The note read:I took the liberty of retaining some of the ingredients you use for my monthly tea. I hope this is suitable recompense. D
“Drusilla,” she realized aloud.
Kallias sifted his fingers through the coins. They were gold nearly all the way to the bottom, where some silver and bronze showed through—perhaps the more humble earnings he’d expected to see. “How much do you think is in here?”
Lea lifted one of the golden coins. They were crisp and perfect, as if freshly minted. Each one bore a tiny image of the emperor’s face in profile, youthful and regal at the same time. The reverse showed the head of a woman. At first Lea thought it was meant tobe Drusilla, but when she squinted at the tiny inscription around the border, she realized it represented the emperor’s late mother, Agrippina.
A golden aureus was worth one hundred sestertii. And there were a lot of golden coins in that chest.
“I don’t know,” Lea murmured.
“I’ll count them, but my guess is that there’s at least four hundred. Which would be forty thousand sestertii. Enough for your freedom.” He was silent for a moment. “How did she know?”
Lea blinked stupidly. “I told her,” she realized. “At that dinner party…I mentioned the figure in passing.”
Her fingers tightened on the coin she was holding. Abruptly, she sat down hard on the bed, jolting the chest of coins. Kallias held the box steady.
Could that be true? Did this chest of coins contain the means to her freedom?
Drusilla knew her brother better than anyone. She knew Lea had made an enemy of him yesterday, and she was good-hearted enough to do what she could to give Lea an escape.
Kallias began removing coins from the chest, counting out small, even stacks of them. They covered much of her floor, turning the humble stone to shining gold. When he finished, he counted the stacks. “I was right,” he announced. “Forty thousand, exactly.” He gathered up the coins, handful after handful, and returned them to the box.
The noise made her ears ring. She should have helped, but she could only sit there frozen with shock.
Kallias closed the lid and pushed the box toward her. “Take it,” he said. “Bring it to Lucullus.”
She forced herself to move, to heft the box. It really was heavy, and her sore arms protested the effort it took to lift. She set it back down.
“Do you need help carrying it?” Kallias’s elegant brows lifted quizzically.
She shook her head. “I will take it to Lucullus. But…not now. Soon,” she promised, when indignation blossomed on his face. “I think it would be more prudent to get our affairs in order first.”
“Prudent?” he repeated. “I didn’t realize you knew that word.”
She lobbed a coin at him, snorting at his yelp when it struck him in the arm. “There will be a little money left over, the money I’d already been saving, but not much. We’ll need to find somewhere to live. I don’t even know how to go about that…”
There were so many unknowns that went along with freedom. For better or for worse, she’d never had to think about things like where she’d live, how to obtain food, all those mundane things others did without thinking. She barely knew how to cook. She didn’t know how to manage a house. There were probably things she had to plan for that she didn’t even know existed. What about laundry? Would she have to pay someone for that?
She squeezed her eyes shut, overwhelmed. Maybe it would be easier if things stayed as they were. If she had Kallias, she might not even mind fighting. She could survive anything with him by her side—
“Lea.” His soft voice cut through her whirling thoughts. He knelt on the floor before her, his hands taking gentle hold of her arms.
She opened her eyes, finding stability in his dark gaze. “I don’t know how to do any of this,” she confessed. “I don’t know if Ican. Maybe this”—she gestured at their surroundings—“is all I’m suited for.”
“I will take care of it.” The calm certainty in his words eased the pounding of her heart. “I will arrange it all. You don’t have to worry about anything. Is it still a seaside cottage you want?”
In that moment, she felt as if she could have named anything—a villa, a palace, a residence on Mount Olympus itself—and he would have made it happen. There was such joy in knowing she could trust him like this, that she could let him take this weight off her shoulders. It filled her to the brim, stealing her breath in a moment of pure elation.
“I-I think so,” she said when she found her voice. All she knew was that she wanted something different from here. And a quiet, cozy house by the sea seemed about as different as she could imagine. “But not too far from Rome,” she added. “I may wish to visit from time to time.”
“Understood. And there’s meant to be a cat, right?”
“A nice one,” she clarified.
He nodded, as if taking mental notes. “Final question. Am I permitted to live in this cottage with you and your cat?”
She grinned. “Not permitted.Required.” She leaned down, brushing her lips along his jaw.
