Page 2 of The Tribune Temptation (Roman Heirs #1)

T wo nights later, Aelius accompanied Catullus to a grand townhouse on the Palatine Hill. His finest toga lay heavy and unwieldy on his shoulders, and he kept adjusting it as he followed Catullus into the atrium.

He tried not to look too impressed by their lavish surroundings but couldn’t help craning his head up at the carved capitals of the columns surrounding the room, painted in red, blue and green. Intricate mosaics of colored tile spread beneath his feet, and lanternlight sparkled on the water of the central pool. A collection of elaborately painted antique vases, each on their own carved pedestal, surrounded the perimeter of the room. They must be worth a fortune.

Sounds of music and laughter grew louder as a slave escorted them toward the dining room. With anxious fingers, Aelius twisted the silver wristband on his left wrist. He strove to tamp down his nerves. He’d have to get used to mingling with the elite if he wanted to be consul one day. At least no one here knew his true background. They’d take him for a plebeian, not a freedman.

They entered the dining room. Colorful frescoes were splashed across the walls. In the flickering light, the figures almost looked as if they were moving. It was some sort of mythological scene, but Aelius couldn’t make out which one.

Catullus introduced him to their host, a gray-haired senator named Crispinus, and his wife, a woman with a simpering smile and cold eyes. Then they took their seats on the low couches placed around the three-branched table. Slaves brought around silver platters of appetizers. Catullus piled his plate high, but Aelius was too distracted to eat much.

Catullus shoved a poached fig into his mouth and nudged Aelius. He tilted his chin toward two young ladies sitting with an older woman who had to be their mother at the opposite wing of the table. “Two contenders over there. I know for a fact their family has two more daughters at home. They’ll struggle to find suitable husbands for all of them. Might be willing to sacrifice one to your cause.”

One of the young ladies caught Aelius’s eye and smiled, her appreciative gaze skimming his body. Aelius smiled back.

The girls’ mother noticed and shot Aelius a glare sharp enough to pierce metal. She spoke a firm word to her daughter, who redirected her gaze elsewhere with a chastened look.

“Perhaps not,” Aelius muttered. Even a plebeian was not good enough to smile at a pretty patrician girl, apparently.

Catullus shrugged and reached for his goblet of wine. Aelius scanned the other guests. He glanced over several wives seated next to their husbands. His gaze landed on another seemingly single young woman. “What about that one?”

Catullus shook his head. “Engaged to a magistrate.”

Aelius kept looking. His gaze paused on a young woman seated next to their host, Crispinus. She must have slipped in after they’d entered, because he hadn’t noticed her during their introduction to Crispinus and his wife. She seemed a few years older than the other unmarried girls. A vibrant blue palla was pinned to her head, covering her hair, and she wore no makeup. Even in the dim room, Aelius could see deep shadows beneath her eyes. She sat stiffly upright, her mouth frozen in a dissatisfied frown, her eyes fixed on the empty plate before her. She sat so still she could have been carved from marble. A statue, fit to worship.

Aelius couldn’t seem to shift his gaze from her. He caught a hint of glossy dark hair beneath the sapphire fabric. A sudden, inappropriate urge overtook him to know what that hair would feel like twined through his fingers.

“Who’s that?” Aelius murmured, tilting his chin toward the woman.

Catullus raised his eyebrows. “Why, that’s Crispina, of course,” he said, as if that should explain everything.

The name did explain one thing. “Our host’s daughter?”

Catullus nodded. “Don’t you pay any attention to gossip?” When Aelius shook his head, Catullus leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Crispina’s husband divorced her last month. It was a considerable scandal. For a senator’s daughter to be sent packing, disgraced…”

That explained her unhappy bearing. “What did she do?”

“It’s what she didn’t do,” Catullus said. “She was married for three years, and couldn’t provide her husband with a child. So he divorced her to find a more fertile wife, and now every man in Rome knows she’s barren. I hear her parents are very displeased with her, and they won’t be making her life easy now that she’s back. She’s either got a life of solitude ahead of her or a marriage to some decrepit old man who just wants a pretty wife for his last few years. Maybe she can snag a priestess-hood if she’s lucky. A terrible waste, isn’t it?”

Aelius’s interest piqued. He took another long look at the young woman. Could she be what he was searching for? He couldn’t hope for better than a senator’s daughter, and she had no better options. Her father would be desperate to get her off his hands, and he might even be willing to contemplate someone like Aelius as a suitor.

