At least three responses ran circles in her mind, with What the heck? and How dare you! first in line. These utterances were, however, facing major competition from What was that you said about finding a private room? Because, wow. She could feel heat pouring off his body. She shivered. This was intoxication. Unstoppable, contagion levels of intoxication.
“Quintus,” she said, but then she stopped, unable to remember what she’d been planning to say next. Even to her ears, her voice sounded warm and throaty. He was nuzzling his mouth along her throat. Oh, dear sweet gods of Rome! His pectoralis major pressed into the hollow along her breastbone, and wow, he was built . . .
He was also speaking again.
“I must not be recognized,” he murmured into her clavicle. This time she caught what might have been anguish in his voice.
Anguish, it turned out, was a good antidote for intoxicating man-touch.
“You know them?” she whispered, suddenly alert to their surroundings.
In place of answering, he nodded and wove his fingers into her hair. Now he was clasping the sides of her face like he was going to give her a kiss, and not a nice kiss. So much for that antidote . . .
But he didn’t kiss her after all.
“Have they gone?” he whispered. His lips brushed her ear as he spoke.
Which. Just. Wow.
She would have answered if speech had been a possibility, but her words had clocked out for the day.
“He is my son,” Quintus said softly.
This information provided another inoculation against Quintus’s hunk-magic. (This was totally a thing: Hunk. Magic.) She gave herself a mental shake and checked to see if the kid and the woman were there.
“I can still see them,” she reported. The boy had paused to examine a stone.
“Tell me when they’ve gone,” said Quintus. With his face buried in her hair like that, DaVinci couldn’t see his expression, but she could hear pain in his voice.
His son. His kid. Laughing and running, here in Quintus’s home town but totally out of reach. It must be killing him.
And then something happened. The boy stumbled as he tried to stand and sent up a wailing cry that would have made anyone with an ounce of compassion turn to look.
“No!” she whispered sharply, grabbing Quintus’s head so he couldn’t turn. “If he sees you and starts crying ‘Daddy’ or whatever, your wife is going to notice you making out with me. So. Not. Good.”
At that, the fight seemed to go out of him. His head sagged until his forehead was resting on her shoulder. She could feel his muscles clench with each of the child’s howling cries. Finally, the crying stopped, and the woman gathered the child in her arms and retreated.
It was safe now for Quintus to release her, but DaVinci didn’t let go. She needed to hold him—and for a completely different reason than what she’d felt moments ago. She wanted to tell him she understood. That she got it. Or that she got some small part of what he must be going through, losing what mattered most. So she held tight for another few seconds, like she could use those seconds to pass courage from her innermost self to his. To tell him it would be okay.
Of course, it wouldn’t be okay. And she got that, too.
Finally letting go of him, DaVinci spoke. “They’re gone.”
Quintus stepped back and released her, drawing a slow breath.
She followed his gaze. He was staring at the exact corner where the pair had disappeared. Of course he was. He would have known where they were going. Home. DaVinci’s heart pinched for him.
“Tata,” said Quintus.
She stared at him, not understanding.
“Tata is what Roman children call their fathers,” said Quintus. “At least, where affection is strong. You asked,” he added.
Had she? Oh yeah. She’d warned him that he didn’t want his kid seeing him and calling him whatever Roman kids called their dads.
DaVinci didn’t know what to say, which was a rarity, but she decided silence was the best course, which was even more of a rarity.
Quintus didn’t seem to expect her to say anything. He was now busying himself tugging at his . . . dress, or whatever it was called. He seemed to be purposefully avoiding eye contact.
“Your wife’s got beautiful eyes,” said DaVinci, trying to dispel the massive amount of awkward that was now filling all the space between them. Filling the entire street. Possibly filling the Roman Empire.
Quintus, however, looked amused. Or . . . something. “Did you mistake the boy’s nursemaid for his mother?”
“Oh. Nursemaid,” said DaVinci, giving her forehead a slap. “Of course Roman toddlers have nursemaids.”
