His gaze followed the sway of her hips in a way that made her wish to wear a stola over this tunica.
Twisting on the slick tile, she slammed her hand against a decorative hall table. “You knew two years ago in Britannia when you first invited me out to the garden hedges, that you could never marry me. Why did you start flirting with me? Was I just a beautiful woman?”
Marcellus took a step closer. His body a pace from her, he rested his hand on the other side of the table. “Since your father, as legate, controlled shipping enforcement against smugglers, Victor wished me to get close to the Paterculi familia in some way.” A wicked grin lit Marcellus’ face. “You’re a good deal comelier than any of your brothers.”
“You!”
“In fairness, I only used the information I gleaned from you to ingratiate myself with the Viri for their eventual downfall.”
Bringing her chin down, she glared at him. “I’m sure I didn’t tell you where our garrison forces were stationed.”
“Oh, you said a lot more than you intended to. Especially when you were kissing me, domina.” He brushed the tip of his finger over her bare shoulder.
Anger flamed her cheeks. She slapped his hand away. “All those times I let you kiss me, you told me you loved me, and I believed you. All just to—”
He angled his flat eyebrows. “Take down the largest smuggling ring in the empire? Bring glory to Rome?”
With a groan, she slid her hand off the carved table. “When you put it that way.”
“And for the first few months, yes, but then I fell in love with you.”
“Loving me didn’t make you stop lying to me, though, did it?” She fixed an accusing gaze on him.
“Remember the time when you met me by the Colne River in Britannia, and I stole a boat, and we got so carried away with talk as the river swells bore us on that we didn’t notice the sun sinking or how many miles we’d floated? I didn’t get you home until the first watch of the night. I still don’t know how you explained that to your familia.”
“You stole that boat?” She’d leaned back against his chest as she sat between his legs, and they’d watched the clouds pass, and imagined stories to fit the puffy shapes. He’d made up some fantastical tale about fairie folk on the mountain peaks. His queen of the fairies had black curls.
“I know I’m just a slave, unworthy of your attention, and you hate every memory of me. But I play the patrician lover well, do I not?” He smiled wistfully.
“You’re not just a slave.”
“Oh, but I am. Wish to see my back again to remind you?” He turned as if to strip his tunic down. “Or the seared flesh on my arm?”
She traced her gaze over the scorched scars of the letters. That day they took the boat, rain had rolled in. Dusk fell as they retraced their footsteps up the riverbank. The water had poured in rivulets around his ears and stuck his tunic to his chest. Marcellus had laughed as they’d ducked under pine branches, the churning mud splashing up to their knees. She bit her lip. “Did you read the scrolls?”
“I did. Your god is a nobler, more powerful one than any I’ve heard of.”
Her heart beat within her. “You mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Think you’ll ever follow the Way?” She clasped the table.
His gaze touched her hand then flicked up to her throat, which betrayed her unsteady breaths. “When I’m with you, there are moments I think I could.”
It’s what she’d always wanted in Britannia, for Marcellus to join her in following her God. Except now he was a slave, and an even greater gulf divided them. An ache pierced her heart. “How did you know what to tell me about the Dacian Wars those months we spent together in Britannia? Learning the war news is why I first started talking to you.”
“I stole the latest Dacian news parchments from Victor. And do you know how many interminable hours I had to listen to Caius Marcellus monolog about his part in the first Dacian War?” Marcellus groaned. “My legs would ache by the end of serving at those dinners.”
“You gave me intimate details only a man who fought there would know.”
His mouth twitched. “When necessary, I invented a good lie.”
“Marcellus!”
His green eyes glinted as he grinned. “I didn’t want you to start asking Fabius your Dacian questions.”
Gwen groaned. “Didn’t you ever wish to tell me the truth about your slave status?”
“And risk you telling? Consul Julius would have thrown me back into slavery.”
Her voice caught. “Surely you knew you could trust me?” Had he never trusted her at all?
