Page 25 of The Tribune Temptation (Roman Heirs #1)

C rispina’s heart thudded in her chest. Her made-up excuses vanished, and she stammered. “I…just…”

Aelius stepped into the room. His brows drew together. “I know you haven’t been feeling well, so when I woke and you were gone, I came to check on you. But what are you doing in here?”

She cleared her throat, which felt as dry as the papyrus she was gripping. “I…” Her gaze jumped frantically around the room, landing on an inkwell. “Needed ink.”

His frown deepened. Her fingers twitched, and the papyrus crinkled. His gaze jumped to it. “What’s that?”

Her legs were stiff, clumsy. She jerked back a step and bumped into the chair behind the desk. Her arm flung out to steady herself, and her fingers released the paper. It fluttered to the ground.

Aelius bent and picked it up. He read it over. “These are my notes.” He lifted his gaze from the paper and stared at her hard. “What were you doing with them?”

She could see in his searching stare that he was starting to put the pieces together. Her knees weakened, and she slumped into the chair. It was over. “I did something terrible,” she confessed, her voice small and pathetic. “But I had no choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

A wave of remorse flooded her. She forced herself to meet his gaze. Suspicion and confusion mingled on his handsome face.

“Rufus blackmailed me into betraying you. I’ve been giving him information on your plans for the past two weeks.” The words felt like shards of glass on her tongue.

Shock rippled over his features. He turned away, braced a fist against the wall. Tension filled every line of his body. Crispina bit her lip, waiting for an explosion.

“Why?” he murmured, face still hidden from her. “You must have had a good reason. Unless this has all been a lie, and you’ve hated me from the beginning. I did fear I would never be good enough for you.”

“No!” She rose to her feet, wanting to go to him but afraid to touch him. “I don’t hate you. I lo—” She broke off. It was almost too painful to admit now, when she was about to lose him, but she had to lay herself bare. She owed him that much. “I love you.”

His head jerked toward her. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

“I also love Max.” Her voice grew stronger. “Rufus threatened him. I did what I did to keep…” She cleared her throat. “To keep our family together.”

He raked a hand through his hair. “How could Rufus threaten Max? And why didn’t you tell me?”

She took a deep breath. “There’s something you don’t know about me.” She told him, in halting words, about her secret lessons. About how she had really discovered Max. About how Rufus had followed her and blackmailed her, threatened to take Max away from them.

Aelius paced while she talked, arms crossed tight over his chest. When she fell silent, he stopped and faced her. “How much does Rufus know?”

“Everything you’ve told me about your plans through the election,” she admitted, the words sticking in her throat. “He was relentless.”

Aelius absorbed this with a face like stone. “You have cost me this election. Do you understand that? I can’t do anything if Rufus can anticipate my every move.”

She swallowed hard. “There will be other elections.”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “Yes, but if I want to become consul in ten years, I needed this election. I needed to win this year . And your foolishness has taken that from me.”

“It wasn’t foolishness,” she snapped. “I was doing a good thing by teaching those children to read. Education is everything. You of all people should understand that.”

“Cavorting around slums dressed as a priestess is not a fitting endeavor for a tribune’s wife,” he shot back.

“Well, I won’t be a tribune’s wife now, will I?” The retort snapped from her mouth like an arrow from a bow. Once, she had entertained a brief hope that Aelius would understand and appreciate the passion behind her lessons. But deep down, she’d known he would react like this. Despite fostering a few radical ideas, he wanted to be seen as respectable, genteel, to put as much distance from his inferior birth as possible. And a respectable, genteel man did not permit his wife to “cavort around slums,” as he so eloquently put it.

His hands balled into fists. “Leaving that aside, why did you not tell me the moment Rufus approached you?”

“I feared if I told you Rufus had threatened me and Max, you’d drag him out of his house and beat him in the streets. Then you’d certainly not win the election, and you’d be arrested besides.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I might have done that,” he admitted. “But you should have told me. Instead you lied to me. About many things.”

Tears pricked her eyes. The shattering of his trust felt like a hand squeezing her lungs, depriving her of air. “I know.”

“You should have told me about Rufus.” His voice grew stronger, angrier. “Maybe we would still be in the same place, but we could have dealt with it together, like partners. But you chose to betray me.”

A hot knife twisted in her stomach. She tried to mask her devastation with anger. “If I had been honest with you from the beginning about what I was doing with my pupils on the Aventine, would you have let me continue?”

He glared at her. “You know the answer to that.”

“Then we are not partners. You promised me freedom, but you would have sought to control me, to tell me what I can and cannot do, where I can and cannot go. We never would have had Max.”

“And Rufus would never have had fodder to blackmail you. I would be on the verge of winning a tribune seat.”

“So that’s more important to you than our family,” she spat. “By the gods, you are selfish.”

“This election is more important to me than anything!” he shouted. “It’s the only reason I married you.”

The vitriol in his voice burned her. She opened her mouth, but no words would come out.

