The Perfect Concubine
Autore
Michelle Styles
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Capitoli
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Chapter One
Rome 68 BC
Thirteen. Thirteen men had arrived after Valeria and all had had their petitions dealt with. Valeria dug her nails into her palms and ignored the increasingly curious stares as the fifth hour approached. Piso the Greek had to listen to her. Her life depended on it.
It was one thing to confidently predict success to her desperate parents, quite another to actually confront the man who had more reason than most to hate her and her family. But without his help, they had no chance of discovering whether her brother still lived.
‘Will you reconsider, lady?’ the steward asked with a curl of his lip.
‘What I have to say is for your master’s ears alone. Please tell him again that Valeria requires an audience.’ Valeria straightened her stola, subtly demonstrating to the officious steward that she was not some daughter of Venus seeking to ply her trade, but a respectable Roman matron. She refused to allow Piso to dismiss her without hearing her plea. ‘Tell him that I will wait out here day and night until he listens to my petition.’
The steward scuttled off, only to return a few drips of the water clock later.
‘He will see you now, my lady.’ The steward bowed low. His face showed more than a little disapproval, as if a respectable Roman matron had no business waiting at the gate of a notorious Greek ship owner.
Valeria ignored the pinching of her elaborately crossed sandals. A simple pair of slippers might have been more practical. However, Piso needed to know that she retained her dignity despite the collapse of her father’s shipping empire, a collapse she bore some responsibility for. She bit her lip. If she had not convinced her brother to take command of that ship, years ago, after he had fought so terribly with their father, he would have remained in Rome and been ready to take charge when her father started to weaken.
She followed the steward into the atrium where water splashed in a fountain decorated with carved dolphins. The vivid frescoes had retained their fresh plaster smell and the mosaics that covered the floor showed no sign of cracking.
Piso stood with his back to her. His body showed no sign of fat; rather, it bore a distinct resemblance to one of classic Greek gods whose statues dotted the atrium. His highly embroidered dark green tunic proclaimed his new wealth and status and only served to emphasise the breadth of his shoulders. Years ago, he had proudly boasted that one day he would wear such clothes. Everyone had laughed, thinking it was another of his famous jokes. A Greek sailor become a wealthy ship owner? Such things only happened in plays. Piso’s serious brown eyes had been at odds with his laughter and Valeria had whispered that she believed him. It had been the start of their doomed romance.
Valeria put her hand to her throat and knew that Fortunata had deserted her as surely as the goddess clung to Piso and guided his every move.
‘State your business.’ His voice was carved from ice-cold marble.
‘I wish to go to Cyrene immediately,’ she said, staring at his arrogant back. She needn’t have bothered with the stola and the sandals. He wasn’t even going to look at her. ‘Captain Piso, they say you are the only man who is brave enough to sail to Alexandria now, and from there I can go overland.’
‘The time to sail has been gone for weeks,’ he said with even less warmth than before. ‘Only a madman would risk his men in such a way.’
‘But you’ve done it before,’ she said hurriedly, before he dismissed her with an imperious wave of his hand. ‘Two years ago. The entire Aventine speaks of your exploits.’
‘Only the Aventine?’ he asked, turning around. A sardonic smile played on his lips. All the softness of youth had gone and in its place he had chiselled cheekbones and piercing brown eyes. ‘Your horizons have shrunk, Valeria, if you are paying attention to Aventine gossip.’
Valeria hated the way she tried to see something of the passionate youth she had once loved more than life itself in those carefully controlled features. Before setting out, she had whispered to her reflection that their shared past was forgotten. But under his gaze, a slow tingle went down her spine as she remembered his soft touch against her skin. She banished it.
‘You were the only capable person left to ask.’ Valeria forced her voice to remain even. ‘The others are cowards and scoundrels.’
A brief light flared in his dark brown eyes. ‘What are you offering, Valeria? What are you offering that you have not offered every other ship owner from here to Ostia? Your body? I have had that before and suffered for it.’
Anger flashed through her at the insinuation. She was no concubine or whore who spread her legs for any man. She longed to storm out and never set eyes on him again but, for her mother’s sanity and her brother’s life, she swallowed her pride. She crossed the atrium, knelt at his feet and held up the small bag of gold. ‘The man I used to know would never humiliate a woman, particularly a respectable matron.’
‘You were always keen on your respectability, weren’t you, Valeria?’
The words sliced through her. She knew she should have expected them, but she had clung to the hope that somehow he understood how she had suffered and the sacrifice she had made for him.
‘I have brought gold, Piso. For my passage. More than enough. Count it. Tell me when we leave. I’ll be there. I’ll brave the journey.’
