To Deceive an Empire: Love and Warfare series book 3 Read online

  “What on earth would I do with a squalling infant that’s not even my blood?” Wryn’s dark eyes held consternation. “Why don’t you marry and take one. You’ve had enough offers.”

  Enough? Many, yes, but not enough. She was one dreadfully important offer short. Marcellus had until sunset to talk to Father.

  “Have you seen my gladius?” Wryn said.

  Turning, Gwen swished through the curtain.

  Aulia grabbed her arm. “Did your brother mention me?” She looked out the slit between curtain and plaster, gaze following Wryn’s departing back.

  “He said you’re nice.” Gwen plopped down beside her best friend.

  Leaning forward, Aulia dropped her voice. “I’m embroidering this for him, for a betrothal gift. It’s the insignia for his legion.”

  Eyes widening, Gwen scanned Aulia’s face. No hint of a jest lightened her countenance. “You know, even if your betrothed does die, it’s not entirely rational to think Wryn will offer for you.”

  With a sniff, Aulia plunged her needle back into the boar’s head. “Your plans are entirely rational?”

  Yes! No. Maybe? She found work for thirty women this month and rescued ten infants. Even if her petition failed, Marcellus would offer for her. Wouldn’t he?

  Chapter 6

  The fortnight had come and gone and Marcellus hadn’t asked for her. Afternoon sunshine reflected off the courtyard pool in weird patterns, same as the shattered pieces of her heart.

  Tears welled in Gwen’s eyes as phlegm built in her throat. She spread the scrolls containing patrician movements these last three years around her on the sun-heated brick. Yesterday, she’d found a lovely carpenter and his wife to adopt the last exposed infant, so she didn’t even have the comfort of snuggling a sweet-smelling baby.

  “Are you well?” Mother touched her back.

  “Perfectly.” Gwen spat the words over the calm water. Now to find which men had visited Gaul, Britannia, and Rome, in that order, and catch the Shadow Man. Though her plan would only work if he was a patrician, and Wryn said he wasn’t.

  “What’s wrong?” Mother sat on the tiled ledge above the water.

  “Nothing.” If Marcellus didn’t care, neither did she. Maybe she would take John. Father kept pushing him at her and John, unlike Marcellus, wanted to catch smugglers.

  More tears welled up and spilled over. Gwen wiped them with the back of her hand.

  “I’ll stay home with you tonight if you like.” The tips of Mother’s blonde hair skimmed the water. “Tired of dinner parties anyway.”

  “No, I want to go.” A legate who helped win the Dacian War would speak tonight. Marcellus would have interesting insights into that after his time serving—

  Gwen bit her lip. No Marcellus. Not now, not ever. She was no fool. She could overlook most of the rumors, believe she could change him. If he didn’t wish to marry her, though, she was done.

  A few hours later, another decorated villa welcomed her familia. Olive trees spread across the street of this wealthy section of town, so different than the stench of the Aventine Hills. Had Marcellus spoken truth about the poor’s oppression under the thumbs of unjust rulers?

  Didn’t matter what Marcellus thought. She wasn’t thinking about Marcellus.

  Once inside the spacious house, Gwen walked to where Wryn stood with John. Their topic—smuggling.

  “The word on the street is patricians are aiding the Viri smugglers.” John rested one hand on a pillar. He had a respectable bearing and was built strong. Unfortunately, the sight of him inspired only lethargy.

  John, however, wouldn’t kiss girls in gardens for almost two years then refuse to marry them.

  Wryn knit his brow. “There’s Victor Ocelli, of course, though I still can’t prove that. I have some other evidence….” He glanced to the milling guests. “I shouldn’t talk about that here.”

  Or to her. Gwen stabbed her toe in a tile crack.

  John shoved his left thumb in his belt. No one could call him less than forthright. He was as straightforward as a log.

  Her younger brother flailed his arms. “We need to search through everyone’s house and dig out the traitors. They could use boys my age, and we could slither through the windows.”

  Wryn laughed. “Such as Sulla’s purgings almost two-hundred years ago? I doubt you’d enjoy that experience.”