“Gwen. When I’m with the Viri, one slip of the tongue means death. Not a clean death by an executioner’s blade, but a harrowing death as the Shadow Man employs every torture device he can invent.”
Please dear God no! If the Viri ever tortured him....
Marcellus turned his haunted gaze to her. “But Gwen, when I have nightmares, it’s not of the Viri discovering me. It’s of being a slave again.”
The tips of Gwen’s fingers chilled as she looked into Marcellus’ face, his fists clenched, his breathing hard and fast. She touched his arm. “What’s your real name, Marcellus?”
“You don’t need to know my slave name. Patricians have no use for slaves as husbands.” He spat on the tile.
She slapped her hand across his face, not hard, but her fingers made a stinging sound.
He caught her wrist as rage flashed across his face. “Do not hit me.”
She swept her eyelashes up. “I threw a javelin at you, drawing blood, and all you did was groan. But I slapped you across the jaw, not even hard, and you look ready to murder me?”
Gaze falling, he dropped his hand from her wrist. “It’s what a master does to a slave.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She pressed her palm against his jawbone where she’d slapped him. “I won’t again.”
He groaned and stepped back. “No, I’m sorry. It’s this place. Too many memories. It’s not your fault.”
“I could redecorate it. Replaster the walls, new tile, you wouldn’t recognize the villa as where all your memories happened.” She needed a new couch for that tablinum.
“Why would you do that? We’re both leaving in opposite directions as soon as the Shadow Man’s caught.”
Her heart sank. He spoke truth.
Chapter 31
Curling her feet underneath her on the couch, Gwen fought back the lump in her throat. If she gave into it, then she’d cry. If she gave into that, then she’d weep, then sob.
Grabbing a jar, she poured oil into her dry hands. Even the mindless motion of rubbing it across her knuckles didn’t stop the thoughts.
It wasn’t fair. Everything those masters had done to Marcellus. Everything he’d become because of it. The fact that, unlike patrician men, who were welcome to enter into lifelong monogamous relationships with slave or freedwoman, though it counted as concubinage, not marriage, patrician women weren’t.
A knock sounded on her door.
“Come in.”
The handle twisted. Marcellus. “You cooked food for all of us, and you didn’t even eat.” He extended a bronze plate. The smell of steamed lamb cutlets along with boiled apricots rose from the dish. A patrician man wouldn’t have brought her food.
“Sit with me, please?” Gwen motioned to the couch.
The door swung shut as he crossed the room. He set the plate in her lap. His puzzled gaze sought hers as he sat.
She shoved the plate onto a low table. Reaching out, she touched the seared skin on his arm, and her finger slipped into the indentation where muscle had burned away into the imprint of the letters. “How did you get it?”
For a moment, he froze. He groaned. “I was almost twenty, in this room. The master ordered me to wash his feet. Caius Marcellus swaggered in boasting of battlefield spoils and the glory of his next post. The same man’s seed brought life to us both, but to the master, Caius was his son, and I nothing but property.�
��
Gwen clenched her hands.
“As I knelt over the water, the master shoved me with his foot. I threw the towel across his chest and struck him on the jaw.”
She followed his gaze to a tile on the right side of the bed. The image of a red flower broke across the edge.
“I knew a scourging such as I’d never seen before awaited me, so I ran. Caius caught me two days later, and I have this to remember him by.” Marcellus held up his seared arm.
“Oh, Marcellus.” She clasped her hand over the mark, but her palm didn’t fully cover it. “Did it hurt dreadfully?”
“Almost as much as the scourging I got after.”
She dug her teeth into her lip.
“It hurt more when my mother cried over the wounds as she rubbed ointment in them. She made me pledge never to repeat it. Yet, the next month, I got her killed.” Wetness glistened in Marcellus’ eyes.
Reaching out, she brushed her fingers against the coarse brown work tunic he wore. “I want to see your scars again.”
“Why?” He didn’t protest though as she pulled his tunic off his shoulders.
