Page 98 of Of Love and Treason
“If you don’t tell me, you know I’ll find you anyway.”
She sighed, indecision warring and finally losing in the wake of the knowledge that she’d never be able to hide from him. Titus wasn’t the best Praetorian speculatore for no reason.
“Leave a message at the clinic of Marius Calogarus Cato on Quirinal Hill. I will fetch it there.”
His eyes softened and he reached out and tugged her palla forward to shield her face. “Be safe,” he whispered, giving her a long look. “Stay hidden.” He took a breath as if to say more but just chucked her chin with a finger and turned away.
Iris watched Titus retreat until a hedgerow swallowed him.
“Well?”
She jumped and turned as Abachum ducked into the pavilion, water streaming into puddles at his feet.
“He’ll be sold at auction.” She blinked back the heat that stung her eyes. “Let’s go back.”
This time, Abachum seemed to sense her need for silence and didn’t speak as they hurried home. Iris was thankful. The rainhad slowed to a spitting mist that swirled through the streets like gray fog.
Any minute. Any minute now she would wake up and it would all be a terrible dream. An earsplitting crack followed by a rumble of thunder shook the cobbles beneath her feet. Her mind felt as numb as her toes. Pater, in prison. Pater, sentenced to be sold as a slave. Her foot sank ankle-deep into an icy puddle and pulled her from her thoughts. Abachum tugged her down the familiar alley as another deep choke of thunder shook them.
Phoebe let them in.
“Come in quickly. Goodness, you’re both soaked through! Here, stand by the fire.” The maid shuffled the two of them close to the stove and added water to a large clay pot.
“I’ll tell everyone we’re back.” Trails of water splattered in his wake as Abachum left the culina. Behind Iris, Phoebe clattered at the worktable before appearing at her elbow with a steaming cup.
“I’ll see about finding you some dry things.” She met Iris’s troubled face with a look of kind compassion. Phoebe patted her shoulder as Iris murmured a thank-you and wrapped her hands around the cup. The scent of cloves and cinnamon spicing the heated wine enveloped her in comforting warmth, though it would not chase the chill she felt deep in her bones.
Alone, Iris shifted closer to the stove and shivered. She shook her head at the irony of her father imprisoned at the Castra Praetoria. Was he cold? Had they given him anything to eat? Would she see him again? Of course she would one day. Yet if she never saw her father again in this life, if he died in the quarry or mine, she would still have to live out the rest of her days on earth missing him. She wasn’t ready to give him up. Their life had been turned upside down. What would she do without the solid safety of her father’s presence? Who would she turn to?
Trust Me.
The command twisted inside her chest, fear and longing warring for superiority. Iris stared at the flames licking the inside of the hole in the top of the stove. Could she trust God, even now? The talk withPater sprang to mind, so recent, yet it felt like ages ago. Of course she could trust God fully then, when He’d shown His power and restored her sight—but would the price of His healing power be paid with her father’s life? Did the Christian God work like the Roman gods, bestowing favors and then extracting payment? That was not how Valentine had explained it, and yet—
Delphine and Phoebe burst through the door then, arms piled with colored linens.
“One of these should do.” Delphine bumped the door closed with her hip. She dumped the pile on the table and turned to Iris with a hug. “Abachum told us about the auction. We want to hear everything, but not before you’re warm and dry.” She gestured to the pile. “No sense in taking them back to your cold room; change here by the fire where it’s warm. We’ll stand guard at the door. Come, Phoebe.” As quickly as they’d burst in, Delphine and Phoebe bustled out, their shadows visible in the crack at the bottom of the door.
Iris stripped off her wet things, draping them over a stool. She rubbed her shivering limbs roughly with a linen towel, drying them as much as coaxing feeling back into them. She was tying undergarments around her waist when voices sounded outside the alley door and the latch jiggled.
“You always exaggerate everything. It wasn’t that bad,” came Cato’s muffled voice.
Valentine’s voice exclaimed, “You could have warned me first.”
A fist pounding against the door covered Cato’s reply. Weren’t there other doors to this house? Iris snatched a long tunic the color of amaranth and wrestled it over her head.
“Just a minute!”
The muffled argument continued, sans the pounding. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t faint a second time,” Cato said.
“You should have learned your lesson after thefirsttime.”
“Everyone else was gone. Trust me—I didn’t want to take you either.”
Valentine didn’t answer. Iris found the correct opening for her head and shoved her arms through the armholes. The gown fit muchtighter around the hips and bust than her own, but at least it covered everything important.
“Will I need stitches?”
Fully dressed, Iris scrambled to slide back the bolt and open the door. Cato and Valentine surged in, streaming water. Cato slopped a dripping sack on the table and Valentine flipped back a soggy hood and unpinned his cloak. He ran a hand through his dripping hair and turned to Iris as she rebolted the door. A split in his chin left a trail of blood down the side of his throat.