Her companion frowned. “Not all children have nursemaids. Ours is a slave I was awarded in the victory over the Usipetes. She bore a child and has been in milk ever since, so she is nurse to the boy.”
“Huh. Go figure. So not your wife then.”
Quintus shook his head and then settled his hand on his sword. “We must find lodging for you. You will await me there while I seek employment.” Hot, hunk-magic Quintus was gone. Anguished, devastated Quintus was gone, too. He was back to business.
Well, if he wanted to get back to business, she could handle that. “I can seek employment, too,” she said. “I mean, if we’re going to be stuck here awhile . . .” At the thought, something in her throat pinched, and she had to take a slow breath. No matter how hot Quintus was, she did not want to be stuck here awhile.
“You cannot seek employment,” said Quintus.
She set her hands on her hips, ready to argue the point all day if she had to. She knew she was a hard worker, and she was not about to be babied by some hulking Roman soldier.
“You are already employed, in the eyes of Rome,” said Quintus.
“What do you mean?”
He raised an eyebrow and gestured to her garment.
Oh. Right.
She’d forgotten.
She sighed heavily. “Got it. I’m your fantasy slave princess. Forgive me, oh master of masters. It slipped my mind.”
Quintus’s face reddened at her words, and she wondered if maybe he’d stumbled across something besides podcasts of conversational English on the internet.
“I’m kidding,” she said.
He gave a curt nod. “Let us depart.”
She had to take long steps to keep up with Quintus, and around every bend, there was something else demanding her attention, which honestly was making it harder to stay freaked out about being stuck in ancient Rome. She was freaked out, but the freaking was continually allayed by compelling examples of ancient art and architecture. A painted wall, a sculpture of a Roman god or goddess, a building fronted with fluted columns—it was all so fresh looking, not worn and chipped as she had imagined ancient Rome. Of course, it wasn’t ancient at the moment. Her internal pendulum swung away from totally Zen-with-being-here and back to terrified-to-be-here. She really should have paid better attention in that meditation class.
The first two places Quintus tried to get a room were full, but the third had a single room on the fourth floor. As they traipsed up narrow, rickety stairs, DaVinci consoled herself that at least the view would be good from up top.
But as it turned out, there was no view.
“Hey,” she said to the innkeeper, who was setting a tiny oil lamp on a shelf. “There’s no window.” She turned to Quintus. “We need a window. Not staying without a window.”
Quintus, ignoring her, paid the innkeeper, who also ignored her and started trudging back down the stairs.
“Wait a sec,” DaVinci said to Quintus. “Make him give us something better. I need a window.”
“Insulae—that is, ‘apartments’ in Rome have no windows.”
DaVinci stared at him, openmouthed. “No windows as in . . . none? Ever?”
Quintus ignored the question “You will stay here.”
In fairness, he’d already answered the question. DaVinci sighed. No fourth-floor views. No anyth
ing views. Crossing her arms, she made a hmmph noise.
“I must find paid labor or we will starve,” continued Quintus.
Her stomach growled. She could definitely use some pizza or pasta or whatever else ancient Romans ate when in Rome.
Examining the room, she saw there was only one mattress, shorter and narrower than a twin bed.
“I get the bed,” she said. And now that Gruff-and-Grumble Quintus was back, she wasn’t inclined to share it.
“It will have pulices,” said Quintus.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Quintus shrugged. “I do not know the English word.”
DaVinci reached into her bag and pulled out the Latin-English dictionary, flipping to the Ps. “How do you spell it?”
“P-V-L—no—P-U-L—”
“Found it. Ewwww! Fleas! Disgusting.” She looked up from the dictionary. “Fine. You get the bed.”
Quintus seemed to be attempting to hide a smile. “I must depart.”
“Okay,” said DaVinci. What else could she say? “So . . . I guess if space–time decides to start behaving, we don’t have to be in the same place or anything, do we? Space–time won’t care, will it?”
Quintus shrugged. “I know not.”
Again with the unacceptable answers.
