He lay the stylus down. “A patrician, of course, of good reputation, with an upstanding familia, preferably one well-connected politically. And I don’t want a divorced woman.”
Aulia embodied all that, though Wryn would no longer describe her in such vapid terms as ‘sweet’ if he’d heard half the Catullus-worthy things she said about him.
“I don’t know why you’re pestering me about this. I won’t marry for years.” He retrieved the stylus.
Waiting years was not something Aulia’s father would allow. “Could you be persuaded to change your mind on the waiting score?”
“No, I have work to do in Moesia, and I want to make praetor.” He grabbed another tablet. “Why are you even asking? You’ve told me a thousand times I don’t deserve any woman, so I imagine you’ll count the daughters of Rome blessed for every year I tarry.”
Not good news for Aulia, but Gwen slapped her hands on the table. “I stand by my opinion, Wryn Paterculi.” Her brother didn’t deserve Aulia.
Wryn cocked one skeptical eyebrow. His mouth turned up in that expression he always wore before saying the most sarcastic things. He shifted his gaze to the next tablet.
“What?”
He shook his head. “It was rude, and it related to you and Marcellus, and I decided not to say it.”
Wryn embracing humility? Would horses speak or elm trees break forth in dance next? With a groan, Gwen turned to the doorway. Now to go home and deal with Marcellus.
By the end of the week, she’d be alone with him in all the vastness of Rome.
Thwack! Gwen swung the hedge-cutting blade across overgrown limbs. The branches splintered. If only the branch were Marcellus’ neck.
She swung the long-handled cutting instrument again. Fig leaves fell. If Marcellus was a smuggler, Wryn would arrest him. As friends with Victor Ocelli, the smuggling would make sense.
A clatter came from around the hedges. Gladius at his belt, Bruno approached the entrance.
“Where’s Marcellus?” A feminine voice called through the gate.
Gwen swung around the mess of fallen branches.
“Is Marcellus here?” That lilting voice spoke again. Bruno held the gate open and a lovely young woman entered the courtyard. She wore dirty clothes, and from the look of still-healing scratches on her neck, she didn’t frequent respectable circles.
“What do you want with my husband?” Gwen clenched her hands around the hedge trimmer.
The woman lifted her long lashes. “To tell him thank you. You’ll tell him for me?”
“Thank you for what?” Gwen jabbed the hedge trimmer into the dirt.
“For the night over two weeks ago. He’ll understand. Here.” The woman held something out to her. Jewels on the knife handle glittered in the sunlight. “It’s his.”
She hadn’t noticed Marcellus leave at night over two weeks ago, but he must have. She had her answer. Marcellus was no smuggler, but an adulterer. Gwen clenched her fingers over the jeweled knife handle.
The clash of steel filled the peristyle gardens. Marcellus swung right, blocking the new recruit’s blow. The man stumbled back.
“Marcellus.” Gwen grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into his flesh. “You’re coming and talking to me.”
Not a good idea after all the questions she’d asked last night. “Can’t right now, training, delicia.” Extricating his arm, Marcellus swung against Androkles’ sword.
“Very well, we’ll talk here.” Stepping between the hum of lethal blades, she shoved both hands against his chest.
He took one step back, gaze searching hers.
“Is this yours?” The glint of metal shone in the sunlight, sapphires on the hilt—Cato’s knife. The one he’d given that ship captain’s daughter to escape Victor.
If the ship captain’s daughter had visited, she would have mentioned the Viri. Gwen would turn him over to her familia. After the Paterculis arrested him, they’d discover his slavery and demand death by crucifixion.
He motioned the rabble back, and they faded into overgrown hedges. Marcellus’ pulse quickened as he met her gaze. “Where did you get that?”
“A woman.”
Marcellus’ heart battered against his ribs. The ship captain’s daughter had come. Crucifixion? No time to flee to Germania. Could he lie his way out of this?
Gwen hit his chest hard. “Is there another woman?”
He jerked his gaze up. “A what?”
“Have you lied to me all this time?”
