The Roman Lady's Illicit Affair Read online

  Can she find freedom...

  In her lover’s arms?

  Desperate for a divorce from her violent, adulterous husband, Vita runs away to the Roman Baths, where she is brought face-to-face with forbidding, handsome slave Ven. In him she finds an instant connection and ally. Yet to escape with their lives, they’ll have to resist their burning chemistry! And as Vita realizes that their freedom comes at a high cost, she might have to make an impossible choice!

  “My reputation is in tatters,” she said. She cried for a little while longer, then turned to leave.

  “There are worse things in the world,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” She studied his motionless profile.

  She moved to get a better look at him. His strong triangular nose in particular caught her eye. It tapered to an unexpected point, giving him an erudite appearance that was reinforced by his

  wide, thoughtful mouth.

  She wished to see his eyes, but still he would not look down at her, and it was then she noticed his forehead. Three thin black letters were tattooed across its wide expanse. FVG they read. Runaway.

  She should have guessed it. He was a slave—a bodyguard for one of her guests. Vita felt suddenly very foolish.

  “You are right, sir. There are worse things in the world,” she said. “Much worse things. My apologies.”

  Finally, he looked at her, and an unwelcome rush of warmth spread beneath her skin.

  Author Note

  From its mythological inception in 753 BCE, the kingdom, republic, then empire of Rome seemed bound to expand forever—that is, until 117 CE, when Emperor Hadrian rose to power. He ceased Rome’s expansion and sought to fortify its borders instead. One of his first projects was to build a wall across northern Britannia.

  Elsewhere in the empire, Hadrian reinforced Rome’s borders with fences and forts, so it is not entirely clear why Britannia warranted a wall. There is evidence of rebellion in Britannia early in Hadrian’s reign, and some scholars believe the 118-kilometer-long structure was built for defense. Others believe it was built to control trade, or simply to give the legions something to do. Hadrian’s biographer famously said that it was built

  “to separate the Romans from the barbarians.”

  I think Hadrian’s Wall was built for another reason—a theory which I have attempted to weave into the story. It is the journey of two people who are both Roman and barbarian and both in search of a home. They must navigate barriers from within and without in order to find what they seek. Perhaps they will also find love...

  I hope you enjoy the story!

  GRETA GILBERT

  The Roman Lady’s

  Illicit Affair

  Greta Gilbert’s passion for ancient history began with a teenage crush on Indiana Jones. As an adult, she landed a dream job at National Geographic Learning, where her colleagues—former archaeologists—helped her learn to keep her facts straight. Now she lives in southern Baja, Mexico, where she continues to study the ancients. She is especially intrigued by ancient mysteries and always keeps a little Indiana Jones inside her heart.

  Books by Greta Gilbert

  Harlequin Historical

  Enslaved by the Desert Trader

  The Spaniard’s Innocent Maiden

  In Thrall to the Enemy Commander

  Forbidden to the Gladiator

  Seduced by Her Rebel Warrior

  Saved by Her Enemy Warrior

  The Roman Lady’s Illicit Affair

  Harlequin Historical Undone! ebook

  Mastered by Her Slave

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com.

  For Michael James Gordon, with all of my love.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Excerpt from Christmas at Court by Blythe Gifford

  Chapter One

  Rome—122 CE

  When Vita spotted the woman’s loincloth on her husband’s desk that night, tears of laughter filled her eyes. It was just that the cloth looked so silly draped over Magnus’s stylus pen, which stood inside its wooden holder as usual.

  Another woman’s intimate garment on top of her husband’s erect pen—what could be more humorous?

  Ha!

  She set down her oil lamp and plucked the mysterious loincloth from its perch. It felt expensively soft—probably Egyptian—and its fine embroidered waistband had been enhanced by gilded beads.

  Gilded beads!

  It was obviously the undergarment of a woman of elevated status—likely an equestrian—or at least someone who aspired to that lofty class. And Vita’s husband had obviously aspired to the woman—probably on top of that very desk.

  Ha, ha!

  Vita considered the female guests who had attended their banquet that evening. There had been only three: all beautiful, all of rank and all very much married.

  Not that a woman’s marital status had ever deterred Magnus. A consummate adulterer, he seemed to appreciate the company of maidens and married women alike.

  And they appreciated him, for part of his job as a commanding vigile of Rome was to keep its women safe.

  To most women, Vita’s husband was not Magnus, but Aeneas or Adonis—a musclebound tower of a man whose physical power was matched only by his heroic deeds, which were eclipsed only by his classic good looks. In sum, Magnus could have nearly any woman he liked—and often did.

  Still, a tryst in the tablinium was reckless, even for him.

  Ah, Magnus.

  So who had it been this time? Gaeta, the olive merchant’s wife, with her fluttering laughter and piles of curls? Or Numeria, the tax collector’s wife, who often stuttered and blinked in his presence? Perhaps it was Lollia Flamma, the architect’s wife, whose nubile beauty was wasted on her much older husband, or so Magnus had commented once.