The air hissed through his lips as he angrily gestured for her to stand. ‘Your money is no good here. Go. Find someone else who might believe your lies.’
Valeria slowly lowered the bag and rose to her feet. All her hopes for this morning tasted like ash in her throat. ‘Why did you agree to see me?’
‘To satisfy my curiosity.’
His immodest gaze raked her form. Valeria forced her head to remain high. She was no longer a naive girl of fifteen in the throes of her first love, but a matron, a divorcée of twenty-one. She’d made the correct choice. This man stood before her, alive and arrogant, because of what she had sacrificed. Once she had whispered that it was enough that she knew he lived and breathed, but now she knew she’d lied. Against all reason, a tiny unacknowledged piece of her had hoped that he retained some feeling for her. That she’d meant more to him than a quick tumble in the temple gardens. That she hadn’t made a mistake in begging her brother Marcus to captain the early ship so that she and Piso could have one last night together.
‘And now that your curiosity is satisfied, I’m to depart quietly?’ Valeria tapped her sandal against the mosaic floor, struggling to retain control of her temper. ‘That is low even for a man of your reputation, Piso.’
‘You are as I expected you.’ His eyes smouldered. ‘You have more than grown into your promise, Valeria.’
Against her better judgement, a warm curl of pleasure stirred deep within her. She banished it.
‘Listen to me as you listen to other people’s pleas, and do not hold our past against me.’ She raised her hands in supplication.
‘Is there any point?’ He shrugged his shoulder. The dark green silk rippled across his chest. ‘My men are more important than gold. If your father wants me to sail him to Cyrene, tell him—from me—to be a man. To come himself and beg rather than sending…his perfidious daughter.’
She forced her lips to smile and show that his words failed to sting. She’d learnt other things hurt far more than words.
The thought of returning to the tiny apartment they now called home, and explaining her failure to her mother, was unthinkable. But to go on sitting day after day, helping to mend other women’s tunics or weave cloth, knowing her pride had prevented her from trying everything was unbearable. ‘How can you refuse? You owe my family a life debt. You should have captained that ship, not my brother. He switched places with you.’
‘Your brother died by circumstances of his own making. He proposed the change, not me. He’d quarrelled with your father. He wanted nothing more to do with his schemes. Keep your facts honest.’
Valeria clenched her fists and longed to scream. He was taunting her. He knew of another reason Marcus had done it—for them, because she begged. But she refused to mention that night, and instead focussed on the recent revelation that had finally given her family hope again. ‘Rumour has it that far from being dead, my brother now lives in Cyrene as a gladiator. He’d not have allowed you to suffer such a fate.’
‘He was a better man than I.’ Piso’s lips quirked upward. He was clearly enjoying her discomfort. ‘Obviously.’
‘All I ask is passage to Alexandria. Take me there and I’ll say the life debt is paid. ’
‘Why not use one of your father’s ships to sail to Alexandria? He has so many, and such loyal captains.’ His eyes taunted her.
‘My father is no longer in shipping.’ Valeria kept her head high. The ships were gone. After Marcus’s reported death, her father had lost all sense of judgement, alienating those closest to him, and developing a taste for gaming and high living, a habit that Ofellius had actively encouraged.
Piso must have heard the Aventine whispers. He probably knew that her father had not spoken a word since he discovered the true extent of Ofellius’s treachery. Dare she refer to it? Valeria ignored the ever-tightening knots in her stomach. ‘As you know, Ofellius cheated us badly.’
Instantly Piso’s face became a cold mask and she knew she had made a mistake mentioning his name. For the first time since she had heard the news of her brother’s survival, she faced the loss of all hope, for would Piso help her now?
‘It was your father’s choice to back Ofellius,’ he bit out. ‘He knew what the man was capable of doing.’
Valeria gulped a breath of life-giving air. ‘I also know what the man is capable of. I was married to him.’
‘Some people can’t see beyond the veneer of respectability and having their palms lined with gold.’
She flinched as the barb struck her but she managed to keep her voice steady. ‘My father knows of his mistake. He has paid for it in the harshest way imaginable.’ As have I.
‘No one held a sword to his back, Valeria. No one beat him within an inch of his life.’
No, they beat me and when that didn’t work, they beat the one man I adored. Valeria pressed her lips together and held back the words. He didn’t deserve the truth. She didn’t have to prove her worthiness to him. ‘Have you always made the right choices, Piso?’
‘I can look myself in the mirror.’ Piso hooked his thumbs into his belt, giving himself time regain control of his composure. When his steward had announced that Valeria waited amongst his clients with a petition, he should have sent her away, but the temptation to see her again after all these years proved irresistible. Her reasons for coming were no mystery—the entire Aventine buzzed about her quest to find a captain foolhardy enough to brave the winds. He’d even bet his steward that she’d show. The news about Marcus’s survival, however, was a surprise.
