by Nhys Glover
But he could and should repair the bridges that had fallen into disrepair between them since he’d heard his son call Brennwen his mother. She needed to know he now realised the truth.
He left Cal’s room and headed for the kitchen. It was late, and when he entered the room he found Cook alone, wiping down benches.
‘Master?’
‘I heard Brennwen in here a while ago.’
‘She’s gone to bed. Will I get her for you?’
Disappointed, he shook his head. ‘No, it can wait until morning. I’m taking the household back to the estate. I want you all safe while I’m away.’
‘You’re going away again?’
‘Yes. Not for long.’
‘Very well, sir, I’ll start preparing for our departure first thing in the morning.’
Gaius wandered down the columned veranda of the peristylium and noticed how full the moon was. Ceres, the moon goddess, seemed to be looking down at him, her face as pale and serene as Brennwen’s. No wonder Cal confused them in his mind.
She needed to know. Brennwen needed to know he no longer suspected her of breaking confidence with him. It would nag at him all night if he didn’t have it said.
He knew which room she’d been allocated. It was an easy matter finding it. But he didn’t want to talk to her there and disturb the slaves who slept in the little cubicles next to hers.
Locating her sleeping space, he pushed back the thick hide that acted as a door. In the darkness beyond, he could see nothing.
‘Brennwen?’ he whispered. If she was asleep, his whisper wouldn’t disturb her.
‘Gaius?’ her voice sounded high with surprise and a little too loud.
‘I need to speak with you.’ He continued to keep his voice low, not wanting the others who slept nearby to know he was there.
‘All right.’
He heard her moving around, probably covering her nakedness. Moments later, she stepped out of her room and faced him in the moonlight. Her face looked beautiful and otherworldly in the blue-tinged lumination.
Wordlessly, he gestured for her to follow him. When she realised where they were headed, she balked. Then, resolutely, she continued on. But, by the time they stepped over the threshold into his rooms, she was trembling.
‘Are you cold?’ he asked. Although it was still only April, the weather was mild. It had been much colder in the North, and she’d seemed impervious to the cold there.
‘No. What do you want, Gaius?’
‘I spoke to Cal. He told me why he calls you Mater. I’m sorry I doubted you.’
Her face in the lamp-lit room showed surprise. ‘You believe me now?’
‘That you didn’t tell him to call you that, yes.’
‘Oh.’ She looked disappointed. Why would she be disappointed to know he believed her?
‘Oh?’
‘I thought you meant you believed that I was Cal’s mother… Not birth mother…’
‘He’s got you all tangled up in his mind with a white statue he’s seen of Ceres. That’s all.’
‘He says he’s dreamed of me for a long time.’
‘He told me that, too. But he said it was a feeling. He didn’t know what you looked like in the dreams. It may not have been you…’
‘You think your wife has been visiting him in his dreams?’
‘No. I… I think he’s a little boy without a mother. To give himself comfort, he dreamed of a mother who loved him. What child wouldn’t?’
‘Did you?’
Gaius swore loudly and stormed over to the desk beside his bed where one of the three lamps that lit the room was placed. Beside it sat his usual goblet of mulled wine, waiting to ease him into sleep. He took a deep swallow of it to calm himself.
‘Did you dream of a loving mother, Gaius?’
‘NO! You know what my mother was like. I told you what a self-centred bitch she was.’
‘But your nurse loved you…’
‘Yes, she did. But then she was sent away.’
‘Did you dream of her?’
‘Does it matter? That was a long time ago. I’m not a little boy anymore. I’m a man. I don’t even know how we got on to this! I just wanted to tell you I knew the truth about Cal now. I thought you’d want to know I trusted you again.’
He turned back to glare at her in his exasperation. The look of utter shock that greeted him made him jerk away.
‘You thought I’d like to know you trusted me again?’ she repeated his words in amazement. ‘After everything I did to get you your son back, you’re now telling me you stopped trusting me because Cal called me Mater?’
