When Gambling (Love and Warfare Series Book 2) Page 4

  Cara’s gaze lingered on the white of the burnt flesh. It looked recent, too. Had it hurt horribly?

  The yellow-clad girl moved toward Cara, displeasure exuding from her slender neck to her bare feet that slapped the tile.

  Jerking the basket from Cara’s hands, yellow-clad girl twisted for a cloth. The wicker frame slid backward and hit a crystal vase. The vase wobbled.

  Cara leaped for the thing. A shattering noise rang through the room and slivers of crystal bounced across the floor.

  “You ignorant slave!” The housekeeper jumped off her stool. “That crystal is worth more than you are. You shouldn’t bear the name Venus. You should be named after some sneaky goblin.”

  Venus dropped her gaze to the ground, but she scowled.

  “I’m letting the master know you broke his best crystal. He’ll thrash you good for it, too.” The housekeeper jabbed a round finger at the curvy girl. “You, tell Dominus Ocelli he needs to discipline her.”

  Venus’ scowl fled. Her eyes jittered in their sockets, her arms trembling. Poor woman. What a horrid fate to be a slave.

  Gliding to the other end of the table, Cara focused on getting pasties on platters. Her arms trembled a bit as she arranged them in position. These delicate glass pieces probably cost more than Father made in two years.

  A man in patrician linen approached the table, led by the curvy girl. Victor.

  The housekeeper dropped tablecloths into the curvy girl’s arms. “Stulte girl, I meant his father.”

  “My father has three score guests arriving in moments. Are you questioning my authority?” Victor slid one eyebrow up, not menacing really, more amused.

  “Of course not, Master.” The housekeeper quickly inclined her head. “It’s that one.”

  The fear faded from Venus’ eyes. Why?

  Victor jerked his chin right, to the far end of the tables. Cara strained her ears as she overworked the corner of her eyes.

  “They tell me you have no respect for my father’s possessions.” With his hand, Victor shifted the tablecloth adorning the newly-set table.

  Venus swept her eyelashes up, a smile on her lips. “What will you do to me for it, Master?”

  Brow furrowing, Cara stared at her.

  “What do you suggest?” Victor’s voice sounded dark.

  Venus brushed her skirt against Victor’s tunic as she moved her hand over his. “Whatever you wish.”

  The housekeeper dumped olive oil into bowls with unnecessary vigor. “That one will never learn discipline with the young master around.”

  Brow still furrowed, Cara glanced back at Venus. Why did Victor smile at the slave girl for breaking things?

  “The wars in Dacia,” a gray-haired fellow with a paunch droned. Forty men spread out in this room backed by pillars. Past the pillars, candles illuminated the flash of silk and jewels where the women gathered.

  Eric leaned against a marble column.

  Standing at the front of the crowd, Wryn raised his hand. “Do you believe the Jazygians support Decabalus or are they merely pawns as he consolidates power?”

  Eric grimaced as Balbinus Maximus launched into an incomprehensible explanation of tribal relations in the Dacian war.

  As he let his gaze wander, he spotted Victor stationed at the side of the room, his attention split between an amphora of wine and the speaker. Through the open windows behind him, a full moon rose, spreading light across shrub-lined paths upon which one could run a footrace.

  Only four more months until the pentathlon, and if he wanted to start a training school, he needed to train hard enough to win. How much longer did he need to stay at this event to appease Father?

  Someone tapped Eric’s shoulder. Gwen balanced on one foot. “What are they saying?” Her voice held an eagerness Balbinus Maximus did not deserve.

  Father walked back from the front of the crowd. “Listen well, Eric. I procured you the opportunity to go with him to Moesia next month to study the Dacian conflict.”

  Eric’s stomach rebelled. Unlike Rome, Britannia only held one pentathlon a year. If he missed it, he’d have to wait another entire year before he got another chance to start his training school.

  “I’ll go!” Gwen raised her high-pitched voice in this room filled with men.

  “No.” Father kept walking.

  How much money would he need to purchase brick and the fired clay tiles for the roof? Two-thousand denarii? If he built the school close to the public baths, no customer would expect a bath house in the back, saving coin there.

