The Patrician's Fortune- A Historical Romance (17 page)

Basil hurried forward, bobbing like a crane searching for fish as his gaze darted back and forth between them. He scooped Lares’ slight body into his arms.

As they passed, Lares caught hold of Damon’s sleeve. “You’ll dine with us this evening?”

Damon shifted his gaze to her. Julia pressed her lips together. She’d limited Damon’s contact with her family—or thought she had—to prevent problems. Looking at Lares’ expectant face it seemed her fears of negative influence by a criminal were well founded.

Before she could answer, Damon spoke. “Perhaps.” He removed Lares hand from his arm and Julia noticed how gently he laid it across her brother’s lap. Damon tilted her brother’s chin up until Lares met his gaze. “Your sister is right. Your efforts did tire you but that will improve as you gain strength. I will see you tomorrow.”

The crestfallen look on Lare’s face lifted. “Tomorrow, then. And Caesar will conquer the pirates again.” He sent a petulant look at Julia. “I
did
walk.”

Julia stared after them, hurt from Lares’ accusing tone causing an ache in her chest. He was only thirteen, a child who could not begin to understand the danger. It was her duty to protect him from bad influences. She shifted her gaze to Damon’s broad back. Even if she was responsible for bringing the bad influence into their home.

“You treat the boy as though he were a child,” Damon said, without turning.

“He
is
a child,” she replied in a clipped tone.

Damon scoffed. “He is a young man on the verge of adulthood.”

“He is a sick child who should not be plied with false promises,” she replied through clenched teeth.

Damon faced her and the intensity in his slate-gray eyes nearly caused her to take a step backward. “That was two years ago. You have coddled him to the point that he feels useless. He only wants to be allowed to participate in decisions.”

“How dare you make judgments concerning my brother,” she shot back. She bit her lip to still the trembling. “I suppose you were mature at that age and did as you pleased.”

A muscle ticked in Damon’s jaw. “When I was his age I did only what my master bid.”

Her indignation deflated at the shadow that passed behind his eyes. “You were
born
a slave?”

He tilted his head. “Concerned that your husband’s pedigree is even baser than you believed?”

Julia did not care one bit for the accusation in his tone. “It was a question, Damon. Nothing more.”

He scowled. “I was
born
a Roman citizen, for all the good it did me. My status changed when I was eleven and my father decided to dispose of his family to save his own skin.”

“Family?” she whispered.

“My mother and two sisters.” The shadows behind his eyes flashed to pain as he stared into the air for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had turned to ice. “My father made quite a nice profit from our sale—enough to pay off his debts and return to the gambling houses with a hefty purse.”

Damon had had a family? It had not occurred to her that he might have someone he cared about outside his criminal world. His gaze had softened at the mention of his sisters, his voice thickened with the hurt and anger he harbored for his father. Julia could not fathom what it must have been like to be used in such a manner, torn from those he obviously loved. But her brother’s welfare was the matter at hand. “I’m sorry, Damon, truly I am, but Lares is special,” she said.

Damon moved toward her, stopping a few paces away. His posture was tense, as though he were holding his own temper in check. “Lares is stronger than you believe. Illness made his body weak, yes, but it sharpened his intellect. He’s a clever boy. He’ll start to wonder—just as the household servants are wondering—why the
master
rarely eats with the family. Why the
master
never sleeps with the mistress.”

Julia’s mouth dropped open before she snapped it close. “The servants have better things to occupy their time.”

Damon lifted one corner of his mouth. “Julia, slaves gossip all the time. I used to sneak down to my master’s kitchen every afternoon just to steal a honey cake and hear the most recent scandal. There isn’t one thing that happens within patrician walls that every steward, cook and maidservant on the Palatine Hill does not know about.”

He was wrong. Her people were loyal, more family than servant. Julia twisted her ring. Still, how many times had she overheard Basil and Dorcas whispering only to turn quiet when she entered the room?

He continued “It would only take one slave, sent by Quintus under the guise of a delivery boy, to relay the news that we are not behaving like lovers.” Damon edged closer, clasped her upper arms. “Quintus wants something from you, Julia. Something more than marriage vows. You know this.”