  Whomever Magnus had chosen as his paramour that evening, there would have been few opportunities to disappear undetected. And the lovers had escaped to the tablinium of all places! Instead of retreating to a quiet corner, they had occupied the centrally located office where Magnus attended to household business.

  Household business indeed! But when could the two have possibly...conducted it?

  Vita thought back to her husband’s movements that evening, but she could hardly remember anything beyond her guests’ frowns and groans.

  Bad food, terrible service, lack of wine—how could she have possibly detected her husband’s transgression when she had been so busy watching her own reputation crumble into ruin?

  Surely he had left clues? He always did. She only needed to think back to the banquet and try to remember them. She closed her eyes and willed herself to return to the disastrous gathering. All at once she was there, hovering outside her triclinium while her guests bit into her disastrous first dish...

  * * *

  ‘These dumplings have the savour of defeat,’ Gaeta was whispering.

  ‘Conjured in the Underworld for certain,’ tittered Numeria.

/>   ‘Come now, ladies,’ said Lollia, ‘the dough would make a lovely sandal leather.’

  There was a smattering of quiet giggles as Vita swept into the room. ‘My dear guests, the oysters are on their way,’ she announced, pretending she had not heard the women.

  ‘Well, that is good news!’ said one of the husbands.

  ‘I think I shall save room for them,’ said another, setting his dumpling aside.

  Vita smiled as she prepared to tell her guests the truth: that the dumplings were an accident that had resulted from the inebriated condition of the woman she had hired to cook. But in that instant the oysters arrived, distracting everyone’s attention.

  Thank the gods—the oysters! Surely the Ostian delicacies would erase the memory of the failed dumplings from her guest’s minds. Borne on trays by two Germanic freedwomen whom Vita had hired at the urging of the cook, the fresh oysters were an unassailably elegant addition to the banquet. Still, Vita’s guests were frowning.

  Jupiter’s thumb—the oysters’ shells were still closed! Worse, the Germanis had forgone the special knives Vita had provided them for the task and were attempting to open the creatures with their own fingernails.

  ‘Is that how they do it in Germania?’ Gaeta clucked.

  ‘We are fortunate they are not using their teeth!’ Numeria added.

  ‘Filthy barbarians,’ Lollia mumbled.

  Vita smiled joylessly. Her own mother had been a barbarian. Brought from Britannia in chains during the reign of Emperor Domitian, she had been bought and sold many times before finally landing in the household of the man who would become Vita’s father.

  ‘You can complain all you want,’ said one of the husbands, ‘without barbarians Rome’s fields would be fallow and its chamber pots full. It is why our new Emperor must continue to conquer their territories.’

  Another husband shook his head in disagreement. ‘The Empire is overstretched as it is. Emperor Hadrian is right in fortifying its defences—especially along the Germanic frontier.’

  A spirited discussion ensued and Vita tried not to listen. The Roman expansion had been forged in misery and enslavement, cruelty and death, yet most Romans spoke about it as if it were a table game.

  She busied herself filling her guests’ cups of wine, though she could not seem to pour quickly enough to keep them full. She emptied the last drop into her husband Magnus’s own cup. ‘The problem is not along the Germanic frontier, but the Britannic one,’ he was saying. He drank the liquid down in a single gulp. ‘Hence the wall Emperor Hadrian will build there soon.’

  ‘It is true, then?’ Gaeta asked. ‘Hadrian is building a wall across Britannia?’

  ‘I have heard that it will stretch over seventy miles, from one sea to another,’ Numeria said.

  ‘Humph,’ grunted Lollia’s husband, Lepidus.

  All eyes turned to the bald, grey-bearded man, who had recently acquired a high post as a military architect in Hadrian’s army.

  ‘I honestly do not see the purpose of a wall so far north,’ Gaeta commented at last.

  ‘To separate the Romans from the barbarians, of course,’ Numeria replied.

  ‘That is not the reason for the wall,’ grumbled Lepidus. He picked up a grape and began to peel it.

  ‘It is obviously an excuse to busy the legions,’ Magnus commented. ‘Without a war to fight, the soldiers will have nothing to do.’

  ‘That is not the reason for the wall, either,’ Lepidus muttered, continuing to peel his grape.

  ‘Its purpose is obviously to control trade,’ said one of the husbands. ‘Taxes over battle axes.’

  ‘That is not the reason, either.’ Lepidus held up the peeled grape and studied it, as if holding a miniature world in his hands.

  ‘Surely it is for defence,’ said another husband. ‘Those barbarians in the north are a different breed. Or have we already forgotten the Battle of Teutoburg Forest?’

  Across the room, one of the Germanic women gasped. The oyster she was opening shot into the air. It soared over the couches to the far wall, where it landed at the foot of a bust of the first Emperor.

  Someone laughed. Another groaned.

  ‘A bad omen,’ Lepidus said.

