To Deceive an Empire: Love and Warfare series book 3 Page 9

  No, things would go much better if this marriage idea worked. Gwen wanted him. Did John’s words during that bet hold any truth? Did Gwen possess some sway over her father’s choice of husbands?

  The only chance a proud patrician father like Aquilus Paterculi, who’d spent decades fighting for Rome, would accept a piddly marriage alliance such as the Marcellus estates provided was if Gwen’s tears swayed the man.

  He’d need the Marcellus villa, too, because he couldn’t bring Gwen back here.

  How was he going to obtain that? Marcellus knit his brow.

  “If her father says no, the news will spread over Rome within the week. Your window of escape before Fabius comes for your head will become small indeed.” Uneasiness hung in Bruno’s dark eyes.

  Bruno spoke the truth. This was insane. Of course, Gwen’s father would say no. Better to flee for the Germanic border now while Fabius sat complacently, get a few days start on him and the Shadow Man. He could lose his life over this marriage business.

  Then again, he could get Gwen.

  Gwen glanced at the sundial. One more hour until she would leave for the Aventine Hills. The scroll of military movements related to the Shadow Man blurred before her restless eyes. She paced the portico.

  “Gwen.” Paulus tore down the veranda. “Father wants to see you in the tablinum.”

  Why? Not more about John? Perhaps she should marry John. He, at least, didn’t sneak into women’s bedchambers at night and threaten throat-slitting. What did she expect from this afternoon’s meeting with Marcellus? That he’d clasp her hand to his heart and beg to marry her? Not likely.

  The shadow of the house overtook her. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, Gwen stepped into the tablinum. Mother stood by Father. Gravity seared across both their faces.

  Father touched the table. “Is it true you created a petition to outlaw marriages and give daughters the right to claim their dowries for themselves apart from their fathers’ choices?”

  “Yes.” Gwen smiled. “My petition will raise the legal marriage age for girls to fourteen, same as for men. Girls are eager to sign. I hope by the end of the year to have accumulated a hundred signatures.”

  “You have to stop.” Father pressed down on the tabletop, his knuckles white.

  “Stop fighting for the rights of girls entrapped by marriage? Never.” Gwen tensed her shoulders.

  “The girls you had sign? Their husbands divorced them.” Such hardness in Father’s voice.

  She was still months away from gaining an audience with the emperor. Who had told? Hermina, that’s who. Gwen glared at the tile. “Livia’s better off without that lout of a husband anyway.”

  Mother grabbed her arm, a desperate look in her eyes. “He kept the children, Gwen.”

  Livia without her children? “The babe’s not more than a week old. He’s suckling yet.” Gwen’s hand trembled.

  “He hired a wet nurse. She’s back at her father’s house.” Father’s voice caught.

  “Burn the paper,” Mother said, “before you do this to all the girls.”

  “It’s not fair.” Gwen raised her hand.

  “I know,” Father said, “but it’s the law, and only the emperor can change that.”

  “I wanted to help girls. They wanted to help their sisters.” Tears rolled down Gwen’s face.

  Mother raised her fair shoulders, her palms up. Though sorrow lingered in Father’s gaze, a firm purpose radiated too.

  “I could keep the unmarried girls’ signatures.”

  Father hardened his jaw. “Claudia’s father betrothed her to Atilius Icilius this morning.”

  “Atilius the senator’s son who lives on Capitoline Hill?” Gwen’s eyes widened. “He’s a brute. Her father already arranged a betrothal with Quintus Semproni, a dull old man, but sweet.”

  “Quintus Semproni broke it off because of your petition. Claudia’s father thought she needed someone who could control her.” Sorrow clouded Mother’s blue eyes.

  Gwen rubbed her fist against the falling tears. “What can I do to fix it?”

  “You can’t fix it,” Father said.

  “But—”

  “You can only stop.” Father’s voice crashed against the tile.

  Mother reached for her. Arm around her shoulder, Mother ran her hand down Gwen’s shaking back. “It’s a wicked world we live in.”

