“Barely! You pressured me.” Her cry was quiet.
“Yes. And you gave in because you wanted it as much as I did.” When tears gathered in her eyes, he cursed, dragging her against his chest and holding her with surprising gentleness, given his temper. “Do not cry, beloved. Please. I am sorry you fell in love with such a weak man, but you destroy me when you cry.” He kissed the top of her head. “I swear, I will not pressure you again. If you come to me, it will be of your own choosing, and otherwise I will not touch you.”
Abigail wept against him, her hands balled into fists around his tunic. “This is not how things are supposed to be.”
Titus cradled her head. “Very little in life is, dear one.” He tipped her head back so that he could look into her tear-stained face. She had no right to look so beautiful even as she cried. “I love you.”
“And I love you.” The admission sounded miserable.
He moved to kiss her, but before he could, he spotted Samuel entering the room. Titus straightened, smiled. “Good morning, Samuel.”
The boy rubbed sleep from his eyes. “What is wrong? Everyone is upset.”
Titus scooped the child up when he approached. “It is nothing for you to worry about, small one. My father has not been behaving himself.”
Samuel settled into Titus’s arms, resting his head on his shoulder. “Perhaps someone should scold him.”
Titus chuckled. “If only it were so easy. I am afraid he is not as good as you, Samuel. He does not listen to our reproaches.”
Samuel reached out to Abigail and touched a clinging tear with the tip of his finger. “Do not cry, Mother. Everyone is sad when you cry.”
Abigail smiled at him and tried unsuccessfully to tame his curls with her fingers. “I am finished crying. Is Benjamin stirring yet?”
“He will be now.”
Titus nodded to her. “Go tend him. I will help Samuel get ready.”
*
Abigail shut herself into the small room and lifted Benjamin from his basket. Part of her had wanted to refuse Titus’s command simply because it was a command. But she had obeyed. Just as she had earlier.
“Father, forgive me, for I am weak,” she murmured in Hebrew, her eyes squeezed shut as she settled onto the bed. But somehow, her brief prayer echoed in her heart as more of an excuse than a plea for help. For though her mind may be repentant, her heart was still guilty. She knew it and wished it otherwise . . . even as she accepted that she would sin again.
*
Titus went out alone that day to answer a summons from the steward in charge of their shipping business, knowing his father would not so much as open his eyes until late afternoon after entertaining all night. He had gotten to know the business fairly well since his return to Rome, and he knew he could handle the problem. In fact, he had a better head for it than Caius did, and his father had surprised him by realizing it. Perhaps he could convince him that it would be wiser to put aside political goals for a while and simply let him tend to this. He would rationalize it by pointing out that in another ten years he could double, if not triple the revenues brought in on their ships. With the added prestige of such wealth, it would be far easier to enter the political arena, especially since his father’s peers would no longer think of him as a child. What he would not mention to his father was that with ten years and added wealth, he would be independent enough to dismiss Caius and his ambitions if he so chose. Assuming the old man had not drunk himself to death by then anyway.
This plan struck him as ideal, even plausible. Having a course of action eased some of the burden of the future from his shoulders and made his step a little lighter. He knew that when he returned to the house he would have entirely different problems to deal with, but for now he would develop his idea, reasoning through it until there were no holes for Caius to point out.