Aelius’s hand closed around her wrist. “Don’t,” he murmured.
“You can’t let him get away with this!”
“Causing a scene is exactly what he wants,” Aelius said.
Crispina ground her teeth. “Are yousureI can’t throw a jug of wine in his face?”
A hint of a smile twitched at his lips. “You do have a predilection for dousing men who displease you, don’t you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Then let’s leave. I can feign a headache.”
Aelius shook his head. “We’ll stay and behave as if nothing is amiss. Come, people are sitting for dinner.”
With a tight sigh, Crispina allowed Aelius to lead her over to one of the low couches bordering the dining table. The rage still boiling in her chest surprised her. But Aelius was her husband now, and an insult to him was an insult to her.
Luckily, Rufus and Trebonianus sat across the room from them. With effort, Crispina kept her gaze focused on Aelius and their closer dinner companions. Aelius wasn’t hard to watch. His face was so expressive, whether in attentive, quiet contemplation of what someone else was saying, or moving and changing as he spoke. He was charming and affable without being too familiar. Even if someone displayed initial hesitation to speak to him, Aelius easily won them over in a matter of words. Crispina only wondered how he would transform friends into votes.
When the dinner was over, they returned home. Crispina collapsed gratefully into the chair at her dressing table. Her head was still ringing from the constant noise and music.
Aelius began disentangling himself from his toga. “I’m going to invite Rufus to debate together in the Forum. I must show him that whatever tactics he thinks he can use to discredit me won’t work.”
Crispina’s anger had cooled but not faded, and it flared again at the reminder. “What if he brings Trebonianus again?”
“He won’t. I could tell Trebonianus didn’t know I’d be there. He’ll be irked with Rufus for surprising him like that, no doubt.”
“I’m sorry you had to sit there across from a man who used to own you.”
“His father owned me,” Aelius corrected. “Trebonianus and I were nearly the same age.” A crooked smile crossed his face. “I was jealous of the education he was receiving, so I used to empty his tutor’s inkwells into the garden plants. Took a surprisingly long time to be caught, and I still think the punishment was worth it. They were starting to think the house was possessed of a spirit that hated ink.” He chuckled ruefully.
The stark reminder of the difference in their upbringings made Crispina’s cheeks heat with a peculiar mix of embarrassment and anger. As a child and young woman, she had felt stifled, trapped, but it was nothing compared to what Aelius had endured. He’d lived a life that hadn’t truly been his own. She started to understand why he was so determined to win respect from the society that disdained him for the offense of having been enslaved.
“Promise me you will beat Rufus,” Crispina said.
“That is the idea, yes.”
Crispina plucked the pins from her hair. “You must prepare for this debate. How do you plan to convince people to vote for you? What do you offer them?”
Aelius watched her as he always did when she was taking down her hair. She wasn’t sure what he found so fascinating about her hair, but it seemed a harmless enough fixation, so she allowed him to look. “The usual. Increasing the grain dole, land for veterans. The same things every politician runs on.”
She worked a comb through the knots that had arisen in her hair. “The state can’t afford to increase the grain dole, and land is already given to veterans.”
He shrugged. “More land, then. I’ll promise whatever it takes to win.”
She set down the comb and turned to face him. His indifference irked her. “Is winning all you care about? What about after the election?”
“I told you, I want to be consul. The tribune position is only a stepping stone.”
Her fingers curled around the ivory comb, the tines digging into her palm. “But as tribune, you have a year to pass bills and enact policies that could truly help the people. The tribune’s powers are unique. You can veto a consul! And yet you don’t care about anything but winning?”
“I care.”
“You care about yourself. About winning. About gaining power and influence for yourself.” Maybe he was more like other men than she’d realized: selfish, small-minded, hungry for power at the expense of all else.
His eyes flashed. “The things I care about won’t get me elected.”
“Such as?”
He occupied himself with folding his toga for several long moments. “It hardly matters, as it will never come to pass. But if I win the tribuneship, I would put forth a bill banning the sale of pregnant slaves, so fathers can’t be separated from their children. And another to waive the inheritance tax on men who free their slaves in their will.”