  Gwen tugged away. Far from making tribune, she couldn’t even help her best friends. She’d hurt them worse instead.

  Now, instead of puzzling over how to help Livia and Claudia, she had to go deal with an impossible man who’d most likely break her heart again this afternoon. If only Father didn’t object to breaking the law and would help her beat some decency into Drusus and smuggle Claudia out of the province.

  Chapter 8

  “So?” Gwen gripped the branch of an olive tree and her gaze clashed against Marcellus’.

  Marcellus raised one eyebrow as he leaned on the same branch a handbreadth away. A frog hopped from the Tiber. Marcellus nudged it back into the depths with the toe of his sandal. His breath touched her neck and she could smell the scent of olive resin on him.

  “Are you going to commit or not? I don’t have all day to waste here.”

  “Commit to love you forever?” He crept his hand up her temple and twisted a black tendril of her hair around his finger.

  “No.” She shoved his hand away. “To marry me.”

  “Well….” He grazed his finger against the tree bark.

  “Do you even want to spend the rest of your life with me?”

  “Never wanted anything more in my life, delicia.” He stepped into her. His arms met behind her waist as he tugged her so tight that her temples touched his chin. “I love how you care about people, and how you help—”

  She grabbed his shoulder and flung herself against his intertwined fingers. His grip broke and she stood free of him. A guard had shown her that trick. With the guard, she hadn’t felt her heart pound as tendrils of her hair fell from the motion. Nor had she looked back to see three of her hairs still stuck to his tunic. “When then?”

  “Gwen.” He stroked his finger down her cheek.

  “Cease touching me and answer.” She didn’t step back; he withdrew his hand. At least he’d learned something.

  He rested against the olive branch. The warm spring breeze tugged at his tunic, molding it to his muscled chest. He traced his gaze over the sunken footsteps their sandals had made in the swampy riverbank. He kicked at the nearest footprint. Then, finally, he lifted his gaze to her. “Would your father ever give you to me?” His voice held morbid gravity.

  “Not asking isn’t raising the odds.”

  “But, Gwen,” he raised one hand, “your father has rejected hundreds of offers, and the Marcellus estates are nothing so grand as many others.”

  “Ninety, and I didn’t want the others.”

  “All the same.” He frowned, his face so grim. He acted like he prepared himself for a funeral, not a wedding.

  “I do want you.”

  “And I want you. If you’d been born a slave, that would suffice. But you’re a Paterculi, Gwen, and—” The graveness left Marcellus’ voice, and a carefree mask slid over his features. “Let’s not indulge in the fantasy that Paterculi males are malleable.” He stepped next to her again, the edge of his toe touching hers in the mud. He ran his hand up the curve of her cheek.

  She slid one arm over the other. “Paterculi females aren’t either.”

  “That is true.”

  “Ask my father.”

  Marcellus’ breath blew across her cheeks. His chest rose and fell with air. In the stillness, the veins on Marcellus’ forearms bulged. If she pressed her hand to his heart, would his blood pound furiously too? Marcellus looked at her. “You think there’s a chance your father will say ‘yes’?”

  “Not a chance, a certainty. Father said I could choose the man I wanted.”

  “All right.”

  Just like that Mar
cellus agreed to what she’d urged him for a year to do without success?

  “Tomorrow morning, I’ll ask him.”

  Her cheeks heated. Marry Marcellus. She had her father’s mother’s flame-colored veil. She wanted Aulia for an attendant, and Livia and Claudia too. She’d kiss Marcellus at the betrothal ceremony, in front of everyone. See Wryn act so smug then. Livia’s daughter could bear the flowers.

  No. Gwen’s heart dropped. Livia was never to see her daughter again. This was her fault, hers. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Crying over the prospect of marriage to me? You’d think I was some father-arranged bridegroom.” Marcellus touched her lips.

  “It’s not that. I’m happy about marrying you. It’s just that… something detestable happened.”

  “Tell me.” Marcellus motioned right to where a fallen tree made a bench half a pace above the roaring Tiber. He sat on it.

