She shook her head, struggling to regain her breath.
Felix clapped his hands, and a servant appeared instantly. “Some wine for the lady,” he requested, and the woman hastened off.
She didn’t deserve to drink his wine, didn’t deserve any consideration after what she’d done. “I did this,” she repeated, trying to find the words for her confession.
Felix crossed his arms over his chest. “I doubt that.”
“You don’t understand.” She gripped the metal arm of the bench. “When we parted the other day, I…I was so angry with you. I p-put a curse on you. Asking Neptune to punish you.”
“A curse.” He considered her for a moment, as if she’d just confessed to preferring dates over figs. “And you believe the storm was Neptune doing your bidding? Targeting one of my ships?”
She nodded.
He chuckled.
“Don’t mock me!” she snapped.
He sobered. “Forgive me. But I don’t believe this storm was anything more than unfortunate happenstance.”
“How can you be so sure?” She desperately wanted to believe him.
“If you had any idea how much money I’ve spent glorifying Neptune, you would know there’s no way he’d forsake me just becauseyouasked him to.”
She swallowed hard. “But the timing…and Ostia hasn’t had a storm like that in years…”
“Lucretia.” He spoke her name as if the syllables were precious, tender, and the anxiety suffocating her eased—just a bit. His voice, usually so clipped and cutting, softened. “Sometimes a storm is just a storm.” He seated himself on the bench next to her, and she became acutely aware of the lean span of his body only a handsbreadth from hers.
“And sometimes it’s the wrath of the gods,” she murmured. “Do you know…are there any survivors?”
“My secretary is assembling a crew to see if anything may be salvaged.” Felix hesitated. “Shipwrecks do not usually have survivors.”
She swallowed hard, picturing Cornelius’s body washed up on a beach somewhere. “I must go. I must see it for myself.”
“See it—? You mean, you want to go to the wreck?”
She nodded. “I have to face what I’ve done.”
“You’ve donenothing!” Felix took a tight breath. “Besides, you have no way to get there. You don’t even know where it is.”
Lucretia rose to her feet, muscling through the unsteadiness in her knees. “You said it’s a few miles south. I can follow the coastal road.”
“You don’t mean to walk!” Felix spluttered.
She faced him, summoning the coolness that usually got her through her encounters with him. “Do you have an alternative?”
He stared at her, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched. She met his gaze as evenly as she could despite the turmoil inside her.
Something seemed to give way in his expression, and he sighed. “I was planning to ride down there to assess the situation, while my secretary gathers men. I suppose my horse can carry another.”
“I would be most grateful.”
Felix breathed something that sounded like it contained a curse, then sent for someone to ready his horse.
Chapter 14
Afew milesturned out to mean an hour crammed onto a horse’s back, arms wrapped unwillingly around Felix’s waist. If the storm was indeed her fault, this must be part of her penance.
“I’m still surprised you ride,” Lucretia said, raising her voice over the wind as the sturdy brown horse slowly traversed the winding coastal road south of Ostia. “I assumed you have your minions carry you in a litter everywhere you go.”