  Paulus’ face drooped.

  A sandal hit the tile behind them. “Don’t make fun of the boy, Wryn.” Father clapped a hand on Paulus’ shoulder. “Thinking outside common solutions is a skill to cultivate. There’s a garrison outside of Ticinum that has reinvented the aqueduct system. I want to show you that this summer, Paulus, and we’ll visit the city’s forum.”

  Paulus burst into a smile. “I want to see it!”

  Gwen jutted her eyebrows down. “I begged you to show me the Agrippinensium government at that age. When we traveled to Germania, you wouldn’t even let me meet the magistrate.”

  Father moved his uneasy gaze from right to left.

  If she’d been born a boy, Father would have taken her to the Senate and city magistrates and encouraged her political ambitions. An angry mist formed in her eyes.

  Gaze still not quite meeting hers, Father ran his thumb over his palm. “You planned to present the magistrate with your proposal to replace him with a female head of government, thus righting the gender imbalance in Roman cities.”

  Not an answer, an excuse. “Maybe that’s what Paulus will do too. You didn’t even give him a list of forbidden topics.” Father had given her such lists ever since she turned eight. She scowled at Paulus.

  Making a scared face, the boy jostled back into the crowd.

  Father ran his tongue over his lips.

  “You can’t use the age difference excuse like you always did with Eric and Wryn when you allowed them to do things you wouldn’t let me do.”

  “More like forced Eric,” Father muttered.

  “Exactly. You wouldn’t even let me.”

  Now John followed Paulus’ example and backed away from the circle. Wryn merely groaned.

  Father shifted in his sandals. “Gwen, you know I think you’re talented at politics. But you wanted to join the Roman Army, and become a senator.”

  “Wanted?” Gwen raised her hand. “I still do.”

  “This is the world we live in, Gwen. I can’t change it for you. You’re a young woman, some things—”

  “It’s not dangerous, nor does it take physical strength to get involved in politics. Look at all those old senators there.” She waved her hand, encompassing many bulbous-stomached men. “Besides, I’m plenty good with a gladius. I’m intelligent too. Also—”

  Father sighed. “To think, I considered your mother difficult for wanting a sheep farm.” He stood there, though, prepared to listen to her rant.

  The anger died into a sick feeling in her stomach. Life wasn’t fair, and Marcellus wouldn’t offer for her. She could fix the Empire if men only let women hold political office. Father didn’t bear the blame for any of it though. “I’m sorry. I’m just in an ill-humor.” She turned.

  Marcellus stood at the front of the room. She pressed her fingernails into her palms.

  Marcellus caught her gaze. No expression lifted the mask of his face, but pain burned deep in his green eyes.

  She took one step closer.

  He turned his gaze away.

  Squeezing her throat so tight no cry could escape, she ran for the bathhouse before her tears overflowed.

  Far into the watches of the night, when darkness shrouded all, Gwen burrowed into silk coverlets. A night breeze blew through the open window, flapping the curtains.

  A noise creaked outside her window, probably the guards making their rounds. Eyes pressed shut, Gwen dug deeper into her pillow. Father kept the Praetorian Guard’s overtime budget plump with the number of off-duty legionaries he hired.

  Something clicked against the tile. She bolted up.

  A man’s sh
adow, outlined by starlight, fell over her bed.

  Her lungs refused to scream.

  “Gwen.” A familiar baritone voice spoke. Stepping back, Marcellus touched the clay lamp sitting on her dressing table. With the scrape of flint against tinder, flames sparked up.

  How had he known where to find her lamp in the darkness? More importantly, what was he doing in her bedchamber? “Marcellus,” she breathed through a throat that refused to work properly.

  “I didn’t get to speak with you at the dinner this evening.”

  “So you came to my bedchamber?” Gwen slapped her bare feet against the cold tile.

  “Shh, someone will hear you.” He touched his finger to her lips.

  “They should. I have a man in my bedchamber.” Try as she might, she couldn’t get her jaw to stop gaping. Could one dream while feeling so awake?

