover false, but as long as it lasted, he’d take it. Eric’s cloak fell open, letting numbing air in, but he slid his arm around her waist and felt more than warm. He lowered his mouth toward her.

  Cara jerked back, gaze focused on the shreds of linen half-covering his chest. “This isn’t a tunic anymore. It’s just threads.” She ran her hand down the cloth. It disintegrated beneath her fingers and her hand touched his skin.

  “I know.” He wouldn’t mind if she did that again.

  “Aren’t you cold at the docks?”

  “Very.” Eric slipped his cold-blistered hands around her waist again. If she’d look up, he’d kiss her and then see what she did next.

  Cara stepped back. “The market shops are just closing. I was headed to buy grain. Perchance we’ll have enough left for wool so I can weave you a new tunic.”

  Doubtful, and not nearly as entertaining a thought as kissing her, but he nodded and turned toward the marketplace. Cara walked by his side, the wool of her hood pulled far over her head. Hide lined the interior of her cloak, making it sturdy enough to last this winter anyway. Eventually, she’d need new clothes, and the baby depended on him, too.

  Eric’s steady breaths made mist in the biting air. This spring, if Roman might prevailed, as it no doubt would, Emperor Trajan would win the war against Decabulus, and capture the Dacian gold mines. Balbinus Maximus’ secretary had said an enterprising trader could make a good profit from trading gold to the provinces. The question was, how could he involve himself in trade?

  “Here, look.” Cara grabbed his arm, directing his attention to a stall where full skeins of wool hung from wooden beams.

  An affable man held forth a skein and named a price, ten times higher than all the money they possessed.

  With a groan, Eric turned away.

  Cara grabbed the edge of his cloak, tugging it away to reveal his shredded tunic. “You can’t wear this anymore.”

  Eric dragged his cloak back over his almost bare chest. “I can if I must.”

  “I have this, used, but still good wear in it.” The shopkeeper tugged out a folded cloth. Shaking out the blue wool the Celts wove, the man held up a long-sleeved jerkin and barbarian trousers. “I’ll give the clothes to you for what you can afford because no Celts frequent my stall, and I’ve been failing for two months to interest a Roman in it.”

  Cara stretched her eyes wide. “That’s because Romans don’t wear trousers. It’s uncivilized. Even Roman legionaries don’t.”

  A blistering wind blew through the marketplace, penetrating the all too fine fabric of Eric’s cloak. “I’ll take it.” Wearing that, he’d be mocked by any Roman who laid eyes on him.

  “But Eric,” she turned her brown eyes toward him, “only barbarians wear trousers.”

  “It’s cheap and I’m freezing and I do not care.” Much. He dropped the coins into the man’s hand. Snow dusted down around them, falling on his hair and face. Unfastening his cloak, Eric grabbed the jerkin.

  His hands lingered on the cloth. He’d heard a tale once about a company of Roman soldiers who, after Germanians took them prisoner, escaped. Rather than suffer the indignity of arriving at the garrison in trousers, they’d marched back naked.

  He’d not freeze to death for Roman prejudice. Eric pulled the jerkin down over the tatters of his tunic and yanked the trousers up over his ripped leg wrappings.

  Cara ran her gaze over the grime that no doubt streaked across his unshaven face, down to the Celtic lacing on his new jerkin. Lowering further, her stare fixed on the trousers, which no self-respecting Roman would
let touch his legs.

  Eric grinned at her and threw back his shoulders, exposing his body to her perusing gaze. “Behold, the look of warmth.”

  She laughed, the sound bubbling up through the dank air like sunshine in the midst of gray.

  He grabbed her hand. “Come, there’re more snow clouds above.”

  Eric pushed the hovel’s door inward. The fire’s warmth leaped up to greet them. Cold porridge, crunchy from weevils, sat in bowls to the right.

  Bending forward, Cara clasped her stomach. “I feel like everything’s churning.”

  “Maybe if you sit down it’ll help.” Eric yanked the pallet closer to the fire.

  Her face glowed and she straightened up. “The babe kicked.”

  Moving behind her, Eric ran his hand across her midsection. Her skin stretched for an instant and a flutter pushed his hand. “She did kick!”

  “He, and have you given thought to what you will name your son?” Swiveling on her heel, Cara looked up, her body so close to his. A dancing light sparkled in her eyes, and she arched her shoulder, jutting out the curve of her stomach.

  “It’s going to be a girl, so I won’t need no boy’s name.” He could so easily slip his hand from her midsection to around her waist and then slide it down further still.

  “Son.”

  “Daughter.” The baby stopped kicking, but he didn’t remove his hand.

  “Son.” Cara flaunted her shoulders, chin held high.

  The sides of his mouth rose as he let a wicked light into his eyes. “Twins?”

  “Heaven preserve us, no!”

  Warmth from the slight curve of her stomach penetrated his hand. He’d not have to move his hand far to feel other curves as well. She’d made it clear by the frigid creek bank of that forlorn villa, as she twisted his betrothal ring around her finger, that she’d not say “nay” even if she wished. That was no more fair than winning a footrace by starting fifty paces in front. Removing his hand, he smiled at her instead. “I’ve a twin brother.”