Yes. “I never lied to you.” He ran his hand across her sculpted cheekbones. She loved him, much more than he deserved, but how long would that stay her hand from having him arrested, crucified?
She threw his hand off. “Much? Remember that word?”
“I love you.” He reached for her hand.
Narrowing her dark eyes into slits, Gwen glared hard enough to incinerate a garrison. “Do you say that to her too?”
“Her?”
“Yes, her. The woman you bought this knife for.”
Wait, the ship captain girl hadn’t mentioned the Viri. Gwen was merely having a completely unfounded jealous moment about another woman. Air whooshed from Marcellus’ lungs as his thudding heart slowed to rest. Summoning a smile, he stepped closer. “You’re the only woman for me.”
“Then where were you those nights you didn’t sleep in our bed?”
“Um….” He scratched behind his neck. “Walking by the river. I couldn’t sleep.”
She clenched her fists.
He slid his hands behind her stiff shoulders. “Gwen.”
“Don’t touch me.”
He caressed his hand down her bare arm. “You’re as lovely as—”
“Remove your hands, or I shall remove them for you—from your body.”
She didn’t mean that. He circled his arm around her waist.
Cato’s knife jammed against his ribs. He felt the prick of blood underneath his tunic. Fingers wrapped around the knife, Gwen glared up at him like some Celtic warrior queen.
He released her. With that disposition, Gwen would never survive marriage to an actual patrician. The patrician men’s loss, because he loved the way her eyes shot fire.
“Next time you touch me, I’ll drive the blade up to its hilt.” She cast the knife at his feet. It clattered against stone as she stomped away.
No, she wouldn’t. Unlike him, she was much too innocent to kill, which made him more the brute for throwing her into this double life with the risk of death or infamia at every turn.
Marcellus kicked the knife, sending the ruby-crusted thing skittering across the courtyard. Curse Cato and his jeweled knife fine enough for a lover’s gift. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to sell Cato’s knife as he first intended when he palmed it from Cato’s belt.
Bruno jogged his arm. “Your wife interrogated me last night.”
“Wife? Rome doesn’t recognize marriage between a slave and a patrician.” Marcellus glared at the stones. More to the point, Gwen didn’t recognize marriage to a man who didn’t account for his hours.
He only had a matter of weeks with her, and she planned to waste them thinking he had another woman? It’s not as if he could tell her he’d been with Victor Ocelli, smuggling for the Viri. Or that he brought the information he gained to Consul Julius, the man who owned him.
“She tried to barge into the back room while you were gone. One of the rabble woke and stopped her.”
Marcellus went rigid. “Woke? I ordered a guard to stand watch day and night. If Gwen had seen our blades, she’d have carried the news to her father and who knows where that would have led.”
Bruno tightened his jaw. “You shouldn’t have married her.”
“I know.” Marcellus dropped his gaze to the myrtle petals that spotted the path. He’d put not only her but all his men in danger.
“Divorce her. You’ll have to anyway within the month.”
Perhaps he could drag out catching the Shadow Man longer than that. Two mo
nths? Three? Three and a half? Gwen would soon forsake her false suspicions and want him again. “She’ll remarry someone who can’t protect her. The Viri will kill her.”
“We have better things to worry about than protecting patricians.” Bruno spat on the ground.
“Gwen’s different.”
“Different how? Because, unlike the other daughters of Rome, she hates you?” Bruno clashed his gaze against him.
“Gwen doesn’t hate me.”
Bruno slid one eyebrow up.
“All right, maybe she does hate me at this moment, but I can fix that.” Gwen was different. She cared about people, the weak, the vulnerable, slaves even. He’d fallen in love with her that winter night in Britannia when she’d cried over the Tellnus son lashing a slave boy and comforted the child after.
“We’re ready to start this slave revolt.” Bruno glanced to rest of the rabble. “You needn’t wait for Consul Julius’ payout. The dowry from that woman of yours has already purchased the blades, and we have connections with slaves in the imperial household. We could start the revolt tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? After he launched that revolt, he’d never see Gwen again. “I bought your freedom, and yours, and yours. I’ll decide when we launch our plans.”
