Dark Horse

Thirty-Six

'Marcus!' Even through her badly bruised tonsils, Silvia's censorious tones echoed across the library. 'Marcus, good heavens, man, you're drunk!'

'Thassa coincidence.' He grinned up at all three of her. 'So am I.'

He lifted the jug to his lips and drank deeply. Under a footstool upholstered in scarlet, a long-stemmed glass lay on its side where he'd rolled it away long ago. Too small. Too bloody small. Needed to do the job faster.

'Absholutely bloody steaming.'

All this time. All this time, he and Claudia…

He upended the jug and finished off even the dregs. That easy familiarity. The jokes. The looks. The passion…

'Poor darling.' The triple haze that was Silvia glided across the floor towards him, her rigidity softening with each dainty step. 'We had no idea you were so deeply attached to your cousin.'

'Snot Leo.' When he shook his head there were six of her. 'Snot why I'm drunk.' He tried to stand up, but his foot kept slipping on the polished mosaic. 'Class, Silvia. Issa problem, see, being patrician. Can't just run away. Patricians have — whassa word? Obligations. That's what patricians have. Obli-sodding-gations.'

'Marcus, please.' Tragic blue eyes turned downwards. 'I've been totally honest with you about my past mistakes and it's terribly unfair of you to drag them up in this way.'

'Wasn't,' he said, belching softly. 'Never crossed his mind, frankly.'

'Then what on earth has driven you to drink your brains out, you poor love?'

'Marriage.'

'Ah.' She crouched down beside him and, as she wiped his fringe out of his eyes, a drift of honey-coloured hair floated gently in and out of focus in front of him. The drift smelled of white lavender. 'I do understand, you know, darling. It's an awfully big step-'

'Can't take steps,' he said sadly. 'Can't even stand up.'

She smiled. 'With me by your side, you can do anything.' Silvia drew a deep breath and ran a crisp pleat slowly up and down between her fingers. 'You were badly burned last time, but you won't regret marrying me-'

'Birthright,' he pronounced grandly. 'Denying children their birthright issanother big problem.'

'Don't let's go into that now. It's late. Let's get you to bed instead.'

'You, Silvia, are a very beautiful woman.' In fact, all three of them were exquisite. Wasp waist, pert breasts, a carnality that belied her glacial exterior. 'But sex is outta the question.' He held the wine jug to his left eye, closed the right and stared into the blackness. 'Seferius,' he announced.

'Sadly, dear, it's only that cheap stuff from over the water in Istria that you've been knocking back. Not Seferius vintage.'

'Want her.'

'I really don't think you should drink any more tonight.' Silvia prised his fingers away from the jug's handles.

'Can't have her.'

'Absolutely not, darling. More wine will only make you throw up, and then you'll be in no condition to conduct Leo's funeral tomorrow.'

'Funeral. Hell. I forgot.' Orbilio rolled on to all fours. 'How's Lydia coping?'

Silvia sniffed. 'We would prefer it if you didn't mention that bitch, if you don't mind. Now let's call for a slave to help you to bed.'

'Claudia.'

'Common she might be, but Claudia isn't a slave, you silly goose. Can you manage there?' she asked, as his hands closed over a cypress-wood chest filled with the works of Homer and Plato.

'Need to talk to her,' he said, testing the grip before hauling himself upright. 'Have to explain.'

'Well, it will have to wait, I'm afraid.'

He lurched from chest to chest round the library until he reached the door. 'Morning will do, I susuppose.'

'It'll have to wait a lot longer than that,' Silvia said. 'She's gone. Cat, luggage, the lot, just like that,' she added, snapping her fingers. 'Didn't even have the courtesy to kiss us goodbye.'

'Uh-uh.' The room started spinning. 'She wouldn't leave without the Gaul.'

'The rumours are true, then? It's what we suspected, of course, her and the boy, and who can blame her. Attractive young widow, all that sexual energy has to go somewhere.'

Orbilio tasted regurgitated wine in the back of his throat. Claudia and the Gaul? Entwined between the sheets, naked, buffered in sweat, groaning in mutual pleasure… He put his hand on the door jamb to stop himself falling.

'But to put your mind at rest, Marcus, the boy has gone, too.' Silvia ruffled his hair like a child's. 'So whatever it was you needed to explain to the lovely young widow, you're either going to have to keep it until we return to Rome or else put it down in a letter.'

'You don't understand.' A vice clamped round his ribcage.

'Letter, definitely, seeing how it worries you that much. Now it's two hours past midnight and you need your sleep, you poor darling. Come along.'

'No.' He couldn't breathe. 'I knew she'd try something, so I — Silvia, you don't understand.'

'Understand what, dear?'

'I locked the Gaul in the woodshed.' Justified on the grounds that he'd caught the bastard sneaking round his papers. 'Shut the cat in there, too.' Serves him right if she scratches his lecherous eyes out.

'Marcus, darling, two men have been brutally murdered and the Medea's on the stocks. That makes Cressia an extremely hazardous place to be at the moment, and whatever else one might say about the woman, Claudia Seferius doesn't strike one as the type who'd wait for her toyboy when pirate ships are on the rampage.'

'Agreed.' Suddenly he was sober again. 'But there's one thing she'd never go without.'

Claudia would never leave her beloved Drusilla behind.

'Meaning?' Silvia asked, linking her arm through Orbilio's.

'Meaning,' he growled, shaking the arm off, 'the silly bitch is in danger.'