  There had been a sudden roll of thunder outside—a late summer thunderstorm—and the Germanic women shrieked. They shoved their trays at Vita and rushed from the lounging chamber in a panic.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Vita had cried and they had replied that the banquet was cursed.

  It seemed they were right, for the rain began to pour through the atrium ceiling so effusively that it soon began to overflow the pool designed to catch it. An embarrassing flood filled the atrium, reaching all the way to the entrance of the triclinium where Vita’s guests reclined.

  ‘Too bad I forgot my fishing net,’ one of the husbands jested and Magnus said something about Vita neglecting to empty the cistern regularly. ‘We would not have a flood if my wife would keep this house properly.’

  The statement was utterly untrue. Vita emptied the cistern of its collected rainwater on the kalends of every month and Magnus knew it. The flood was a result of the build-up of sediment—too much sediment for Vita to be able to dispose of on her own. She had been urging Magnus to hire someone to remove it for years.

  Vita had been unable to say anything in her own defence, however, because by that time her arms were nearly collapsing beneath the weight of the two heavy oyster trays she held.

  ‘More oysters, anyone?’ she asked, with perhaps a little too much cheer. Her guests only stared into their cups.

  ‘I will return in just a moment,’ she told her guests, then waded across the atrium towards the kitchen, trying to keep her spirits up. It was then she remembered the Falernian. A cup of fine wine could solve most crises and Falernian wine was the finest there was.

  When she rounded the corner of the kitchen to fetch the special amphora, however, she discovered it lying empty on the floor beside the slumbering cook.

  ‘What have you done?’ Vita shouted, but the woman only snored.

  Her heart pounding, Vita ran out of the kitchen towards the entry hall. She needed a breath of fresh air and a moment to collect herself. Swinging open her front door, she rushed outside, crashing headlong against a barrier that might have been Hadrian’s Wall itself.

  She gasped and stumbled backwards, nearly tripping on her own feet. ‘Curses!’ she gasped. Regaining her balance, she peered up at a broad-chested pillar of a man standing motionless outside her door. The rain poured down over his short brown hair, plastering it to his skull and continuing down his stony profile.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she commented, but he made not a single movement to acknowledge her. She wondered for a moment if he was even alive. He seemed more statue than man: a rain-chiselled warrior, frozen in time.

  ‘Is there something wrong with you, sir?’ she asked. ‘Can you hear me?’

  He slid her a glance, as if noticing a tossed apple core.

  ‘Are you not going to apologise?’ she asked.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For bumping into me!’

  ‘I did not bump into you,’ he stated, returning his attention to the pouring rain.

  By the gods, he was right. It was she who had bumped into him. What was wrong with her?

  ‘Apologies,’ she said. ‘I am not myself today. I have just come to get a breath of air.’ The man stared out at the pouring rain, unmoved. ‘My banquet is a disaster, you see,’ she continued. ‘The food is bad, the service has escaped and there is a flood in my atrium.’

  She did not know why she had felt the need to confess herself to him. He was a stranger, likely a bodyguard for one of her guests, and surely did not care to hear of her woes.

  Still, tears began to fall down her cheeks, mixing with the rain. ‘My husband loathes me. Our friends find me r
idiculous. No matter how much I try, I can never please them.’

  She gazed out at the rain, wishing it could somehow wash away the memory of the banquet from her guests’ minds, as if it had never taken place. She wished she could wash away the memory of the last ten years, in truth.

  ‘My reputation is in tatters,’ she said, ‘and so is my marriage.’

  She searched his face for some sign of a response, but it remained as still as a mask. She followed a drop of rain down the bumps of his arms and on to the paving stones at his feet.

  She wiped her cheeks and turned to leave.

  ‘There are worse things in the world,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  He shook his head, dismissing the words.

  ‘Apologies, but what did you just say?’ Vita insisted.

  She moved into his line of sight and gazed up at the features of his face. To her surprise, they were broad and pronounced, like those of a politician or man of the stage. His strong triangular nose in particular caught her eye. It tapered to an unexpected point, giving him an erudite appearance that was reinforced by his wide, thoughtful mouth.

  That mouth—it seemed full of opinions, though his lips seemed far too sensual to support anything it said. She wished to see his eyes, but still he would not meet her gaze. It was then she noticed his forehead. Three thin black letters were tattooed across its wide expanse. FGV, they read. Runaway.

  She should have guessed it. He was a slave for one of her guests, most likely Lepidus, who was the highest-ranking man there. It was probably Lepidus who had ordered the man’s tattoo, for the old equestrian architect had many slaves and was known for his brutal punishments. Vita felt suddenly very foolish.

  ‘You are right, sir. There are worse things in the world,’ she said. ‘Much worse things. My apologies.’

  Finally, he looked at her and an unwelcome rush of warmth spread beneath her skin. His brownish-green eyes were large, yet perfectly proportionate to his other outsized features. Still, they dominated his face, along with all of Vita’s attention. They seemed to see inside her somehow.