  “How are you?”

  “You can’t be here.” She moved her gaze to the curtained entranceway. Mother didn’t sleep well, and Paulus still liked to run in here when he had a nightmare.

  “Obviously, I can, since I am.”

  “Marcellus this is….” She glanced out the window to where guards were supposed to barricade this villa.

  “I didn’t know your hair was so long.” He snarled his fingers in a curl as he gazed at her black hair that cascaded in waves to her waist.

  “Marcellus!”

  “This fabric’s very thin.” He ran his hand down the front of the shift she’d donned for bed.

  She lurched back.

  Marcellus moved his hand behind her back. Leaning forward, he kissed her cheek. “Is your skin as smooth as this shift?” He caressed both sides of the linen, his hands coming in at her waist.

  “You can’t—”

  “Can’t what?” He molded the fabric to her body, and he might as well touch skin for how it felt to her, and no doubt him as well.

  “Stop.”

  Releasing her waist, he cupped her hair in his hands, letting it fall between his fingers. “Very well, I’ll stop and you start. I want a kiss here.” He touched his lips, then his jaw.

  “I could scream.”

  “Why would you?” He slid his hand over the curve of her shoulder. “You like kissing me.”

  She grunted. “Perhaps, but I gave you a fortnight to ask for my hand, and you refused. Violating my privacy by showing up in my bedchamber in the middle of the night isn’t going to change that.”

  He frowned. “You’re not dead yet. I could still ask for you.”

  Dead? “I said a fortnight, and your fortnight’s passed.”

  “You think just because you’re a Paterculi, you can command my schedule to the day?” His voice hardened.

  “No, because I’m a woman and you’re a man, and you should not be in my bedroom.”

  Anger stretched his face.

  “Leave now, or I’ll scream, and my father will come.”

  “You wouldn’t get a single sound out unless I let you.” He slid his finger across her throat.

  She stared at him. Maybe the stories about him held truth.

  He stepped back. “You want me to leave?”

  She crossed her arms over her bosom, though that didn’t make him stop looking at her body. “I’d rather you asked for my hand in marriage, but yes.”

  He sat on the little stool by her dressing table and tilted the plush seat back. “Any news on these Viri you pursue?”

  “You just broke into my room, ogled me in a sheer dress, implied that you could slit my throat for quite sensibly getting my father involved, and you want to talk about smuggling?”

  “Does your brother have information on the identity of the leader?”

  She stared at Marcellus’ complacent looking face. “I think all of Rome is right. You are a lecher.”

  “Lecher? More like hero, and it’s not a part I care to play.” Anger burned in his eyes even as he let his gaze trace down her loose hair.

  “Hero? For breaking into a girl’s bedchamber?”

  “Not any girl’s. Yours.”

  “Yes, mine.” She grabbed a coverlet off the bed and threw it around herself. “I don’t appreciate it.”

  He turned his mouth up in that carefree expression that could mask any emotion. “At least I broke in now, not in a month or two when you’ll have some jealous husband to blame you for my break-in.”

  “You’re right. I might go marry someone else before the month’s out. After I do, I won’t even think about you. Ever.”

  Crossing the space, Marcellus touched her hand. Bending, he let his mouth just brush her lips. So warm, so gentle. He intertwined his fingers with hers. “Liar.”

  She couldn’t breathe. How much of an idiot was she for allowing this?

  Releasing her, he strode to the curtain that separated her room from the atrium.

  “You can’t go out that way.”

  He looked back and smirked. “No one caught me before.” Then, like the night wind, he disappeared.

  Gwen collapsed onto her bed. Feeling under the mattress, she touched the cold steel of Wryn’s gladius. She wrapped her fingers around it.

  Marcellus spoke falsehood. She would forget him. As quickly as humanly possible, too, since he obviously had no intention of marrying her.

  Gliding silently through the Paterculi house, Marcellus entered Wryn’s darkened room. A locked box stood in the corner. Kneeling, he dug a lock pick into it. The hinge gave way. Tablet after tablet was piled inside. Grabbing the tablets, he took them to the abandoned tablinum.