‘You know how I felt about him knowing your beliefs. Surely you can see how that would undermine my trust in you, if you’d gone against my dictates so blatantly?’
‘No. No, I don’t see that at all. I’ve never been anything but honest with you. How could you doubt me like that?’
‘Because I… Because you’re a stranger. Because I don’t know you!’
‘I was even more of a stranger when I told you my dream, and you believed me enough to cross the country with me because of it.’
‘That was different.’
‘How?’
‘You and I had the same goal then – saving Cal. Once that was achieved, our goals seemed to diverge.’
‘Is that why you decided to make Ardeth Cal’s nurse rather than me?’
‘What? Oh, the Brigantes rebel. No, that was… I don’t know. It just seemed a way to save her from her fate. I didn’t think about…’ He stopped stumbling over his words, excusing his behaviour like a callow youth. He felt anger rising inside him. He didn’t have to answer to her.
‘It doesn’t matter what I was thinking! I am the master here and I made a decision. That’s all you need to know.’
Brennwen began to blink quickly, as if to keep back tears. He hated himself for inflicting pain on her. But she had to know the situation. She had to realise they couldn’t be together. He’d find her a safe place with his father, well out of his reach.
‘Yes, you are the master here. But you aren’t my master. I’ll be leaving in the morning.’
He didn’t know how he got from the desk by the bed to her side, but as the word ‘No’ burst from his throat, she was in his arms, held tight, his chest heaving as it pumped air into his suddenly starving lungs.
‘No, you can’t go away,’ he mumbled into her soft, colourless hair. It smelled like sunshine and salt from their sea voyage.
‘Gaius, I’m not your slave. You can’t tell me what to do.’ She stood stiffly in his arms, and her voice was stark with pain.
‘I can and I will. As far as the law is concerned, you’re an escaped slave. You can’t just…’
‘You’d return me to my master?’ Her voice caught on her tears.
‘No. Of course not. I owe you too much to do something like that. But you can’t leave. I have plans. I’ll buy you and give you to my father. His estate’s not far from mine. You can see Cal whenever you want. You’ll be treated well there.’
He felt her trembling in his arms, and then her head came to rest against his chest. ‘I thought you were going to send me away so I’d never see Cal again.’
‘Am I such an unfeeling brute?’ he said on a groan as he stroked her hair, wanting to release it from its braid, wanting to have it falling through his fingers like a snowy waterfall.
‘No. But when I wouldn’t agree to be your bedslave, and you wanted to make Ardeth Cal’s nurse, I thought…’
He stopped her painful words with his mouth. It felt like years since he’d kissed and held her. It felt too long. All the pent need and desire he’d been holding at bay, surged to the surface.
At first, she didn’t respond, and a hopeless panic began to well up inside of him. She no longer wanted him. How could she not want him when he needed her so desperately?
But, just when he was about to admit defeat and let her go, she softened in his arms and began to kiss him back with the
same sense of desperation that was driving him. The realisation flooded him with relief and fiery lust.
As he ground his mouth against hers, he began releasing her hair from its braid. In moments, he had it loose and running through his fingers, just as he’d dreamed it. Moaning his delight, he used it to draw her even closer. Now that he had her where he’d wanted her to be for nearly a week, he couldn’t get enough of her.
He dragged her head back so he could kiss and lick her neck, spending time nibbling on the lobe of her ear as if it was a delicacy he’d waited an eternity for. When her hands found their way under his tunic and then his loincloth to grasp his backside, he thrust against her with his hips, wanting to drive his rampant sex into her hot flesh. Her fingernails bit into his muscles so painfully it was bliss, and it drove him on.
He left off clutching at her hair and began removing the pins that held her gown to her shoulders. In moments, he was throwing away the pins and watching with delight as the gown slipped down her body to pool on the stone floor at their feet. She was bare footed. Of course, she’d been in bed and hadn’t had time to put on her sandals. Somehow, the fact that she had come to his room barefooted was the most erotic thought to ever cross his mind.
