She pulled up short, and turned her head away. 'No, Marcus, I can't deny that.' Her voice was soft. He'd had to strain to catch the words. 'Neither can I, in all honesty, deny that what's between us has a name.'
His breath had caught in his throat. Finally, goddammit, she was going to admit it! Admit to this surge of electricity which crackled in the air whenever the two of them were together!
'It's called,' she whispered, 'a marble sundial.'
Swallowing his grin, he'd tried another tack. He reminded her that wherever she went, trouble came up like a rash behind her. 'Someone,' he concluded cheerfully, 'has to bale you out of all your scrapes.'
'Marcus Cornelius, you are surely the most arrogant, the most opinionated, the most conceited man I have ever had the misfortune to meet!'
'You forgot to mention my devilish good looks.'
It was always like this. Bolts of white-hot lightning flashed between them, passion crackled in the air, yet whenever he tried to move in closer, to pursue the relationship, Claudia pushed him further and further away. Any further and he'd need to communicate by courier!
Why could she not acknowledge what existed: the passion and the sparks? Sure, she was scared of getting burned — she'd grown up tough, and that toughness had bred an uncompromising streak rarely found in women — but what did she have to lose by breaking the siege just for once? He'd never know, because that latest episode had ended in a quarrel, with her accusing him (him! a patrician, with lands and riches more than he could spend!) of being some seedy treasure hunter after her inheritance! Croesus! Orbilio had slammed his fist into the palm of his hand and reminded her that he was an investigator, not a bloody gigolo! He knew to the copper quadran how close she sailed to the financial wind and, unwisely perhaps in retrospect, he'd reminded her that she was, at that precise moment, stony broke.
It was an intimacy too far.
'How dare you!' she'd hissed. 'How dare you pry into my personal affairs, you grubby little ferret! I'll put up with many things, Orbilio, but I won't tolerate snooping, and if you ever so much as show your face around here again, I'll — '
He'd forgotten what exactly she'd threatened him with. A gelding knife, he believed, although that was immaterial. What he'd been trying to do, in his clumsy roundabout way, was to offer her his help, but would she listen? Would she hell! She'd drummed him out, with any headway he'd been making collapsing like so much rubble at his feet. If only he could find some way of making Claudia come to him for once, not the other way around.
The Appian Way became more congested the closer they drew to the city and he had trouble steering his horse through the crush. Peddlers up from Naples, fortune-tellers from Brindisi. Landowners departing the sticky city enclaves for fresher, cooler mountain air. Soldiers on patrol, making the roads safe for everybody, young and old alike. Along this stretch, tombs sprouted up to line the route, travertine or marble monuments to the lives of merchants, marshals and magistrates including, ahead there on the right, the circular turret of Gaius Seferius.
Orbilio reined in beside it, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. Remus, it was hot! Shading his eyes, he glanced up at the sun, directly overhead and casting virtually no shadow. Noon. No time to be out in this scorching, vile heat, yet he lingered beside the tomb, reading Gaius's life story in the frieze which ran around it. Like most others, it had been neatly edited, but there he was, the wine merchant, surrounded by his vines and scribes, and Orbilio placed his fist on his heart in salute. He had liked Gaius. Forthright, irascible, shrewd and funny… nevertheless he didn't mourn too deeply the big man's passing, for it left the field wide open for his widow!
The same widow who, at twenty-four, had inherited the whole shebang and found, almost immediately, that those men who had once been Gaius's friends were suddenly her enemies. Enemies who would not tolerate a woman merchant, who had first tried to buy her out and when that failed, set their course to freeze her out. Inasmuch as he had a vested interest in this human tornado, Orbilio knew she'd taken to passing on hefty bribes of late, as well as selling her wine at a loss to give people the impression the business was succeeding. Oh, Claudia. Why don't you ever let anyone help?
'Gee up!'
Marcus guided his horse through the army of herders steering pigs and sheep, goats and cattle into town. He picked his way past rickety wagons up from Campania, through squads of high-spirited schoolboys making the most of the holidays, through a veritable sea of servants, porters and slaves on errands, his horse snorting down its pedigree nose at this honking, braying, bleating throng.
Orbilio plodded on, up the Slope of Mars, past the temple of the god of war and along the covered portico, whose welcome shade invited many travellers to stop and snooze a while. What he needed, he reflected, was a meaty investigation to sink his teeth in, a case dramatic enough to justify delegating the Roll of Honour to a junior. Murder would be his first choice, although a juicy kidnap, a senator dabbling in a spot of forgery, a general up to his epaulettes in fraud, no, he wouldn't sneeze at those. Passing through the Capena Gate, he realised it would have to be a prestigious family involved, or he'd not be able to extricate himself from this administrative role, but where oh where was Orbilio going to find a family with such an obliging skeleton tucked up in its closet?
He sent a silent prayer to Jupiter, Bringer of Justice, to deliver him such a case and then, for the remainder of his ride, let his mind drift on a woman who not so much hit the ground running, as hit it like a spinning top. Why is it, he wondered, that whenever I'm with Claudia, I'm completely lost for words?
Outside his townhouse on the Esquiline Hill, Orbilio swung himself out of the saddle. Perhaps he ought to pay her a call? Pretend he was passing and 'Master! Master Orbilio, come quickly!'
'Tingi?' In all the years this mournful Libyan had been his steward, Marcus had never seen him flustered. 'Whatever's the matter, man?'
'The new banqueting hall, sir. It's terrible! Really terrible.'
Mother of Tarquin, was that all? For a minute, Orbilio had thought it was something serious, not just a problem with the extension he was planning. Builders! Has one ever come and gone without leaving a bigger mess behind?
'Don't worry about it, Tingi.' He brushed the dust from his tunic with a ox-tail whisk and slapped his boots. 'The room will look fine when it's finished.'
Being a town house, expansion wasn't easy, but it had occurred to Orbilio that if he extended the room behind his office — that old storeroom no one ever bothered with — to run the whole length of the courtyard, then he could have a dining hall suited to entertaining on a grand scale and perfect for all weathers.
'No, no, sir. It's the wall.'
'Exactly, Tingi!' Marcus slapped his steward on the shoulder. 'I don't want a wall, that's the point.' He wanted sliding doors, which would open the length of the room to merge the dining hall with the garden. Perfect for summer banquets!
Inside the atrium, he paused to acclimatise to the dappled shade cast by a tall, honeycomb screen which brought a coolness to the room in stark contrast to the sweltering heat outdoors. Here, the air was fragrant with incense and myrrh, and with laurel which was sacred to Mars.
'I'll have a light lunch of cheese and fruit, then I'm off to the baths.' Followed (yes, he was sure now!) by a visit to Claudia Seferius.
'The wall, sir — ' the Libyan paused, slowly shaking his head. 'There's no way I can describe it, you must see for yourself.'
Perhaps this torrid heat made him pine for his desert homelands? Orbilio decided to humour him, because Tingi wouldn't fuss over nothing. Woodworm? Dry rot? A prickle of unease ran down the young investigator's spine. There was a look on his steward's face… Commiseration? Sympathy? For what? Curious, Marcus followed him down the peristyle, past the kitchens, past his office to the little storeroom.