  Gwen shook Eric’s shoulder, an unrelenting insistence in her voice. “Tell me what’s happening in Dacia.”

  “If I knew, I’d have passed the military strategy class.” Not failed.

  Gwen crossed her arms over her tunica. She was comely as sisters go. “I’m still furious with you.”

  With a groan, Eric turned away and moved toward the hallway between the two rooms. A refreshment table groaned with the weight of food.

  He seized a chalice. How would he win the pentathlon while exiled to Moesia?

  “Water?” A girl holding a heavy flagon on her hip smiled at him. She wore the brown tunica of the townsfolk. Cara.

  “Gratias.” He held out his chalice.

  She tipped the silver flagon, spilling liquid into his cup. Her amber skin turned to pink at her cheeks, those cheeks curving up to her dark eyelashes above.

  “That’s an image of the Silk Road.” He touched the flagon. “See there, a caravan of camels.”

  “That’s what camels look like? I thought they were poorly etched horses.” Cara arched her lovely lips. She pointed to an orange tapestry on the other side of the room that portrayed a gladiator battling a tiger. “Where do tigers come from?”

  “India.”

  “Oh, I want to go there, too.” She set the flagon down. “Do camels come from India?”

  He shook his head. “Arabia and Egypt.”

  “Have you ever ridden a camel?” A lock of hair fell over Cara’s ear. Candlelight reflected off the lock.

  “No. They’ve got nasty temperaments, and they spit.”

  “I wouldn’t mind getting spat on if I could ride a camel.” Her eyes held a dreamlike reverie.

  “That’s because you’ve never had a camel spit in your eye.” He grinned at her.

  “Did it hurt terribly?” She stretched up and touched the corner of his eye. Her movement shifted her curved body to within a handbreadth of him.

  Had no one ever taught this Cara the bounds of appropriate interaction? She could easily give another patrician the entirely wrong impression.

  Someone tapped his shoulder. Eric turned.

  One of Gwen’s friends, a girl clad in pink silk, fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Who is that?” From the look on pink-silk girl’s face, Cara had already given someone the wrong impression.

  The last thing he needed was the girl in pink silk creating a sordid rumor out of him talking to a plebeian girl and it getting back to Father. “No one.” Turning, Eric moved swiftly toward the Dacian speaker.

  “Dominus Paterculi?” another feminine voice called.

  Eric looked left.

  Lady Aulia’s face fell. “Oh, you’re not Wryn.”

  He grinned. “Wryn? I’ll tell him you asked.” Only, Wryn better be kind to Aulia, because she was sweet, and her father was atrocious.

  Crimson flushed across the girl’s face, but she smiled. “Yes, do.”

  Back in the Dacian speaker’s room, Victor’s wine cup stood empty, but nothing else had changed. Eric collapsed against the wall beside Victor. “Still torturing yourself?”

  “Ecce, you have to know this stuff to gain power and riches.”

  Eric shrugged. “I’ll do without.”

  “Did you hear the speaker’s taking four men with him to study the Dacian situation?”

  “Yes, my father’s forcing me to be one of them.” Eric took a swallow of tasteless water.

  “Good.” Victor slapped h
im on the back. “My father’s got a villa in Moesia. You can stay with me.”

  “What about the pentathlon?”

  “Balbinus Maximus will run out of things to say eventually. We can train at the villa and return in time for the event.”

  Eric furrowed his forehead. That actually didn’t sound terrible. He took another swallow of water and looked to his left.

  A pace behind him, in the otherwise male-dominated room, Gwen stood by Marcellus. “That’s why Dacia is so important now?” Gwen curved her lips.

  “Yes.” Marcellus never moved his gaze from her.

  Victor jostled Eric’s shoulder. “Tomorrow night, down at my father’s warehouse, some friends and I are having a party. Want to come?”

  “I suppose.” Eric shrugged and met Victor’s eyes. “Meet at the training grounds beforehand?”

  With a groan, Victor stretched the shoulder that Eric had slammed into the ground this morning during wrestling practice. “Do you train every day?”