Having said this, he left the room and thudded down the stairs.
“Great,” said DaVinci. She flopped on the bed. Then remembered about the fleas and jumped up, crossing to the far side of the room.
She surveyed her cell. There was nothing interesting about the room. Not even graffiti. Okay, there was one interesting thing. The oil lamp, which looked handmade.
“Duh, it’s handmade,” she muttered to herself.
She examined it, noting the hasty construction. She could knock out forty of these a day if Quintus couldn’t find gainful employment. Of course, she’d need a good source of clay . . .
“Ugh!” she grunted. She was not planning to settle down and make clay lamps for the rest of her life. Space–time had better get its shizzle together, and fast.
“You hear that?” she said, tipping her head to the ceiling with the reprimand. Then, settling in the corner farthest from the flea haven, she tried to entertain herself by looking up a handful of words she remembered from the outdoor graffiti. The individual words were intended to convey highly insulting messages. She also remembered one three-word sentence. When she looked up the words, it turned out they announced to the world the amazing news that Titus crapped here.
“Oh, good grief!”
She closed the dictionary and shoved it back inside her purse, jostling her phone in the process. This, she pulled out and turned on.
“Hello, relic of the modern age,” she murmured.
The glow was about three times brighter than what the pathetic lamp could manage. She adjusted the screen brightness to save her battery and then fumbled around in her purse for her portable charger, which turned out to be completely drained.
“Awesome.”
She had 43 percent battery remaining. No charger. No window. And no idea when Quintus would be back. And she wasn’t even tired, which ruled out sleep as a way to pass the time. She should be tired. She hadn’t slept for a day, except on the plane from LA to Miami.
“How can I not be sleepy?” she asked her empty room.
The room had nothing to say to this, and after another minute of muttering to herself, DaVinci made a decision. She might be stuck in ancient Rome, but she sure as heck wasn’t going to stay stuck in this dismal room without a view.
Standing, she dusted herself off and tromped down the stairs to check out Mr. Quintus’s Neighborhood.
37
• DAVINCI •
Rome, 53 BC
Taking a deep breath, DaVinci departed the insula. She wasn’t going far. Getting lost in a city two thousand years in the past had pretty much zero appeal, but sitting in her windowless cell was only making her worry about whether or not she was stuck in Rome. She needed something more distracting than looking up dirty words in the dictionary. What she needed was her paint box. Or a redo button for several of her life choices in the past week. Yeah, a redo button would be excellent.
Moping sure wasn’t going to help. DaVincis were made for action, not moping. What was it Halley used to call her? A “force of nature”? So she didn’t have a paint box. Fine. Did she have a pen and paper? She checked her purse, shoving her phone out of the way. No pen. Or paper. Of course not. But then, in a head-desk moment, she realized what she did have. Out came her phone. She knew precisely what use she was putting that 43 percent of battery life to. Pictures now could be turned into paintings later.
She gazed up and down the street. There was only one way to go; to the left the street dead-ended into a cluster of empty wooden tables. To the right, then. As she strolled, everything begged to be photographed, from the interesting faces passing by to the stone carvings over doorways to the freshness of the colors in a Rome that hadn’t yet faded from glory.
She felt her breathing softening and deepening while she took in the sights and smells and sounds of the vibrant city. The street she walked down now looked nothing like the quiet, empty, shuttered street of an hour earlier. She hadn’t noticed the narrowness of the passageway before, but at this time of morning, the street was so crowded it almost felt like the surrounding walls were pushing inward.
She joined the moving river of humanity, shuffling slowly forward, a stranger in a strange land. And to think, this was Quintus’s home—this was his normal.
She stood aside for three men carrying bleating lambs over their shoulders, shouting what DaVinci assumed meant, “Get the heck out of our way, already!” Although it might have been, “Last chance to get lamb at these prices!” Her Latin vocabulary was practically nonexistent, other than the handful of graffiti insults she’d looked up. Happily, no one was showing any interest in a young woman surreptitiously snapping pictures with her iPhone.