  She stood above him as the tears streamed down her cheeks. “I was trying to help my friends, Livia and Claudia. Petition the emperor to improve the lot of women.”

  Reaching out, Marcellus locked his fingers around her hips and pulled her on his legs.

  She could feel the heat of his body and other scarcely appropriate things. He said he’d ask for her tomorrow.

  “What happened?”

  She clasped his hand so hard her nails dug into his palm. “Drusus, Livia’s husband, had hit her. She showed me the bruises, so I had her sign the petition. Then Drusus divorced her and kept her babes. He won’t even let her see them.” Her tears splashed against her collarbone, falling to wet silk.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for her. She’s still a patrician. If you want to see beatings and rape, just look at what patricians do to slaves.”

  “How could you say that?” She tried to rise, but Marcellus’ hands shackled her to him. She flopped back against his shoulder and gazed up the sloping hill. Even the air looked gray with this mood. “You don’t understand. You’re a patrician man.”

  Marcellus’ entire body tensed behind her.

  She glanced at his face. “Claudia, her father betrothed her to a brute as retribution. I should help her flee.”

  “Think patrician women will ever give up their life of luxury, their dozens of fan-bearing slaves?”

  “For freedom, yes.” She glared at Marcellus. He had the worst attitude about this. Of course, Claudia would rather make her own way, spin wool and sell merchandise, than marry such a man. Claudia couldn’t even persevere through weaving one length of cloth. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. I would.”

  “You’re different.” He slid his fingers over her bare shoulder.

  “No, I’m not.” She jumped off his lap. “Those girls, they’re just like me. They want the same things. Freedom, love.”

  He caught her hand. “You wish everyone happiness, not just yourself. Tell me, how many of those patrician women beat their handmaidens?”

  “Well….”

  “When their husbands philander, who do they have flogged or sell into hard labor? Their husbands?”

  “I told Livia not to.” Gwen grimaced. “She was mad with grief. I blame Drusus more than her.”

  “To her slave, did it matter? Or the fact that Drusus forced the girl, did that matter to Livia when she sold the girl to the worst brothel in town as retribution?” Marcellus’ green-eyed gaze pierced her.

  Gwen ran her tongue over her lips. Her hands went limp. “I guess not. Is the girl all right? I could free her and give her work at the fuller’s shop.”

  “It’s too late.” Marcellus dropped her hand. “She took her life.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps I spend time at brothels.”

  “No, you don’t.” She tilted her head. A black curl slipped from its binding, falling down her neck. Her hands clenched. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  The breeze blew between them. She ran her gaze over Marcellus’ face.

  He stood. “I have work to do.”

  She nodded.

  “Until tomorrow, domina.” With a grin, he raised her hand to his lips. Domina, the title a patrician woman took when she married. Or, the title a slave called the mistress of the house. Marcellus had never called her domina before.

  As she walked up to the weaver’s stall and the guard she’d brought at Marcellus’ insistence, she glanced back. Marcellus moved down the riverbank and disappeared behind the edge of a hovel.

  Wait, he’d somehow escaped answering how he knew about Livia’s slave. Just like all the other questions he hadn’t answered these last two years. Was marrying Marcellus truly a wise idea?

  Extracting her knife, she twirled the sharpened blade. She’d never recommend a girl such as Claudia marry Marcellus, but she could handle him.

  As the first sunrays lit the eastern sky, Marcellus rapped against the Paterculi gate. Guards in the bright red cloaks of Roman legionaries patrolled the villa yard, wearing a path in the grass.

  A ruffled-haired porter stuck his head out of a brick enclosure. One glimpse of him, and the man scowled. “You’re not welcome in this villa.”

  Marcellus rested one hand on the brick wall. “I need to see the legate.” Fabius would scourge him, kill him, and sell him back into slavery for asking to marry Gwen.

  “To murder him, like your friends the Ocellis?” The porter glared through the iron bars.

  Wondrous opening. Not only would Gwen’s father think the Marcellus estates vastly inferior, but, apparently, the man rightfully suspected him of a connection to the Viri. As things stood, he had until the end of the month before the Shadow Man expected Gwen dead.