His hands came down to clasp her small breasts, kneading them and drawing them up and away from her chest. The weight of them in his palms was perfect. He felt her nipples harden. Suddenly, feeling them wasn’t enough. Grabbing her hand, he led her to his bed and threw her down on it so he could properly reach those hard, tantalising points.
She didn’t move when he dropped down onto her and began to suckle her nipple hard. But when his hand clamped over her maidenhair, she groaned and arched up off the bed, her hands coming around his back as she feverishly tried to find his naked flesh.
Wanting to please her, wanting to give her anything she desired, he sprang back and quickly removed his clothes, aware in every second how her glazed silvery eyes took him in. When had a woman watching him seemed so thrilling? It had never felt that way before.
But he didn’t think on that new discovery for long. Moments later, he was back with her, pressing her body into the soldier’s pallet that he’d forced on himself for years. It wasn’t big enough for both of them. He needed a proper bed for her. A bed where they could sleep comfortably, side by side. Like he’d done with Calidia.
The sharp thrust of guilt made him gasp, and for a moment he stopped. What was he doing? This woman shouldn’t mean more to him than his dead wife. This woman shouldn’t drive him to madness when the mother of his child had died for him.
But her small hands found his aroused sex and began stroking it, her inexperience still a marvel to him. And suddenly, he was back from the hell he’d dropped into, back in the arms of the woman who could so easily give him pleasure that defied all that had come before her.
‘I want to take my time,’ he mumbled into her neck as he kissed it in open mouthed, wet kisses that trailed down to her neck. ‘I want to give you the kind of pleasure I feel…’
‘Don’t. Don’t torture me. I want you, now. I need to feel you inside me.’ Her need was bliss. Amazed at how responsive she was, how her needs seemed to match his so perfectly, he looked down at her, reading that need in her darkened eyes. He let her guide him to her entrance and then he thrust into her welcome core, feeling the tears sting his eyes. Gods, would being inside her ever feel anything but glorious? Would he ever tire of her flesh, tire of her moans and kisses, the way her hands roamed his skin, wanting more?
No. He never would. Though he had known her for mere weeks, that time had been the most intense of his life. He called her a stranger, but nothing could be further from the truth. He knew this woman like he had never known another. She was part of him. And that thought awed and humbled him, and left him fragile in a way he didn’t understand.
But then he was moving, thrusting slowly into her still stretching flesh, feeling the exquisite pain of her internal muscles around his shaft. So hot, so wet, so welcoming.
And she wrapped her legs around his body in a way she’d never done before, and she joined him in the repetitive, carnal movements, matching her rhythm to his, gasping and panting as he slammed home over and over again. There was no thought of her fragility, no thought that his almost violent assault on her body might be painful. She gasped and cried out softly, but he didn’t think it was pain. Or if it was, it was the blissful pain of frustrated desire.
When his pounding hips would go no faster and no deeper, he felt her flesh convulse around his shaft, sucking it so hard that his control was ripped from him and he exploded, fiercely, violently, almost painfully into her, on one hoarse cry of exaltation.
He kissed the salty, damp skin of her shoulder as he started to become aware of his surroundings again. It was odd how the world disappeared when he was with her. How everything that wasn’t her faded away. Or was it that the sensations were so overwhelming, there was no place left in his mind for anything else?
Was this why Lara had turned against her class, why she’d sacrificed everything her patrician’s upbringing had told her was important? Was feeling like this, when she was with Vali worth more than all the rest put together? If it was, then he understood her for the first time. Understood her choices, and wished that he could make the same ones.
But he couldn’t. She was a woman. Even as a noble woman, her responsibilities, her duties to her family, were so much less than his. Even had he wanted to give up his position to be with Brennwen, he couldn’t have. His father needed him. His son needed him. Both paterfamilii were his responsibility. He may have turned his back on Rome and its aspirations of power and glory, but he was still a Roman, and that meant something. It meant more than his personal wants and desires.
