Lucius lowered his hand from Elephant’s nose. “Were you scared when you joined the army?”
Max leaned against Elephant’s side, stretching an arm over her warm back. “I was too stupid to be scared.” He realized what was behind Lucius’s question. “Given that you seem to be much smarter than me, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were scared.”
Lucius shrugged and said nothing.
“Listen, that’s a long way off. By the time you’re seventeen or eighteen, I bet you’ll feel differently. You’ll be excited to leave Rome and see different lands. You’ll make new friends and have some adventures. Besides, maybe you’ll decide that you don’t even want to go into politics. Then you won’t have to join the army.”
Lucius shook his head. “Mother wants me to become a great man like my father.”
“There’s more than one way to do that. You don’t have to be a politician or a statesman.” Max hesitated. Volusia might not thank him for undermining her ambitions for her son. But Lucius should understand that he had options. Max had only joined the army because he thought it was his only option to make something of himself, and it hadn’t exactly ended well. “You could become a man of trade, or be a great writer or historian. With a good education, which you seem to have, you can do anything.”
Lucius gave Max a searching, considering stare, then a small nod.
Two weeks later, after a series of similar visits, Lucius had grown confident enough around Elephant to feed her apple slices without shrinking away in fear. He’d become more talkative around Max, too, and Max was starting to find Lucius’s endless stream of obscure facts charming. Max even borrowed one of Lucius’s books on the history of the Punic Wars so he could quiz the little boy on long-ago battle tactics and generals. He tried his best to stump Lucius, but the boy answered every question flawlessly.
One sunny afternoon, Max enjoyed lunch with Volusia and Lucius at a small table in the atrium of her family’s house. Rufus was out for the day on business—as he always was when Max visited—and Volusia’s mother was visiting a friend, so it was just the three of them. This was how it would be once they were married, Max realized with a surge of warmth in his chest. He wanted nothing more than the chance to enjoy a sun-filled lunch with Volusia and her son.
“Darling, you’re not eating your plum,” Volusia said to Lucius. “Is it underripe?”
Lucius had gone to the trouble of carefully slicing his plum into sections, but had piled them in the corner of his plate instead of eating them. “I’m saving them for Elephant,” he announced. “May we go see her after lunch?”
A broad grin spread across Max’s face at the fact that Lucius had reserved a portion of his own lunch for Elephant. “Soon she’s going to like you more than me if you keep spoiling her.”
Volusia wrapped her arm around Lucius’s slim shoulders and pulled him close to kiss the top of his head. “Of course you may go visit Elephant with Max. Do you think you’d like it if you could see her every day?”
Lucius’s face brightened. “Yes!”
“Then I have something very important to ask you, darling.” Volusia reached across the table to clasp Max’s hand. “Max would like to marry me, and become your stepfather. Do you think you would like that?”
Lucius glanced from Max to his mother. Max never imagined he’d feel so nervous about the judgment of a nine-year-old.
“I suppose that would be all right,” Lucius said.
A ringing endorsement if there ever was one.
“He’s not very good at naming horses, though,” Lucius continued.
Max grinned. “Tell you what, you can name the next horse I buy. Deal?”
Lucius nodded solemnly. “Agreed.”
Volusia hugged her son and kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you, darling. If you’re finished with your lunch, run along and fetch a cloak to go visit Elephant.”
Lucius ran off. Volusia rose from her chair and crossed around the table to Max, settling herself in his lap. “Are you ready to be a stepfather?”
Max wrapped his hands around her hips, savoring her weight and warmth on top of him. “He’s too smart for his own good, but I think we’ll get along.”
Volusia laughed and looped her arms around his neck. “I can only hope you’ll be a good influence on each other. Butpleasedon’t teach him to swear. At least not until he’s older.”
“Until he’s older,” Max promised.
“We’ve fulfilled one of my father’s conditions. Now we only must wait eight months, and we can be married.”
“Eight months.” Max groaned. “That’s an eternity.”
“We spent ten years apart, and we have a lifetime ahead of us.” She touched his cheek, bringing his face close to hers, and brushed her lips over his. His mind buzzed with the pleasure of her touch. “A few months is nothing. I’ll be your wife before you know it.”
Chapter 29