  “Have to beat you.”

  Victor parted his teeth. “Don’t speak against the sun.”

  False. He’d win this pentathlon. As to the sun, he planned to rise hours before it to run, because Victor still beat him at that event.

  Taking a swig of wine, Victor watched Eric. To find out what he knew about Ocelli smuggling, he needed to get to know the youth better, a lot better than competitive haggling over a wrestling match would accomplish. Maybe he could interrogate him in Moesia. Also, why was Eric content not pursuing wealth and power like the rest of the patricians?

  Something sharp poked his ribs. Victor swiveled into a knife point.

  “Interested in the Paterculis?” Marcellus lounged back against the plaster wall, knife in hand.

  Victor jerked away. “The Paterculis are friends. What’s it to you?”

  Though the man had arrived in Britannia only a matter of weeks ago, his reputation as a violent war hero willing to support less than scrupulous causes if they served his personal interests preceded him. “Friends? Only the Ocellis have hated the Paterculis for almost two decades now, ever since Legate Paterculi was a tribune and your father a praetor.”

  “No reason I can’t train with the man’s son.” Victor eyed Marcellus’ blade. A pinpoint of his blood gleamed on it.

  Marcellus smiled a guarded smile that showed white teeth. “I expect you to include me in your plans.” Slipping his knife underneath his tunic, he walked away.

  Victor shivered. Another enemy. Perhaps if he didn’t break the law to gain wealth and power, he wouldn’t have so many enemies. What was life though without wealth and power? Victor turned his goblet bottom up. Eric acted fulfilled even when he eschewed wealth and power – and women.

  Insanity. The man had addled wits.

  The housekeeper had snuffed out most of the candles, the entertainers had left, and patrician sandals had long since slapped across the tile threshold. The darkened room looked as forlorn as the white table linen, now stained by fish sauce and spilled wine.

  Sweeping her broom forward, Cara sent the last crumb tumbling into a pile. She’d seen it all tonight; the patricians with their expensive clothes and too perfect accents, the foreign delicacies, the crystal, the vaulted ceilings. Not quite Greece, but much closer than the rest of Camulodunum.

  Eric had called her “no one.” She glowered at the tile, but what had she expected? Patricians didn’t consider plebeians friends, and at least a dozen patrician girls had turned their heads when Eric walked into this room. Even now, they probably daydreamed about becoming Eric’s bride. After all, she’d done the same thing.

  Feet thudded against tile. Eric’s tunic hung down from his shoulders, sliding around the muscles of his arm. He looked at her. “Have you seen Victor? He promised me a case of javelins.”

  “How would I know? I’m just no one.” Cara plopped on a wine cask.

  The moon pouring through the open window behind Eric lit his frame. He swung to a halt. “I’m sorry I called you ‘no one’. I wanted that girl to stop talking.”

  She shrugged, wrinkling the plain wool of her dress. Why had she allowed herself to think about this man day and night? Yes, Eric was heroic, and magical, and everything she ever wanted, but as a patrician, he’d never deign to be her friend, let alone anything more.

  Eric extended his hand. “Friends?”

  The wine cask wobbled as she startled. “You’d call a plebeian woman friend?”

  “If you’d call a member of the wretched male gender friend.” His glorious brown eyes laughed.

  “I never considered you wretched.” She reached out and laid her hand in his. So big. So powerful. Oh, to hold his hand as she strolled down Camulodunum streets.

  He squeezed her hand then dropped it. “I never considered you wretched either. See, we’re friends.” He grinned.

  “What do you think of me?” Gaze on his face, she held her breath.

  “I think you’re an adventurer with a keen mind, and I believe that you only talk to me mostly to learn about far off lands.”

  “That’s not true!” She jumped off the wine cask.

  He cocked his right eyebrow in half-skepticism, half-mirth.

  Moving to within half a pace of him, she clasped her hands in front of her and gazed up into his eyes. “Tell me something about you that you’d only tell a friend.” Her heart fluttered inside her.