With a soul-deep sigh, he rested his forehead on Brennwen’s tiny shoulder. ‘I wish…’
‘I know…’ How sad she sounded, as if her heart was breaking as she spoke.
Then, without another word, she climbed off his soldier’s bed, dressed, and left him.
And he made no move to stop her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
24 April 86 CE, Lentulus Estate, Cantiaci Territory BRITANNIA
Brennwen had just finished dictating a missive to Livia Davrydiani, telling her of the successful rescue of Cal, and thanking Allyn, Leonis and herself for their help in achieving that end, when she heard the children running past the door to the scriptorium. With a quick thank you to the scribe, she followed in the children’s wake.
Outside, she smiled as she watched the three children start playing Puddles. The rain had only just stopped after two endless days of it, and the two small slaves and their little master must have noticed and immediately decided to play in the puddles. It amazed her how little regard for status and position these children had. Though Cal was the powerful one by birth and gender, Ariadne was the natural leader of this group because of age and personality.
It was probably she who had decided that a game of Puddles was called for, even though she had to know Cook, who was now her mother, would frown on the mess they’d make of themselves. The boys always eagerly followed her lead, which, right now, meant shrieking and laughing as one jumped in a puddle and splashed the other in mock battle.
‘He seems no worse for his experience,’ Gaius’ father said, coming to stand next to her on the front step of the villa. The man had come to visit a few hours after Gaius had left on his journey to Venta three days ago. She imagined that Gaius had stopped in at his father’s estate on the way to ask that he keep an eye on Cal while he was gone.
‘It amazes me. He doesn’t even have bad dreams about it.’ When she addressed this man, she dropped her head and spoke shyly, always aware that he had been, up until recently, a powerful senator in Rome.
‘Thanks to you,’ Bibulus replied thoughtfully.
Surprised to have this stiff, distant man praise her, she glanced up and met his gaze. His brown eyes were gentle.
‘Do you think
Cal doesn’t talk about what you did for him? How you’ve been with him his whole life, mothering him in his dreams. How, when the rebels took him, you came to him in his dreams and promised you and his father were coming for him, and that he needed to be brave and stay strong. And how, when the sickness claimed him, it was you who nursed him back to health and helped him escape. No wonder he calls you Mater.’
‘I’ve been trying to get him to stop doing that, but he is as stubborn as his father.’
Bibulus laughed. ‘Gaius is only stubborn when it comes to his obligations.’
Annoyance rippled through her. ‘Your son doesn’t want his son thinking of me as his mother because I’m a slave. He stubbornly refuses to see that Cal and I have dreamed of each other for years. That without those dreams I couldn’t have found him. He considers me a hysterical, over-imaginative woman. Slave woman.’ She amended the last statement to reinforce her principal complaint.
Then she realised who she was talking to and clamped her mouth shut. This man was probably the one who had taught Gaius about status, ambition and personal sacrifice.
‘Ah, so you aren’t always so shy and quiet. I was starting to wonder what my son saw in you. Now I’m getting the idea.’ He grinned cheekily, and that emotion seemed so out of keeping with his personality that Brennwen wasn’t sure she interpreted it correctly.
‘Look, Gaius is a man of his times. A man of his class. With no real feminine influence on his early life, he had only my misguided and regimented rules and beliefs to cling to. He was the oldest and a boy, and he knew from moment he could talk, that he would one day be the head of our clan, our paterfamilias. He knew that he had obligations to fulfil, and that he needed to become a glorious, powerful and honourable senator one day. That’s what I taught him. And that’s what I was taught by my father.’ He shifted his sandalled feet restlessly, kicking at a small pebble like a child.
‘And because I listened to my father, I gave up the one true love of my life, married an insane, debased woman of my own class and spent the remainder of my years trying to stay out of the power-hungry web she wove. She gave me two children who lacked all humanity and tried to take my dearest child away from me. All for her own debased purposes. But I look back at my lack-lustre life and blame only myself.