Gods, he was so close. Her breath came quicker. She felt no threat save to the integrity of this façade of control she’d built. It trembled beneath the fact that Damon had given voice to her innermost fear.

She forced herself to meet Damon’s probing gaze. There was no malice in those gray eyes, only a glint of concern and she thought with a flash of annoyance, smugness. He was right. She’d suspected Quintus’ motives from the very beginning. That Damon had come to this conclusion so quickly was both surprising and disconcerting. She nodded her agreement. “Yes, though I cannot begin to fathom what. I barely know him and my father... Well, my father loathed him.”

“Enmity between the powerful is common,” Damon observed. “Why did your father dislike him?”

Julia hesitated. While Damon had not exhibited murderous tendencies as she’d feared, she wasn’t exactly comfortable sharing information either.

Damon pulled away and looked at her, an amused smile curving his lips. “You still do not trust me.”

She rolled her eyes and shrugged out of his hold. “You’ll forgive me if I’m hesitant to discuss such matters with a stranger.”

He put a hand to his chest. “You wound me, Julia. You know of my familial beginnings, abysmal as they were. I have demonstrated my flexible nature in perpetrating your charade. What more could you want to know?”

Julia folded her arms across her chest and leveled a look at him. “Why were you being crucified?”

Damon sobered and his gaze hardened. Mentally, Julia chastised herself for being so foolish as to press him in the matter. He looked exactly like a man capable of heinous crimes deserving of such a fate.

Several long, tense moments passed before he spoke. “I was caught in the middle of a situation at an inconvenient time.”

“Inconvenient?” She raised her hands in frustration. “Could you be any more cryptic?”

A muscle popped in his cheek. “I was attending a meeting of tradesmen. Fifty men of various occupations gathered to discuss business concerns.”

Julia’s patience was wearing thin. “That is hardly a crime. Trade guilds conduct meetings every day.”

“Agreed. But this group had powerful enemies. The meeting had just begun when a detachment of soldiers from the urban cohorts arrived and arrested every participant.”

A chill swept through Julia. “But the urban cohort is commanded by...”

Damon nodded curtly. “The Urban Prefect. Less than twelve hours later, every innocent man there had been convicted of treason and sentenced to die by Quintus Marcellus himself.” He stepped closer and held her gaze. “He is capable of anything. If I am to keep your family safe, any doubts, any information you have you must share with me.”

Julia frowned at the vehemence in his voice. “Of what use would such information be to a tradesman?”

Damon’s smile sent chills down her back.

“I’m no tradesman, Julia. I’m a spy.”

“N
ot while there is breath in my body.”

Kaj had assumed his stubborn stance, arms crossed over his massive chest, feet spread apart and gaze fixed on some distant object. Julia sighed. They’d been standing in the hallway outside Damon’s tiny room arguing for a good part of an hour, the majority of which had consisted of Kaj ranting and raving about her losing her mind. Perhaps she had.

The decision to allow Damon to share her bedchamber had not come easy. But then, she thought dryly, nothing had since the day she’d brought him into their lives. He had taken every notion she had about the malleability of the indebted and tossed them over a cliff. He had opinions and was not afraid to speak them. And a part of her could not deny there was truth within many of them.

While she had harbored a growing unease with Quintus and his motives, she had not thought him anything but annoying and persistent. But Damon’s revelation that the Prefect had had a personal hand in the deaths of what he claimed were innocent citizens had sent her anxiety into full blown terror. She shook her head. And he knew this because he was a spy.

If he had told her he was Jupiter, she’d have been less astounded. She’d thought Damon many things but a secret operative? When she’d pressed for an accounting of his employment he’d demurred saying only that he had resigned from his last position.

Of course she was taking the word of a spy.

Kaj had almost dissuaded her when he’d suggested that Damon had been sent to spy on the Manulus family. Julia had nearly laughed out loud at that. What would there be to report? That the plan she’d been so certain was foolproof was unraveling before her eyes? That instead of protecting her family, she’d placed them in greater jeopardy? Oh yes, that would be well worth reporting. Kaj brought her back from her thoughts.