“Shouldn’t I consider her, then?” Aelius asked. “She could be exactly what I need.”

Catullus’s mouth tightened. “I thought about suggesting you go after her, but I think she should be a last resort. I know her. She was prickly at best before her divorce, and since then I imagine her temperament has only soured further. To make matters worse, she’s extremely well-read and intelligent. She can recite Homer backwards and forwards, and I think she even knows Aramaic—”

“What, you don’t think I can hold my own with an educated woman?”

“With all due respect, my friend, you’re not exactly an academic.” Catullus lowered his voice even further, speaking close to Aelius’s ear. “Crispina dared to correct me— me !—at a party a few months back when I was reciting Sappho. In front of everyone, can you fathom it? It was horribly rude.”

“Ah, so you just don’t like her because she embarrassed you,” Aelius said. “Well, I don’t know any Sappho, so she can hardly repeat the offense.”

Motion flickered where Crispina had been sitting, and Aelius returned his gaze to her. She rose from her couch with brisk but graceful movements and headed for the door.

Aelius seized his chance and rose as well. Speaking to her alone could be his best opportunity to create a good first impression.

“If you’re not back by the time the next course is served, I’ll assume the atrium has a new statue,” Catullus said.

Aelius blinked at him. “What?”

Catullus let out a long-suffering sigh. “I was comparing her to Medusa. It was quite clever.”

Aelius rolled his eyes and made for the door. He kept his movements casual, so anyone watching would think he was only going to relieve himself, but as soon as he left the dining room, his pace quickened.

Ahead of him, Crispina’s palla fluttered behind her like a sail seeking a sea breeze. Aelius jogged a few steps until his foot flashed out and caught the hemmed edge of the fabric. It pulled loose from her head and fell, revealing shining dark hair bound into a sleek bun at the nape of her neck.

Aelius immediately bent to pick up the fallen palla. “I beg your pardon, lady,” he said as Crispina turned.

She snatched the fabric from his hands. “Are you following me?”

“No, I was just…” He struggled to gather his thoughts, thrown off-kilter by her directness. He’d been expecting the coy manners of a well-bred patrician girl—not a question so forthright it could have come from his commanding officer in the army. “Going where you were going. To take a breath of air in the atrium.”

“I was going to relieve myself. Are you going to follow me there?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and continued walking down the colonnaded hallway.

Idiot . They’d exchanged barely a dozen words, and somehow he’d managed to cock it up already. He should have listened to Catullus. But he wouldn’t give up so easily.

He followed at a slower pace, keeping a safe distance so she wouldn’t notice him. He entered the atrium; she continued through it and disappeared into another part of the house. Aelius lingered by the central pool. She’d come back this way, and then he could try to salvage the situation.

Aelius waited in the cool evening. Distant noises of the party filtered to him from the dining room, but the atrium was quiet. A few minutes later, a figure appeared on the other side of the atrium.

Crispina had pinned her palla back atop her head. It flowed over her shoulders down to her ankles in a wave of deep blue. She paused as she entered the atrium and cast Aelius a suspicious glance.

Aelius summoned every ounce of his charm. He knew women found him attractive, as he often caught lingering stares or flirtatious smiles from ladies he encountered in passing. He curved his lips into a smile. “Pleasant evening, isn’t it?”

She approached slowly, clasping her hands on her bare forearms. “I suppose.” She glanced in the direction of the dining room, and her mouth tightened.

He sensed she wasn’t eager to return to the party, which he could use to his advantage. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Aelius Herminius.” His full name was Marcus Trebonianus Aelius Herminius, but he hated using it. It was customary for freed slaves to take the name of their former master, but he preferred to be known by his own name, Aelius, and that of his stepfather, Herminius.

“How do you know my father?” She did not introduce herself.

“Er, I don’t actually. I’m here with Catullus.”

“The poet.”

It wasn’t a question, but Aelius nodded. “He spoke very highly of your taste in poetry.”

An eyebrow lifted. “I doubt that.”

Silence stretched. Aelius’s mind whirled, trying to think of something else to say. She wasn’t moving to return to the party, but she wasn’t saying anything either. Instead, she regarded him with a steady, cool gaze that made his skin crawl with anxiety.

He decided to try a compliment. All ladies liked compliments, didn’t they? “You look most beautiful tonight, lady.”

She glanced over at the pool next to them as if bored.