The new recruit gripped his gladius hilt. “She’s a domina. She’s not worth dying over.”
Oh, but Gwen was worth that. She very much was. “She suspects nothing, and I’ll be careful. I promise.”
“For the sake of all our lives, I pray that is true.” Bruno drew his gladius. Androkles clashed his against Bruno’s as the sound of training rose.
Marcellus whipped out his gladius with a swish of metal. “When I go to meet Fabius tomorrow, then the Viri later this week, you’ll guard Gwen with your lives.”
The rabble groaned.
A light footstep sounded on the steps. Gwen swept into the gardens, blankets hung between her arms. Her dark eyes held killing fire.
“What’s this?” He searched her face for any sign of softness, but hard angles shoved down her ravishing eyebrows and puckered her ruby-red lips.
“Your bedding. You can sleep with your men tonight.” She shoved the blankets into his arms.
Hope lit his eyes. “Then on the morrow, you’ll forgive me?”
“After what you did?”
“I didn’t do anything.” Except plan a slave revolt she’d consider treason. Lie to her about his very name. Unwittingly get her into a situation that would make her infamia throughout the Empire if the news ever got out—cohabiting with a slave.
“The only reason I’m still underneath your roof is because I haven’t yet braced myself to hear the ‘told-you-sos’ my familia will pile on me.” Gwen turned on her heel.
“See,” Bruno hissed. “She’s leaving anyway. Launch the revolt.”
Marcellus shoved Bruno. He thudded against the garden path as he hurried after Gwen. He caught her in the darkened atrium. “Gwen, you have to believe me. I’ve never so much as looked at another woman.”
“Believe you? With your reputation?”
Yet another reason to hate the now-dead Caius Marcellus, beyond the stripes on his back. “You can’t believe all the gossip you hear on street corners.”
“My mother says men earn reputations.”
Caius Marcellus certainly had earned the reputation that he now bore. “Your mother worries too much.”
“Who was that woman then?” Gwen’s dark eyes flashed hot as Hades’ flames.
A smuggler for the Viri whose life he’d rescued from Victor’s hand. Gwen worked to free oppressed women. She’d like that story, well a version thereof. “I was walking back from the river that night I couldn’t sleep, and a gang of bandits attacked her. I fought them off. I must have dropped my knife.”
Gwen pressed her red lips together, her alabaster forehead furrowed.
Furrowing as she considered forgiving him? He slipped his hand over hers.
She jerked away. “I’m nowhere near forgiving you. Not until I have a lot more information.” She spun on her heel.
If she started searching, what else might she find?
Chapter 22
Gwen paced in front of the gate. Marcellus had left hours ago. She’d have followed him, but she hadn’t seen him leave.
“Missive for Caius Marcellus.” A mounted messenger clashed his hand against the gate.
With a glance to where Bruno stood yawning in a patch of sunlight, Gwen swung the gate open. “I’m his wife. I’ll take the letter.”
With a nod, the messenger handed her a tablet. She skimmed her gaze down the writing.
My apologies. I was sending your profit to the consul as you requested. Here are the profits for this three-month. Should I send the summer’s profits to you in Rome as well?
Lycurgus, steward of the northern villa
“There’s this.” The messenger dropped a sack into her arms. The heavy weight of coins ripped against her grip.
“Salve.”
The man urged his horse down the street.
What consul had received the money from Marcellus’ estates? Why? Had he gambled away months’ worth of profits?
“Who was that?” Bruno stood over her.
Gwen clutched the tablet to her chest. “A present from my familia.”
“Oh.” With a grunt, he turned away.
After entering the villa, Gwen picked the lock to the moneybox and dumped the heavy sack inside. She took a ragged breath. In this room, only yesterday, Marcellus had wrapped his arms around her, held her, kissed her. Her chest shook. She loved him.
If he didn’t love her, what did it matter?