“How can you trust him?”

How could she? It was true she couldn’t give him actual evidence of Damon’s credibility. But Kaj had not heard the hitch of emotion beneath Damon’s words as he’d spoken of the executed men. She supposed he could be lying but something deep within her had decided he was not.

She sent a sideways look to Kaj. “Do the servants discuss the business of the household amongst themselves?”

Kaj pressed his lips together in a tight line.

“Kaj, you are a true friend, I wish you to be at ease.” Julia stood straighter. “But I am still mistress here and my decision stands. Damon will sleep in the master’s chamber.”

Damon slowed his steps as he approached his cell. Had he heard right? He cast a wary look at the impotent fury reflected in Kaj’s expression. Apparently he had. Julia was agreeing to allow him in her sleeping chamber. A vision of her lithe body lying beneath him, lips swollen from his kiss, skin flushed from lovemaking flashed into his mind.

With effort he tamped down the surge of heat that shot through his blood. His goal in suggesting the arrangement had been an honest effort to enhance the perception of a sound marriage while affording him time to investigate Quintus. Well of course that
had
been his intent. After all, he’d assured Julia from their first meeting that he was a man of his word, a man of honor. And she had accepted that despite her concerns and doubt regarding his character. Bedding Julia was not his intention.

His gaze shifted back to his goddess and he noted the strain marring her beautiful face. It didn’t sit well with him that he’d caused it, but there were few choices. Her poorly thought out plan was firm evidence that she had no understanding of what Quintus was capable of while he had witnessed fifty bloody instances of his cruelty.

Damon strolled to Julia, resisted the urge to slip his arm around her waist. No use angering the giant any more than necessary, though the warmth radiating from her was becoming a very pleasurable habit. Careful to keep his expression indifferent he asked. “Is there a problem?”

“Kaj has concerns,” began Julia.

“I have more than concerns,” Kaj spat out. “You intend to harm my lady and this I will not allow.”

Damon gave the big man a measuring look. He knew the servant was loyal to Julia but there was an emotion deeper than devotion to a mistress threaded through his words. A stab of jealousy went through him until he realized that emotion was Kaj’s true concern.

Damon blew out a breath. It would be more advantageous to have Kaj as an ally than to continue as an enemy. “You have no reason to believe me when I say I want Julia safe. But you and I have been out in the world. We know the lengths someone like Quintus will go to to get what he wants—my near execution is only one example.”

Kaj shifted his attention by an almost imperceptible degree to Damon. It was a start. “The problem lies in discovering what the Prefect really wants,” Damon continued, “while fostering this illusion of marriage. You know as well as I that this was not the best plan.” Damon bit the inside of his mouth as Julia bristled under Kaj’s self-satisfied look.

“I tried to convince her of this from the onset,” Kaj said. “She is a most stubborn female.”

“She is that,” Damon agreed.

“Your pardon,” Julia said between clenched teeth. “I am still present.”

Damon flashed her a smile which only broadened under her heated glare. She reminded him of a lioness, the fleeting image of taming the she-cat sent more heat through his core. Taking into consideration that devouring Julia with his eyes might not be the best approach with Kaj, he sobered. “You see Kaj, we are on common ground. You have my vow that Julia will be safe with me.”
From
him, he amended silently, he wasn’t as certain.

“I am in no danger,” Julia insisted, “I agreed to this only to prevent any doubts about my marital status from wending their way outside these walls.” She sent him a warning look. “Damon will share the bedchamber, nothing more.”

What was he, a eunuch? It would take only a moment, given his natural talent and skilled hands, to coax the passion he knew she possessed to the surface. His cock twitched at the possibility.

Gods, what was he thinking?  He was attracted to Julia—what sane man with a drop of blood in his body wouldn’t be—but to seduce her would go against the honor he’d worked so hard to convince her he possessed.

Honor was damn inconvenient.

Damon pulled himself out of his musing to realize that Julia had been giving Kaj some sort of instructions. The big man still looked miserable but he acknowledged her with a curt bow before stalking off to do her bidding. Julia watched him go, twisting her ring.