Tugging his back to face her, she fit her thumb into a gouge on the left side of his spine. Other gouges dug into his ribs at different angles. “Were these from the metal in Fabius’ lash?”
Marcellus looked at the plaster wall, his voice a monotone. “The overseer at the villa up north had a lash with metal also.”
“The same man I collected money from?”
Marcellus nodded. The motion moved his hair. He’d cut it again, the stiff strands cropped so close to his scalp.
Oh, to brush her fingers across that hair. “What did you do at the villa?”
“Little of everything— farm work, tending the grape vines, cleaning.” His tunic bunched at his belt, revealing a back covered with scars.
“These faint marks?” She ran her finger over the white lines that crisscrossed his shoulder blades.
He craned his neck. “The cane from childhood. Mostly from the domina at this villa. She hated that I bore her husband’s face. I often wished to tell her I hated it more than her.”
She ran her hand over the scars, hundreds of scars, thousands of scars. Mistiness formed in her throat. “There’s not a finger’s width on your back not marked by the lash.” Fabius had spoken truth on one point, the first time she glimpsed Marcellus’ back, she should have known he was no patrician.
Marcellus rested his hands on his crossed knees, no expression on his face. Yet, each time her fingers touched his back, he stiffened. “It was a point of pride for the overseer at the villa. Ensure the rebellious slaves didn’t have a patch of skin unmarked.”
“What did you do as a child?”
“Steal things from the overseer, give the taskmasters lip, run off to the mountains in the evenings, pound into anyone who touched my mother.” He rolled his eyes to the stucco ceiling. A naked picture of Mars peered down. “All similar to your childhood, I’m sure.”
She truly needed to repaint this villa. Except she wouldn’t have the chance to. Pain seared through her. Dropping her gaze, she pressed her thumbs into the knotted muscles of his back. She massaged over the deep lacerations.
He whipped around. “What are you doing?”
“Massaging your back, did I hurt you?” She ran her finger down the line of a scar.
“That’s a slave task.” He tugged his tunic up.
“Stop fidgeting. You’re worse than a child.” She poured oil on her palm and warmed the film between her hands. Shoving his tunic down with her elbow, she grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her. She slid her hands across the brutal lines of his back, kneading the muscles beneath her fingers.
He held his body rigid, his arms taut at his sides. “Why are you doing this?”
“Hasn’t anyone ever massaged your back?” She dug her fingers into his shoulder muscles, pressing against tense ligaments until they eased beneath her hands. “Massages feel lovely after a day’s exertion.”
“Yes, but you’re a domina.”
“Can’t we forget that for a moment?” She ran her fingers down the sides of his back, rubbing oil into scars.
He squirmed beneath her hands. “How could you, when your hands are on the very scars that mark me as a slave?”
“Marcellus.” She ran her tongue over her lips. If any of her friends heard her say this, they’d think her moonstruck. “I didn’t defy my familia because of your rank. I did it because I loved you.”
“You loved me as a patrician.” He twisted away from her hands.
She touched the seared flesh of his arm. “I loved you as a man, though I’m not quite sure you’re a good one.” She truly should answer that question before she even considered what she very much wished to jump into.
His piercing gaze touched her. “I don’t abuse the innocent like Fabius does.”
True. Sliding one arm around his neck, she touched her mouth to his. She pressed her other hand against his bare chest.
He met her gaze. “You now know I’m a slave. Legally, you could lose your freedom for lying with me.”
She drew back. This was only a kiss. She hadn’t intended....
Yes, she had. She stiffened her shoulders. “The law says cohabiting, which you’re forcing me to do anyway.”
“Forcing, making it not your fault to any court of law.”
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she slid onto his legs. She pressed her lips to the warmth of his mouth. Her heart pounded against his. Moonstruck or not, she knew what she wanted. After all, patrician men did it all the time. Didn’t she have the right to the same privilege as a man? “I’m not leaving you when you lose the Marcellus estates. I want you for a lifetime. Your children, your—”
“You shouldn’t want me.”
