He tossed the fabric to the floor for one of the maids to pick up in a scurry before he could step on it. “What has happened to our son?” He looked ready to call fire from Jove down on her for whatever it was she must have done.
Aquilia’s silver brows drew together. “Stop towering over me like the Colossus and firing accusations. What are you talking about?”
Caius kicked the handmaiden out of the way so he could pace, ignoring the whimper of pain she made when she collided with a sturdy table. Aquilia curled her fingers into a fist.
“He has always been impossible,” he raged, arms gesticulating in anger. “I expect it of him. And he is no less stubborn now, but there is something more. As if he thinks himself better than us.”
He spun back to face her. “Tell me you did not notice it at dinner this evening. Tell me you did not see how he looked at that slave as though she were a goddess dangling blessing before his nose.”
Aquilia forced her fingers to relax and lounged back against her chaise. “As usual, Caius, you are overreacting. Certainly, I see affection between them, but that is no surprise. She is his lover, and he her protector.”
Caius practically hissed as he devoured the space between them again. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her several inches off the chair, his fingertips biting so painfully into her arms that she cried out before she could think that she did not want to grant him that satisfaction. “You never should have let that whore into our house. She has proven herself already to be a poisonous serpent just waiting to strike. Jason already fell to her venom, I will not see my son do the same!”
He released her, and Aquilia struggled to maintain a measure of grace as she collapsed back into the pillows. She did not rub the bruises on her arms. In fact, she regarded him cooly, without flinching. “Do you want her that badly, Caius?”
His hand fisted, he even pulled his arm back a bit. But he did not hit her. He knew well that if he ever did, she would walk out of his house so quickly that he would have no time to stop her and so loudly that all of Rome would know it within an hour. “How dare you, woman! I come here with concern for our son, and you drag up your pain at not being able to satisfy me?”
Aquilia rolled her eyes. That particular barb had lost its sting a decade ago. “You come here concerned only because you see that Titus cares for her. And since he has taken the loveliest women in Rome to his bed and never been inspired to care, you think that this one must have some rare talent to inspire a fondness in our son where none was possible before. You are jealous, Caius, because you know if you touch her Titus will not forgive it. But you see that young, supple body, and you think you must possess it.”
Caius narrowed his eyes. “To hear you talk, I almost think you want her.”
She just gave him an icy smile. “It is not inconceivable that you would have forced me to find my pleasure elsewhere, even in another woman. But in reality, you have ruined pleasure for me altogether, Caius. I want her only to be out of my house, and soon enough she will be. In the meantime, I only want you to stay away from her before you force yet another rift between you and your son.”
Caius measured her for a moment then spoke from between clenched teeth. “You know nothing, woman,”
He stormed from her room. Aquilia just watched him go, then motioned for the maid to hand her embroidery back to her. Life as usual in the Asinius house.
*
Caius raged through the peristylium. His next destination was Titus’s room, but he took a detour on the way to the quarters of the female slaves. His blood was boiling, and he would need to expel his wrath if he wanted any sleep tonight.
“Qira!”
A door opened, and a slave stepped out. She was nude, her long red locks hanging wet about her, sticking to her breasts in a way that had him ready to take her then and there, if he had not had another task looming over him.
“Master.” Her eyes were on the ground.
“You will join me tonight. Go now and wait for me.”
“Yes, Master.”
He turned and walked away again before he could see her go back into the chamber she shared with two others. He headed now for Titus’s room, fully prepared to tell his son that he had better get his fill of the Hebrew now, for once she left, she would never be welcomed under his roof again.
He didn’t bother knocking on his son’s door either, just opened it and walked in. Not with quite the energy he had entered Aquilia’s chamber, but still forcefully enough to gain the attention of the two occupants. Caius sneered. There they were, not in bed as he had half expected to find them, but sitting on the chaise, facing each other, their hands intertwined. The way their heads snapped up upon his entrance, he supposed they must have been bowed. Doing what? What were they looking at that was so interesting?