A sound by the doorway made them both turn their heads. Gaia stood there, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “I heard shouting.”

Crispina and Aelius exchanged a fraught glance. Then Aelius squared his shoulders. “There will be no more. We’re done.” He headed for the door and disappeared into the darkened house.

Gaia fixed her cool gaze on Crispina. “What happened?”

Crispina swallowed hard. Drawing breath pained her, as if she’d been punched in the stomach. “I must let Aelius tell you. If you hear it from me, you’ll find some way to see my side of it. And I don’t deserve your kindness or sympathy.” Her nails dug into her palms, the pain a tiny echo of what was going on in her chest.

Gaia stepped forward and reached out a hand as if to rest it on Crispina’s shoulder. Crispina flinched away from the warmth of her touch. She deserved no comfort. “Please, don’t.” Any sliver of kindness would make her crumble, and if she crumbled, there would be no putting herself back together again. She slipped past Gaia and stumbled from the room.

It was dangerous to be on the streets alone in the middle of the night, but Aelius couldn’t return to the bedroom he shared with Crispina, couldn’t spend one more moment in the house with her. He glanced around the empty streets, daring a brigand to jump him. He could use a good fight right about now.

He indulged himself with a fantasy of going to Rufus’s house, breaking down the door, dragging Rufus from his bed and beating him to a bloody pulp. But Crispina was right, damn her to Dis. That avenue would only lead to his arrest, and where would that leave his mother?

Instead, he went to the only other place he could think of: Catullus’s house. Catullus was habitually late to bed and even later to rise, so Aelius had a feeling he’d be up even at this time of night.

A yawning slave let him in, and moments later Catullus met him in the atrium, a blanket wrapped around his bare shoulders. A young man with tousled hair trailed him, fixing Aelius with an annoyed stare.

Catullus showed no trace of irritation, even though Aelius had evidently interrupted something. “What’s amiss? Or is this a social call? I suppose we could make room for one more.” He gave a jaunty grin, though his companion scowled.

“I’m sorry,” Aelius said, unable to entertain his friend’s jokes. “It’s Crispina. She has…” He struggled to find the words to articulate what she had done. “She’s ruined everything.”

Catullus’s brows drew together. He turned to the young man. “Go back to bed, love. I need to speak with Aelius.”

The man huffed but left them alone. Catullus beckoned Aelius to follow him into his study, and directed the slave who’d let him in to bring them wine.

“Talk,” Catullus ordered as soon as the door of the study closed behind them.

Aelius sat and dropped his head into his hands. His mind was still swirling. Images from the past hour kept coming back to him. Waking to find Crispina gone. Discovering her in his study. The anguish on her face as she confessed. This all felt like a bad dream, but one he would never wake from.

He relayed the broad strokes to Catullus. His friend listened in silence, fingers tapping gently on the corner of his desk. When Aelius finished, his fingers stilled. “Fuck,” Catullus said. “That’s bad.”

Sometimes Catullus didn’t need masterful poetry to perfectly capture a situation. “Yes. The worst part is, I want to admire her,” Aelius said. “A woman like her, taking an interest in the education of children in a slum? But she kept it from me. She lied to me, and then she betrayed me. It’s all over.” Not just his chances in the election, but his marriage, the love that had been budding between them. His heart twisted with another anguished throb.

“What are you going to do?” Catullus asked.

Aelius heaved a sigh. “I don’t think there is anything I can do. Rufus has beaten me. Only a fool doesn’t know when to admit defeat. Perhaps I should do as my mother suggested before all this. Get a nice place in the country, try to be satisfied with a quiet life.” Give up his dream of a consulship once and for all.

“And Crispina?”

Aelius’s lips tightened. He hadn’t wanted to think about this part. “I can’t be with her after what she has done. We must divorce.” The formalities would have to wait until after the election. He didn’t want to alienate what little support he did have by divorcing his wife days before votes were cast. He would ask her to return to her parents’ house tomorrow, though.

Catullus nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.” He leaned forward to clasp Aelius’s hand. “If it’s any consolation, I do believe she acted out of desperation.”

“She told me she loved me tonight. In the same breath as she confessed feeding information to Rufus.” Her words echoed in his mind. I love you . Once, he would have rejoiced at that, would have felt like dancing through the streets. But tonight, he could only feel the cruelty of those words.

“Do you love her?”

Aelius lifted his wine cup and drank deeply. “I fear I do,” he admitted as he set the cup down. The pain he felt upon learning she had lied to him told him he loved her. If he hadn’t loved her, he would have felt angry, yes, but this deep, twisting ache inside him spoke of love. Only love could make the betrayal cut with this degree of agony. “I want to hate her. I want to curse her. But instead I love her, even though she’s taken everything from me.”

“Mm.” Catullus sipped his wine. “I believe hate and love are closer than we realize. Right now you are filled with passion toward her, whether good or bad, but in time, the fire will fade, and you will feel nothing.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Aelius muttered into his wine cup. Catullus merely offered a sympathetic grin and topped up his goblet.