Lady of the Eternal City by Kate Quinn Read Free Book Online Page B

Jew with all the fire of her hotheaded cousins who swore that one day they would liberate Judaea from Rome—all their fire, but a good deal more sense. Sense, fire, and sweetness too, and when you put those things together with that snap of laughter in her blue eyes and enough skill in the kitchen to make angels weep, you had a very grateful ex-legionary and current desk mule who counted himself lucky.
    My daughters were wrinkling their little noses and complaining about the dockyard stench, and I laughed. “We won’t be staying long.” Not in obscene and teeming Gesoriacum with its docks swarming with sailors and pickpockets; the air smelling of brine and unwashed bodies; the views over the rooftops all roiling ocean and the sails of triremes and somewhere beyond it, mist-bound Britannia. A fascinating sight any day, but today I just snugged my wife in to one side and led my family to their temporary home.
    “I like it,” Mirah decided, fists on hips as she looked through the atrium to the tiny wall fountain that managed to fill the little garden with a pleasant plashing sound. Antinous was loping through the atrium like a young colt, and the girls were squealing and squabbling over the little chamber they’d share. “Of course, I’ll have to cover that fresco—”
    “Later,” I said, and tossed her over one shoulder.
    “Put me down!” Mirah laughed, squirming against my grip.
“Vix!”
    “Antinous,” I said, and pointed at the girls. “Take ’em out and keep ’em out till midafternoon.”
    “Done.” I heard his laughter as he steered the girls through the atrium, and I didn’t even wait for the door to thud closed before I was carrying my wife toward the bed.
    “Put me down,” she was saying, drumming her fist against my back. “This is very undignified!”
    “And you’re very disobedient. I should beat you.” I tipped Mirah into the middle of the wide sleeping couch. “Go on, scold me. You’re so pretty when you scold.”
    She dissolved into laughter and I dissolved into her, my tart and tender wife. My breastplate and greaves clattered down into a pile on the floor, her gown billowed down on top, and her russet hair came loose from its scarf in a warm banner. I kissed her and kissed her, moving over her, moving through her, and then I kissed her again because I had too many unkissed months to make up for. “Missed you,” I murmured into her mouth in the quiet that came after, her warm forehead still pressed against mine on the pillow. “Hell’s gates, but I missed you.”
    “Are you still sorry I insisted on coming to Gaul?” The ripple of laughter still came through her words, lazier now.
    “No,” I admitted. “Though I should be. You should have stayed in Rome, you and the girls.”
    “What, moldered there another eight months like we did when the Emperor dragged you all over Germania doing Prefect Clarus’s job . . .”
    “Someone has to.” The last Praetorian Prefect had been summarily fired after the four executions at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign—the Emperor had managed to dump most of the blame for those executions on him. “Your overhastiness in making the arrests caused great ill will in the Senate,” was how he put it, eyes dancing with amusement at the man’s astonishment, because after all, he’d done nothing but follow orders. His replacement, Prefect Clarus, was a wine sack, so I did all the work while that bloated prick enjoyed the rank.
    Mirah was still arguing. “Maybe the Emperor will station you back in Rome for the next leg of the journey? He could take Prefect Turbo with him instead.”
    “He trusts Turbo more than he trusts me. When it comes to leaving one of us out of sight for months, anyway.” Marcius Turbo was the other Praetorian Prefect—there are always two, largely so you can have one kill the other if someone gets too big for his boots. Turbo was a grizzled, matter-of-fact old soul as rough around the edges as I was; he had a mind