  If her father said “no,” and the news got out, he had a lot less time than that before the Shadow Man would kill him. He glanced back to the bustle of peddlers. Gwen had said her father would certainly let her choose. “Just tell the legate I’m here.”

  With one more suspicious stare, the porter turned to the house. A little later, he returned with Legate Paterculi.

  The porter swung the gate open and the legate crossed through it. “What do you have to say to me, Caius Marcellus?”

  “I’d prefer to discuss it somewhere more private than the street.” Marcellus glanced into the gated courtyard he’d never entered with permission before.

  “Very well.” The legate motioned to the guards. They parted, allowing him entrance.

  Marcellus’ sandals made a clicking noise as he passed the stone entrance, through the atrium, and into the tablinum. Scrolls lined a multitude of shelves and tablets piled on a polished table.

  A chill ran between Marcellus’ shoulder blades. The man whose seed had given him life used to have just such a tablinum.

  “So?” Legate Paterculi stared at him.

  “Merely because I drink wine with Victor upon occasion, doesn’t make me a smuggler, regardless of the stories your son spreads.” What evidence did Wryn have? Gwen obviously didn’t believe Wryn’s accusations.

  “Are you here to prove that you’re not and that you weren’t part of the Ocelli plot on our lives last year?” Sun glinted off Aquilus Paterculi’s signet ring.

  “I swear this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “I put little trust in pledges from men such as you.”

  “Such as me?” Marcellus’ back went rigid as anger flushed his face. “I might not be rich as a Paterculi—”

  “I did not refer to your wealth.”

  Ha! Patricians only cared about wealth when choosing their daughters’ husbands, not virtue, love, or their daughters’ happiness. The man whose seed had given him life had sold off his own daughter at much too young an age. Nine months after Flavia wept her way through the wedding ceremony, she’d died in childbirth. Another death on the hands of the man whose seed from which he’d sprung.

  All patrician fathers were like that, which is why Aquilus Paterculi would tell him ‘no.’ Why did he invite death by asking for Gwen? If Aquilus Paterculi refused him, he’d
only have hours to flee before Fabius heard of it. Marcellus ran his slick thumb over his knife hilt. Gwen promised her father was different than other patricians, that he would let her choose.

  Even if Gwen’s father did say “yes,” marrying Gwen meant he couldn’t start a slave revolt for five years. He’d have to play the patrician another five years. Marcellus traced a grout line with his sandal.

  He’d have five years with Gwen. Since he couldn’t kill her, showing up to the Viri meeting place married to her would significantly decrease the risk of the Shadow Man slitting his throat. Even if the Viri didn’t slit his throat, Fabius very well might.

  Fabius needed him to catch the Shadow Man.

  The legate sat. “What do you want?”

  “Your daughter.”

  “Excuse me?” Legate Paterculi narrowed his eyes.

  “To marry her.”

  “You come into my house,” the legate threw his stool back, “and you dare to presume that I would ever let a man like you within a hundred paces of my daughter.” The legate raised both hands. “You’re a brutish, lecherous—”

  “She wants me.” Gwen said her father would let her choose. She had better have spoken truth.

  “How would you know? If you ever go near my daughter.” Legate Paterculi shoved both hands against his shoulder.

  Rather than flick out his knife, Marcellus stepped back. “Gwen said you’d give her a choice.”

  “Why are you speaking to my daughter? If you ever say another word to her, I’ll—”

  Clearly, despite Gwen’s claims, her father was exactly like the man whose seed had given him life. Shoulders back, Marcellus glared at the man. “You’ll do what?” He’d done a lot more than speak to Aquilus Paterculi’s daughter.

  “Guards.” Aquilus Paterculi gestured to the legionaries outside the entranceway. “Throw this man out. Violently.”

  As Marcellus spun around, five guards grabbed his arms. Before he could draw his knife, they dragged him across the atrium, through the courtyard, and hurled him out the gate. Marcellus stumbled back a step as the iron gate slammed behind him.