“If I may, sir…” Siro said as they passed farm after farm. “How did the lady come to be with us yesterday? I was rather surprised to see her. Given that you are not exactly…friends.”
Not exactly, indeed. Felix briefly explained the events which led to Lucretia accompanying him to the wreck.
“Shecursedyou?” Siro bristled, casting an outraged glance back at where Lucretia rode in the cart. “The nerve of that woman. Such things are not to be trifled with.”
“I believe she intends to undo it when we return.”
“She had better. All the more reason for you to find a way to eliminate her. Speaking of which, have you fixed a date to travel to Spoletium?”
Felix sighed. He’d been putting off the trip to search for Lucretia’s guardian. The whole journey would take at least a week on horseback, and he didn’t particularly enjoy traveling. No doubt in his absence, Lucretia would think of another way to strike at him. Though at least curses were perhaps now off the table.
“I must look at the calendar when we return to find a suitable date,” Felix replied.
Getting to Lucretia’s guardian could be the most effective way to remove her from his path. But as his mind ran over the events of yesterday, he couldn’t help wondering if there was a way to get everything—or at least almost everything—he wanted in one fell swoop.
He wanted Lucretia; he’d known that since meeting her, and it had become an unquestionable hunger as of last night. Andhe wanted to broaden his influence over trade throughout the Mediterranean.
He had believed the only way to attain the latter goal was to start with Ostia, to attain total control here and then expand. Which required removing Lucretia, his last remaining rival.
But in one of their conversations yesterday, Lucretia had given him another idea.You know there is room for both of us to be profitable in Ostia, she’d said, and she was right.
Perhaps he could afford to leave her be in Ostia, and turn his focus to other port cities. Start acquiring a few shipping operations, finance more ships, and expand from there. Lucretia could keep her trade in Ostia unchallenged.
That avenue also opened up the very tempting prospect of being able to accept her proposal—or at least, negotiate a modified version.
His nobler hesitation yesterday had been that he didn’t want her to feel obliged to sleep with him. He wanted her to want him.
And last night proved that she did.
He turned to glance back at her. She sat primly in the cart, one arm resting on a barrel. Their gazes met, and he turned quickly back to the front. There was something knowing in her gaze now, something that recalled their intimacy of last night. He might never be able to look at her again without thinking of what they’d shared. No matter what happened from here, she would always be a part of him.
When Lucretia returned to Ostia in midafternoon, Marcus was just setting his school bag down in the atrium.
He frowned, glancing through the open front door at the group of riders and carts moving off. “Where have you been?”
She couldn’t blame him for his accusatory tone; after all, she had been gone overnight with no word or notice. “I’m very sorry, sweetheart. It was an unexpected trip, and we were detained overnight.”
“Was that Felix with you? I thought you hated him. I thought we were never supposed to speak with him again.” No wonder he sounded so peeved—she must look like a terrible hypocrite, forbidding Marcus from associating with Felix and then turning around and spending a day and night in his company.
“I don’thatehim.” She explained briefly about the shipwreck and the events which had led her to spend the night in a coastal town with Felix—though chose to leave out their sleeping arrangements.
“A shipwreck? Why couldn’t I have come?”
“It was very gruesome, Marcus,” she chided. “Men died.”
He huffed but abandoned the subject. “Can I have ten denarii?”
She granted the request, pleased that he asked this time instead of stealing from her. After she gave him the money, he disappeared. Lucretia spared a few minutes to freshen up after her travels, then went to her office to catch up on anything she’d missed while away.
Dihya was there, of course, and jumped to her feet when Lucretia entered. “Where have youbeen?”
Lucretia sighed and, once again, relayed the broad strokes of her unexpected journey with Felix.
“And you spent the night with him?” Dihya demanded. “In the same bed?”
“He was too snobbish to take the floor!”
“Well, did anything happen?”