  Marcellus lit a lamp and scanned down the words. Latin anyway, not Greek, so he could read them.

  It was an account of recent shipments seized, a list of what provinces the Viri were most active in. It was mostly accurate except the Shadow Man had also visited Sicily. There was nothing in it that would help him discover the identity of the Shadow Man. Marcellus groaned and scooped the tablets back up.

  The Shadow Man had promised vengeance next time they met if Gwen wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t kill Gwen. He thought he could.

  In those moments standing over her bed before she woke, though, he proved to himself that he couldn’t.

  Now he’d have to play the part of the hero, meet the Shadow Man with Gwen still alive, and his life in jeopardy instead. He could only hope the Shadow Man would kill him rather than turn him out of the organization. If he lost his influence with the Viri, Fabius would discover it, and Consul Julius would send him back to slavery.

  Death? The chains of slavery? Marcellus ran his finger over the edge of his knife. He needed a plan.

  What if the Shadow Man sent someone else to kill Gwen? He should warn her. Then she’d know he communicated with the Viri and tell her father. When Legate Aquilus Paterculi prosecuted him in court, the Shadow Man would certainly kill him.

  Marcellus slid into Wryn’s room, replaced the tablets, and clicked the box closed.

  Dodging the steady thump of guards’ sandals, he reentered Gwen’s room. She slept now, the covers pushed back, her fingers twisted around a short sword. Her head tilted and starlight glinted across the ivory throat he could so easily slit this night. She was a patrician. By her very birth she deserved to die.

  He dropped his gaze. He couldn’t kill her. Even though his life was the price for hers, he couldn’t. Stars glittered in the dark sky. He drew in a breath of chill night air, perhaps one of his last breaths.

  Or did another way exist? Gwen had suggested it. He could protect her then. The Shadow Man had told Victor he tolerated some insubordination when the cause was one’s wife.

  Then he’d have Fabius to answer to. Fabius could sell him into slavery.

  Fabius needed him to catch the Shadow Man.

  He’d have to take the Marcellus estates rather than the money for the slave revolt if he chose this path.

  The estates provided income. In time, he’d have enough coin for his slave revolt.

  What about when he revealed his slave status to start the revol
t? Gwen wouldn’t even need a divorce to scorn and leave him then. Any marriage between a patrician of her rank and a freedman was, by law, illegitimate.

  He could delay the revolt. Ten years? No. Five years? Yes, enough time for more training, and five years’ worth of harvests from the estates should pay for the blades.

  Five years of happiness with Gwen. His heart pounded within him. He could take her to see the waterfalls on the northern Tiber. Go to the Mediterranean Sea with her. Hear her laugh rise above villa vineyards as he held her.

  No, this would never work. Her father wouldn’t agree. Even as Caius Marcellus, he didn’t have the political connections Fabius did.

  Besides, Gwen had a keen mind. His current living situation would expose him to her, let alone if she took one look at his back. Also, if anyone ever discovered his slavery, she’d never outlive the infamia of cohabiting with him.

  What other options did he have? Die at the Shadow Man’s hand? Flee before Fabius discovered the Viri had disowned him and sold him into slavery?

  Escaping a patrician’s hunt for a runaway slave wasn’t as easy as it sounded. He learned that three years ago. Marcellus pressed his fingers to the bandage that always covered his right arm.

  Moving past Gwen’s sleeping form, he slipped out her window. His feet hit the courtyard stone with a thud. He glanced back to the darkened room. Before this week concluded, he’d either claim that girl as his own or die at the Shadow Man’s hand.

  Perhaps both.

  Chapter 7

  “Tell me of the latest political news, John.” Gwen settled into a chair, her back pointedly turned to the hub-bub of dinner guests’ chattering.

  Even through the noise, she could make out Marcellus’ voice. She knew he stood surrounded by a host of men and women. After yesterday’s midnight unsuitableness, she didn’t need to see Hermina fawning over him, or the shy girl with the dimple casting longing glances, or Claudia giggling at his every word. “That news, John?”