Time to Depart by Lindsey Davis Read Free Book Online

two ranks above me. We never would be married unless I could persuade the Emperor to promote me to the middle rank - which had been refused once already. One of the Caesars had turned down my request, even though I had earned quite a few favours from the Palace and my father had lent me the qualifying cash. Humbling myself to take the loan from Pa had been hard; I reckoned the Palace owed me more than favours now.
    But the Palace was irrelevant. I was in a fix. Plebeians were not supposed to sleep with senators' female relations. I was not a slave, or I would have been dead meat long ago. There was no husband to be affronted, but Helena's father was entitled to view our crime in the same light as adultety. Unless I was much mistaken about the ancient traditions of our very traditional city, that gave him the right to execute me personally. Luckily Camillus Verus was a calm man.
    'So how do you feel, Marcus?'
    Fortunately my life as an informer had trained me to avoid saying what I felt when it could only lead to trouble.
    Helena filled in the gap for herself wryly, addressing the. sky: 'Marcus is a man. He wants an heir, but he doesn't want a scandal.'
    'Close!' I said it with a smile as if both of us were joking. She knew I was dodging the issue. Applying a serious expression, I altered my story: 'It's not me who has to go through with the pregnancy and the dangers of birth.' Not to mention enduring the extreme public interest. 'What I think takes second place.'
    'Ho! That will be a novelty. It may not happen,' Helena suggested.
    'Looks definite to me.' Helena had been pregnant with a child of mine before, miscarrying before she had even told me. When I found out, I had vowed never to be left out again. Believe me, keeping track had not been easy. Helena was the kind of girl who lost her temper if she felt she was being watched. 'Well, time will show if I'm right.'
    'And there's plenty of time,' she murmured. I sat there wondering: time for what?
    The child would be illegitimate, of course. It would take its mother's rank - utterly worthless without a father's pedigree to quote as well. Freed slaves stood a better chance.
    We could cope with that, if it ever came to it. What was likely to break us, one way or another, would happen to us before the poor scrap was even born.
    'I don't want to lose you,' I stated abruptly.
    'You won't.'
    'Look, I think it's fair to ask what you want to do.'
    Helena was frowning. 'Marcus, why can't you be like other men, who don't want to face up to things?' Maybe she was joking, but she sounded serious. I recognised her expression; she was not prepared to think about this. She was not intending to talk.
    'Let me say what I have to.' I tried playing the man of the house, knowing this normally only got me laughed at. 'I know you. You'll wait until I leave for the Forum, then you'll worry in private. If you choose a course of action, you'll try to do everything alone. I'll have to come chasing after you, like a farm boy left behind at market when the cart sets off for home.'
    'You'll soon catch up,' she answered with a faint smile. 'I know you too.'
    I was remembering the little I knew about what she had gone through, on her own, that other time. It was best not to think about it.
    Legally, every day I kept her I was robbing her noble father. Once the results of our fling became apparent, Helena would be strongly encouraged to regularise her life. The obvious solution for her family would be a quick arranged marriage to some senator who was either too stupid to notice this, or plain long-suffering. 'Helena, I just want you to promise that if there are decisions to be made, you will let me share in making them.'
    Suddenly she laughed, a tense and breathy explosion of dry mirth. 'I think we took our decisions in Palmyra, Marcus Didius!'
    The formality cut like a boning knife. Then, just when I thought I really had lost her, she seized me in a hug. 'I love you very much,' she exclaimed - and