A gentle nighttime breeze flowed over them, wafting the floral scent of perfumed oil to his nose. Her scent, he realized. It brought to mind a disquieting image of her lithe body being massaged all over with oil. His mouth opened, seeking words to distract him from the images running through his head. Then he was talking, his mouth sputtering words before his mind could catch up. “Catullus tells me you are recently divorced.”

Her gaze flicked back to him, sharp as a freshly honed blade.

The words kept spilling out. “In fact, I was relieved to hear it—”

“Were you?”

Aelius realized how idiotic his statement had sounded. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean it that way…I just…I found you to be so striking, lady, and…” His disjointed words hung in the air. Aelius cringed. How was it that he could speak with confident eloquence to a hundred men in the Forum, but he’d managed to so thoroughly botch a single conversation with one woman?

“Please, do continue,” Crispina said, her voice dripping vinegar.

Aelius braced himself. Too much had been said already. The only way to possibly salvage this disaster of a conversation was to be forthright and honest. “I am in search of a wife, and I thought you…well, you…”

She stared at him with a blank, flat gaze, with no hint of reaction at his bumbling words.

“…you might be interested in marrying me,” he finished lamely. He waited for the shock, disgust to fill her face at such a horrible, unexpected proposal.

Her eyes flashed, like firelight on obsidian, and her features hardened. She wasn’t shocked or horrified by him, Aelius realized: she was angry.

“What a funny joke.” Her voice was soft, but an edge of menace thrummed behind it, like a cat poised to strike. “Such an easy target I’ve become. The disgraced divorcée, the butt of dinner party pranks. Did Catullus put you up to this? Is this fodder for one of his overwrought poems?” She took a step toward him. He moved back, his calves hitting the stone edge of the pool at the center of the atrium.

He realized with a surge of horror that she’d thought he was mocking her. “No, you have the wrong idea—”

In a fluid motion, she bent down to the pool and raked her hand through the water. A wave sprang up and drenched the left side of Aelius’s body. He stumbled away in shock, spluttering.

Crispina turned on her heel and left the atrium. Aelius cleared water out of his eyes. Well. He could hardly blame her: he deserved that.

He dried himself as best he could with the folds of his toga, then returned to the dining room. Crispina had resumed her seat next to her father. She did not look up as Aelius walked past her and rejoined Catullus on their couch.

Catullus gave him a long look. “Did she try to drown you?”

“Nearly,” Aelius said ruefully. Luckily the room was dark enough that he hoped no one else would notice his soaked toga. He took a long swig of wine. “I’ve made a mess of it all.”

“I warned you she can be peevish. What did you do?”

Aelius cringed at the memory, painfully fresh. “She made me nervous. I tried to explain why I wanted to talk to her.” He closed his eyes. “I may have attempted to propose to her. She thought I was mocking her.”

Catullus let out a whistle. “Gods below, you’re an idiot.”

“Yes, you were right, and I should have listened,” Aelius admitted. “How do I apologize? Should I approach her again tonight?”

“Not unless you want to actually end up floating face-down in the impluvium, I fear,” Catullus said. “A groveling letter is the way to go. I’ve written plenty. I can help you with the wording. And don’t worry, there’s another dinner party next week I can take you to. There is sure to be a different crop of girls in attendance.”

The prospect of a different pool of candidates didn’t fill him with the optimism it should have. An hour ago, he hadn’t even known Crispina existed, but now, something in him was convinced she could be the solution to his problem.

Aelius could benefit Crispina as well. He eyed her, sitting silently next to her parents at the other wing of the table. They both ignored her, apart from the occasional disdainful glance from her mother. Crispina’s mother regarded her with a look that Aelius was more used to seeing directed at himself when someone realized he was a freedman: scorn mixed with contempt.

A hint of sympathy welled in Aelius’s chest; though he’d never known his father, he’d never had to suffer the coldness of a disinterested mother. One loving parent was better than two indifferent ones.

Yes, he and Crispina could help each other. He could offer her a marriage that would free her from the shame of her divorce and the evident unpleasantness of living with her parents, and she could get him access to the elite that he needed.

Unfortunately, he seemed to have made himself detestable to her, but hopefully Catullus’s help with a groveling letter could fix that.

A sudden buoyancy filled him, as it always did when he came up with a plan. True, he still had no desire to get married, but now, he wondered if Crispina’s blue-veiled figure held the key to the only future that would make him happy.