His interest in seeing Valeria was supposed to be purely academic, as one might have for a once-beloved statue—dispassionate and uncaring. But he was unprepared for the intense desire laced with anger that coursed through him the instant he saw her treacherous face again.
Valeria had destroyed his world once. He had believed her lies and half-truths about how she’d always love him and want to be with him. Despite the beating he’d received, he had clung to the knowledge of her love to keep him alive. Then, through the haze of pain, her unmistakable voice had filled the room with the life-destroying words that she was marrying Ofellius and wanted nothing more to do with Piso, had never loved him and never wanted to see him again. Less than a week later, his ribs taped and his soul aching, and with two women to support him, he’d watched the radiant bride as she threw nuts to the crowd on the way to her new house. Her gaze had slid over him and he’d called himself a fool.
Later the Aventine rumour mill had worked overtime detailing her fabulous dinner parties and the clothes she wore, and he’d had a hard time remembering that once she had been a fresh-faced innocent.
Last year, like the scheming witch she was, when she realised Ofellius was on his way out, she divorced him, fleeing back to her father and his wealth. Except that her father’s once-mighty empire of ships lay in ruins, lost through both his and Ofellius’s bad judgement and neglect.
‘It will be a cold day in Hades before I voluntarily help you or your father, Valeria.’
Her face contorted with barely suppressed fury. ‘This is about not my father or me, but Marcus.’
‘Six years, Valeria. Marcus might not welcome you, even if he is alive. He bore little love for your father’s new friends. You know how they fought over the direction the business should take.’
‘Marcus could fight, better than anyone. He trained with gladiators. My brother could survive and I have to know if he did.’ She stood there with her head proud, shoulders back. Her layers of tunics clung to her curves, enhancing her figure rather than hiding it, but there was no denying the slight fraying around the hem and the uneven dyeing of the cloth. Valeria had fallen in the world and he should rejoice in it.
But she stood wrapped in her stola of Roman respectability with a beseechingly earnest expression on her face, and the temptation to believe her coiled itself around his brain.
‘I’ve no interest in the answer,’ he said, quashing his feeling.
‘It would have been kinder to turn me away at the door.’
‘I’ve never been kind, Valeria. Kindness is something that gets stamped out at an early age on the streets of Rome.’ Piso pressed his hands to his eyes and regained control over his emotions. ‘You intrigued me. It took courage to come here.’
‘Thank you.’ She took a step toward him, holding out her hands. There was a latent sensuality about her eyes and mouth. Against his will, Piso remembered the cherry and summer wine taste of her lips. ‘Is it wrong to wish to find out if my brother survived?’
‘And this was how you planned on convincing me? You had to know I would not need gold. You must have thought of something else.’ He watched her with steady eyes. Even now, despite everything, he wanted her in his arms again, tasting her skin and delving deep within her.
Her tongue flicked over her lips, turning them cherry ripe. ‘I will do anything to get my brother back. When he was here, the family thrived.’
‘Anything?’
She gave a nod as her long lashes swept down, hiding her lying eyes.
‘Shall we test that theory?’
Piso reached for her, gathered her unresisting body to his and lowered his mouth. Her lips reminded him of why she lingered in his dreams. He deepened the kiss, parting her lips with his tongue, slaking his thirst until her hands came up and gripped his shoulders. Her black hair tumbled down her back, the hairpins scattering over the floor. She moaned slightly in the back of her throat. With his last ounce of self-restraint, he put her from him.
‘Now you will take me to Cyrene?’ Joy and relief sounded in her voice.
‘That served a different purpose.’ He steadied his breathing.
‘To demonstrate your mastery over me?’ she asked in a shaky voice. She dropped to her knees, picking up the scattered pins.
‘You planned to offer me your body.’ He held the last pin out to her. ‘I decided to sample to see if I liked what was on offer.’
‘I…I…’ She froze, fingers outstretched towards the pin and her green cat eyes wide.
‘We both know what you are, Valeria. You proved it six years ago.’
‘Have you finished your humiliation? Your kiss was unwelcome,’ she said in a breathless whisper that gave lie to her words. Her lips were too red and swollen; her heart beat too fast in the hollow of her throat.
Piso belatedly realised that he also had erred. His body demanded more than a solitary kiss, but it was within his power to get it.
‘Before we discuss North Africa, you must be prepared to give me something.’ He held out his hand. ‘I want more than a quick tumble in the atrium for my trouble. I want you as my concubine. Come share my bed.’