He’d sworn he had no other woman.
He’d sworn many things. She’d seen him lie as glibly as a swindler in Britannia. A film of tears hazed over her eyes.
Could Marcellus be innocent? He’d spent an entire night away from home—twice or more. If he had another woman, surely there’d be evidence? Love letters? Financial notes?
Crossing to the shelf, she pulled down the first scroll. Virgil, no help there. She tugged off another scroll. Dust sprinkled onto her hand. A Dacian map.
The entire villa looked as if no one had lived in it for years. Marcellus did journey often. He said he’d take her to the mountains in northern Italy this summer and they would watch the sun rise over the clear waterfalls.
Sobs wracked her chest. A heavy footstep passed outside. Thrusting the tears away, she threw the curtain open. Androkles.
“Androkles,” she called.
He turned. “Domina.”
She ran her tongue over dry lips. “Why does Marcellus leave at night?”
“Leaves, domina?” Androkles raised bushy eyebrows.
Playing ignorant, like Bruno. “Does he have another woman?”
Androkles scowled. “This is a conversation you should have with Marcellus, not me.” He marched on.
Wretched loyalty from Marcellus’ bodyguards. She glared out the window to where afternoon shadows grew longer. Marcellus still hadn’t returned.
She glanced at her red silk dress. The market, that’s where she’d go. No patrician could make a move without servants spreading it through the marketplace. Marcellus was a favorite subject of Rome’s gossip mills.
Crossing to their room, Gwen strapped on Wryn’s gladius. Marcellus’ brown cloak hung on the far side of the cold bed. She pulled the hood over her pinned hair. The cloth enveloped her, making her indistinguishable from any plebeian.
The scent of grass and olive leaves washed over her. She dug her teeth into her lip. Yesterday, she’d smelled that scent on his hair as his bare arms had wrapped around her, so warm against her.
She shook her head. There was no time for tears. She had information to discover, and this was war. Her sandals clapped against the courtyard stone. She grabbed the iron curlicues of the gate, but unlike earlier, the latch was locked tight.
“Where are you going, domina?” Bruno stepped in front of her. He hel
d the gate key.
“What concern is it of yours?”
“If you’re going out, you’ll need someone to guard you.”
She fingered her gladius. “I can take care of myself.”
“’Tis Marcellus’ orders.” Bruno nodded to the new recruit.
“Marcellus can keep his orders to him—”
“Not to worry, domina.” The new recruit advanced. “I personally would be delighted to let you die.”
She blinked, but when she moved out the gate, the new recruit thudded after her.
Out of sight of the house, she pointed left. “If you’re so interested in inviting my death, we can part ways here.” She’d not die, not with her gladius and knife.
“Marcellus would never forgive me.” Glare directed at the street, the new recruit trudged behind her.
“What’s your name? I feel foolish calling you the new recruit.”
The new recruit grunted. “Tarbus.”
“Why this loyalty to Marcellus, Tarbus?” The same loyalty that kept any of Marcellus’ men from answering her questions.
“I was captured in the first Dacian War, my family wiped out. Served five years a slave before Marcellus bought my freedom.”
“Yet, Caius Marcellus helped Rome win that Dacian War and contributed to the capture of thousands of free Dacians.” If she could make someone angry at Marcellus, perhaps the rabble would start telling her the truth.
“Marcellus would never do that.” Such vitriol in the new recruit’s voice.
“Um, he did. He’s a Dacian war hero.”
“I still hate you, domina.” The new recruit fell back several paces and resumed glaring and trudging.
Gwen groaned. Soon the bustle of the marketplace rose, colorful stands filling the broad cross streets. Moving to one stall, Gwen fingered cheap beads.
“See something you like?” A toothless crone smiled over the tray of beads.
Tugging the hood of Marcellus’ cloak further over her face, Gwen nodded and overpaid the woman thrice over for the beads. She leaned one elbow on the stall’s counter. “What’s the latest gossip on Marcellus?”
To Deceive an Empire: Love and Warfare series book 3 Page 22