She jumped off him. Rubbing at the wrinkles she’d made in her tunica, she tried to brush off the heat of him, but she only streaked massaging oil. Her tongue fumbled over itself as she looked everywhere but at him. “You’re saying no? I shouldn’t have even asked. I apologize. I—”
“No.” He grabbed her around the waist. “I most definitely am not saying ‘no’, delicia.”
As he tugged her against him and his strong arms wrapped around her, she reached for his kisses, and the world felt right.
Wait, how would she ever explain this to her familia? Her hand froze on Marcellus’ sternum. Jesus said slave and free were equal. If her familia couldn’t accept that, they weren’t as good followers of the Way as they thought. She tore Marcellus’ tunic off.
Jesus also said not to marry a pagan. She squirmed, her bare skin brushing Marcellus’. Of all the Bible passages she’d ever forgotten, why couldn’t she have forgotten that one?
He caressed the curve of her cheek, the calluses of his hand catching in her hair. Tears glistened in his eyes and one welled over to roll down the edge of his perfectly angled nose. “I missed you so much, delicia.”
She touched her mouth to his. He’d convert soon enough.
Fingers numb, Marcellus buckled his sword belt. Gwen had kissed him. She’d whispered “I love you”, her breath brushing against him, despite knowing his slave status. Her hands had run over the stripes of the lash, and still, she’d not turned away from him.
His chest shook as he yanked his sandals on, his fingers clumsy on the laces. Dawn’s rays lit Gwen’s sleeping form in the bed she’d let him share with her last night. Not just last night, she’d asked him for a lifetime. He fumbled for the door latch.
Even the sound of his sandals thudding against the tile sounded surreal.
The rabble straggled into the back courtyard, shoving handfuls of grapes into their mouths.
Grabbing a newly-purchased shield, Marcellus swung his gladius. The steel clashed against Bruno’s blade. Marcellus jabbed with his sword, but his gaze rested on the pair of doves perched on an olive branch.
“The domina loves you now.” Bruno sliced forward with his blade.
Marc
ellus jerked his shield up just in time to avoid a blood-stained arm. “What?”
“How large of a villa do you think you live in?” Bruno’s laugh echoed across the cold stone that dawn’s light had yet to touch. “We all saw you emerge from her room this morn. What thrice-magical love potion did you use to get a domina to touch a slave?”
“She said she’d stay with me even after.” After he caught the Shadow Man and Consul Julius stripped away his forged patrician status, leaving him but a freedman. Stay with him a lifetime. The words had sounded mountains away when she said them. She’d lose her patrician status if she did as she suggested, her citizenship even, though not her freedom once Consul Julius manumitted him.
“Told her of the slave revolt?”
“She doesn’t know about the slave revolt. She can’t.” Marcellus dropped his shield. “Can’t! You hear me?” What if Gwen got through that door and saw the weapons? Overheard a conversation? He couldn’t ruin this with her.
“Why?” Bruno scrunched his brow. “She’ll lose her patrician status and inheritance cohabiting with a freedman. If she’s accepted that, why not tell her of the slave revolt?”
“She loves me, but she’s also a patrician. Her father leads garrisons. To her, a slave revolt would be treason.” One thing Gwen would never give up is the way she saw the world. Though her God honored slaves, this Jesus did not encourage revenge.
“What will you tell her after we capture the Shadow Man and launch our revolt?”
Then he would have to give Gwen up. He shouldn’t have let her make this sacrifice for him knowing that. The woman he loved had come to him, thrown her arms around his neck, and told him she wanted him as her gaze ran down his bare chest. What was he going to say, no? He wasn’t that much of a hero.
Bruno jogged his arm. “What will you tell her?”
“I have no idea.”
Chapter 32
Gwen tromped across the atrium to the back courtyard. Steel clashed against steel. The morning light reflected off Marcellus’ blade. He was hers now for a lifetime, which made her heart soar, but just now fury flamed inside her.
To Deceive an Empire: Love and Warfare series book 3 Page 30