He narrowed his eyes, disbelief mingling with irritation. “You’re actually refusing my proposal? For the third time?”
She nodded. “But I’m not refusingyou. I want you, by day and by night.” An unpleasant thought occurred to her, one that turned her stomach but that she had to voice. “However, if you prefer to have a wife who can give you children that bear your name, I won’t stand in your way.”
He glanced away from her, and she held her breath. What if she had misjudged his desires? What if what he truly wanted was a traditional marriage with a wife who would keep his house and bear his children?
Felix met her gaze once more. The momentary frustration faded from his eyes, replaced with a steady acceptance. “I thought I made it clear.Youare the only woman I have ever wanted, or will ever want. If this is how you’ll have me, then I accept.”
Warmth surged inside her, and she raised their twined hands to kiss his fingers.
“As for a child,” he continued, “that is easily solved. If my sister ever has a son, I can settle my estate on him. But until then, I’ll designate Marcus as my heir. We need not be married for that.”
Tears pricked at her eyes. “You would do that?”
“Of course,” he said, as if he thought nothing of it. “Who else?”
“Oh, Felix,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms around him. Together, they tumbled from their sitting positions to lie flat on the bed, holding each other tight.
They were quiet for a moment, until Felix let out a low chuckle in her ear.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
He traced a finger along her cheek, tender and reverent. “In one day, I’ve lost nearly my entire fortune. If an oracle had told me this would happen, I would only have imagined the utter devastation I’d feel. But I find that I’ve gained something far more precious.” He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I would spend the rest of my life without a single denarius to my name, if that’s what it took to keep you by my side.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “Luckily, I do not plan to live a destitute life. We’ll rebuild your fortune. Together.”
“Ourfortune,” he said, and sealed his words with a kiss.
Epilogue
One year later
Lucretia rested her hands on the rail of the ship as the port of Alexandria came into view on the horizon. The deck rolled gently beneath her feet, but after two weeks of sea travel, she hardly noticed it. The first few days had been an utter misery of seasickness, but after many prayers to Neptune and Amphitrite for mercy, her body had eventually become accustomed to the ceaseless motion.
It wasn’t just seasickness that plagued her in those early days. At first, anxiety had been a constant thrum in her chest, a twisting in her stomach. She’d cursed herself for allowing Felix and Marcus to convince her to come on this trip to Alexandria. Every sway of the ship portended sinking, and every time they caught sight of another sail in the distance, it was pirates.
At least if they died, she reasoned in her darkest moments, the three of them would die together.
But the ship hadn’t sunk, they hadn’t even seen any bad weather, and no pirates were to be found. Felix had been a steady presence at her side, a reassuring voice in her ear whenever her worries threatened to overwhelm her.
As one uneventful day followed another, the tension in her chest eased, and she no longer spent every waking moment consumed with worry about shipwrecks or pirates or storms.
Marcus’s enthusiasm had also helped. It was hard to be anxious when her son’s eyes glowed with delight as he learned a new knot or wheedled the captain into teaching him a new navigational technique.
Though Marcus remained a somewhat ambivalent student when it came to learning the nuances of trade and commerce, he’d taken to sailing with an enthusiasm that reminded her of Cornelius. She sensed he’d found his passion, though she might have wished his interest stayed with chariot racing or something else that would keep him on land.
Dihya and Siro had remained behind in Ostia to manage affairs while Lucretia and Felix were gone. Their working relationship was tumultuous but somehow efficient, and Caeso’s baked goods smoothed over many a quarrel between the two deputies. Dihya and Caeso had married the previous autumn as planned, and Dihya was now several joyful months into a pregnancy. Lucretia smiled as she imagined how big her friend would be upon their return.
Felix, beside her at the rail, wrapped an arm around her waist. His fair skin had acquired a glow of color from the trip, and the wind whipped at his dark hair. “Almost there,” he murmured as he gazed out at the approaching land.
“The first thing I’m going to do is buy a hat.” Instead of an even, golden tan like Felix, Lucretia’s skin had gained adisagreeable array of freckles over the two weeks of being out on the sunny deck. “And perhaps some cosmetics.”
Felix chuckled. “If you cover up those freckles, I won’t know where to kiss you.” He had developed an irritating habit of kissing each new freckle as it appeared.
She scowled. “I can live with that.”
He pulled her closer, speaking low in her ear. “The first free afternoon we have, I’m going to rent a pleasure boat and take you out on it. Just the two of us. And then I’m going to strip you bare in the sunlight so your entire body gets covered in freckles. That way I’ll haveplentyof places to kiss.”
A tendril of heat wound through her at his words. Despite her dislike of the freckles, he presented an appealing picture. Privacy had been at a minimum aboard the ship. They were lucky to have their own cabin, as opposed to sleeping in a tent on deck like the crew and Marcus, but it directly bordered the captain’s cabin. By the volume of the captain’s snoring audible in their cabin, Lucretia knew he’d be able to hear anything and everything they did. To spare the poor man, they had refrained from indulging in each other.