  “I couldn’t make sense of a word that Dacian speaker said tonight, and I’m already dreading the lecture I’ll get from my father when I fail to comprehend the Dacian reading he assigned me.” Eric’s face fell. Dejection?

  “Oh, Eric.” She clasped his hand with both hers and pressed it against her heart. “You could never fail.”

  He stared at her and removed his hand.

  Her hand felt cold when not in his, but at least he called her friend. “Will I see you at the training grounds tomorrow?”

  “I train every day, but doesn’t your father object to you lingering on a male training field?” He still stared at her, a perplexed look in his riveting eyes.

  An uncomfortable feeling swam in her stomach. Dropping her gaze to the dark tile, she ran her tongue across her lips. “I don’t tell him.”

  “Oh.”

  She stiffened. She liked when he spoke of Greece much more than when he questioned her choices. Edna went to the training grounds, so it’s not like that act could be so abominable, despite what Pruella’s mother would say. “Going to lecture me?” Conan would.

  Eric laughed. “I’ve never lectured anyone, but be careful. You don’t want to give people the wrong impression.”

  Never lectured anyone? She beamed at him. She’d marry Eric tonight. Impossible dream. Eric belonged to the patrician world of far off politics, exotic lands, and unfathomable wealth.

  With a nod and a “salve,” he walked away.

  What had he meant “wrong impression”?

  Chapter 4

  The summer sunshine bathed the grassy knoll as Cara sat by Conan.

  “You’re lovely.” Conan slid his hand across her cheek.

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.” Cara stretched out on the blanket.

  He laughed and picked up a chunk of cheese. “Only you.” He broke it between his long fingers, spilling crumbles down his tunic. He handed half to her.

  Taking a slow nibble, she watched the clouds bob out to the horizon where Eric said the ocean roared. She needed to see that ocean, cross it, too.

  “Look. I’m making this for Aidan and Pruella’s wedding.” Conan pulled a shelf bracket carved like a seashell from the basket.

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I love it, Conan!”

  A large smile spread across his face. “I need a verse to carve on the shelf’s edge. Know any love poetry?”

  “Hmm, I’ll think on it.” The placid air wrapped around them in this peaceful valley as she leaned back on her elbows. Father decreed that to travel foreign lands, she’d need a man at her side. Conan
was a man, and unlike Eric, an available one. “What are your dreams, Conan?”

  “To build up my business, of course. Hire more workers, set up trade with Londinium.”

  “Ever want to leave this village? Travel the world?” She gazed at the blue sky.

  Conan laughed. “Traveling is for the rich and the destitute pilgrim. You’ll never build a business that way.”

  “But to see the sands of the Mediterranean, or cross the threshold of the Parthenon.” She sighed to herself at the very thought of such magnificence.

  “Do you know what ship’s fare costs?”

  Sitting up, she grabbed for Conan’s hand. “What about a small trip? Take me to see one of those seashells you carved?”

  “You’ll fret less over impossible dreams once you’ve had a babe or two of mine.” Standing, he stuffed the bread and water skin back in the basket.

  Impossible? Would she never see the shores of Greece or that Parthenon Eric spoke about? She flopped back on her corner of the blanket. The wool scratched her neck. She didn’t want any babies, let alone Conan’s.

  Picking up the basket, Conan squatted by her. “Kiss me.”

  He was an excellent kisser, proficient in all the trade requirements. Good eye contact going in, the right amount of pressure touching lips, a quality drawback that left a tingling sensation.

  Still, she turned away from him. “I don’t want to.” Father wouldn’t like that Conan had started kissing her, but two years had passed now and no one had died from it, despite what Pruella’s mother said about kissing.

  “I’ll kiss you then.” Conan slid his arm around her waist.

  “No.” She wasn’t so sure she wished to marry him either.

  “It’s just one kiss.” He moved his mouth over her.

  Rather than fight him, she let him do it. The kiss only lasted a few moments, anyway. Unlike kissing, marriage lasted a lifetime, and that was a long time to sweep Conan’s shop and bear his babies.

  On the other hand, she didn’t wish to break Conan’s heart, and Father wouldn’t let her take a servant position with a merchant’s wife.