There were men and women dressed like her, in short tunics that looked like they’d been worn day and night for years on end. Which they probably had; Quintus hadn’t said anything about getting her a pair of “slave pajamas” to sleep in. A few children dressed in nicer (well, cleaner) clothes were tossing bits of flatbread to pigeons. One of the girls was trying and failing to catch a pigeon.
“Good luck with that,” murmured DaVinci. When Klee and Kahlo were little, they had devoted hours to elaborate schemes for catching seagulls at the beach, resulting in similar levels of success.
Turning from the children, DaVinci examined the faces of the adults rushing past. Almost everyone she saw looked exactly like her idea of Italian. Glowing olive-toned skin, brown or hazel eyes, and extremely healthy heads of dark hair. It made her feel slightly anemic. It also made her wish she had some paper and a box of Conté crayons. She was buying some as soon she got home. And new paints and brushes and—
It hit like a punch to the gut: she was assuming she would get home. But what if she didn’t? Her stomach knotted. What if she was stuck? She thought she’d felt alone before, in her own time surrounded by people who didn’t share her memories, but what if she never made it back? It would be a completely different kind of alone, trapped here. What if all she had was a phone full of images of her friends and family? Hastily, she turned her phone off. Then turned it back on to check the battery. Down to 41 percent. She supposed if she were stuck here, she could get some paints and paint pictures of her friends and family from her phone photos. At least that way she’d have something to remember them by.
At the thought, she had to swallow back tears.
She would not let herself think like this.
Littlewood was a genius. He would be hard at work figuring out what had gone wrong and how to fix it. She had to keep her fears at bay. Stay busy. Keep occupied. Her phone had lots of battery left. She decided to stay the course with Project Capture Ancient Rome on Camera. More pictures. Less worrying.
/> She began retracing her steps from earlier in the morning, thankful for her pathologically accurate sense of direction. Soon she was passing graffiti she recognized and crossing a wide street that had been empty earlier. Now it was filled with people hawking goods, gossiping over cups of wine, and rushing off to do . . . whatever Romans did. She turned into a quieter side street, realizing she’d made it all the way back to the street where Quintus had seen and recognized his son. The street where he’d pretended to make out with her. The memory sent a warm shiver through her. What would it have been like if he’d actually kissed her? She felt a tug in her belly and immediately rolled her eyes at herself.
As if.
Quintus might be a veritable Apollo—well, whoever that translated to in the Roman pantheon, but he was also rude and patronizing and, hello, married with a kid.
The thought brought back her memory of the look on his face when he’d seen his son but couldn’t do anything about it. Talk about a kick to the cojones. Talk about loss.
And then she had an idea.
If she could find Quintus’s house, maybe she could hang around and snap a picture of his boy. With her own fresh fears about never seeing her family again, she had a pretty good idea how much a picture would mean to Quintus. And as soon as she got home—because she was totally getting home again—she could print it out or even paint a miniature for him to carry everywhere. It was a genius idea.
As long as she could figure out how to ask, “Where’s Quintus’s house?”
Reaching for her dictionary, DaVinci felt a swell of purposefulness. It was refreshing; purpose had been hard to come by this past week. She wedged herself into a recess like the one where she’d changed clothes earlier, and in the privacy of that nook, she looked up a couple of Latin words: ubi for where and domus for home. These two words, in combination with Quintus’s name, ought to get her where she needed to go.
She approached the first respectable mom-type she saw—well, mom or wet-nurse, it was impossible to tell which—and asked her the question.
“Ubi . . . domus . . . Quintus Valerius?”
From the woman’s raised brow, DaVinci knew she’d mispronounced the words or put them in the wrong order or something equally awful. Or maybe slaves weren’t supposed to speak to nicely dressed women. She tried repeating the words, but the woman said something that sounded like ignorant and pushed forward. After a few more tries and a few more ignorants, DaVinci consulted her dictionary again, where she learned ignoro meant roughly, “I have no clue.”
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