Читать книгу Mastered By Her Slave - Greta Gilbert - Страница 9

Chapter Three

When they reached her house atop Palatine Hill, Clodia summoned the slaves to the atrium. “Please welcome this man to the familia,” she instructed. “He is my new bodyguard.”

Forty sets of eyes surveyed the man. The women of the house seemed especially pleased. They smiled shyly. “Where are you from?” they asked in Latin, then in Greek. “Have you a wife? A family? A trade?” But the man remained wordless.

“Let us give him room to breathe,” said Clodia, wondering if she had made a mistake. Did this man loathe his situation so deeply that he would withhold his protection, or refuse the grave favor she would soon require of him?

Time was running short. Paulinus’s sister, Maevia, had already paid Clodia several visits since the funeral, the most recent just a day before. She had run her fingers around the rim of Clodia’s silver goblet and smiled wolfishly. “How vulnerable I would feel if I were you, Clodia,” she commented, “all alone in such a big house, and without my late brother’s Praetorian Guard to protect you.”

Clodia had practically felt the woman’s hands around her throat.

But Maevia’s words had inspired a revelation. If Clodia could find the right bodyguard, perhaps she could command him to help her escape. Or perhaps she could strike a bargain: the man’s freedom in exchange for getting her—and her dowry—safely out of the city. It was an idea that surely not even Maevia could imagine. The challenge would be to find the right man, the right bodyguard.

Clodia summoned Tira, her ornatrix. The lithe, beautiful young woman was her best hope for softening the man.

“Please see that he eats. Discover his name. Then groom him for duty. And find someone who speaks his tongue. I cannot own a bodyguard who is deaf to urgent times and matters.”

“Yes, Domina,” Tira said, her face brightening.

As Tira led the man up the stairs, he glanced back at Clodia briefly, perhaps in gratitude for granting him the company of a woman as lovely as Tira.

Good, Clodia thought. The man deserved a bit of pleasure, and perhaps some necessary goodwill would come of it.

Still, as she watched his bare feet ascend the stairs, she remembered that fleeting moment at the fountain. With his eyes upon her, she had felt for a moment as a bird diving high above the city, dizzy with the fall.

The menacing clank-clank of the knocker brought Clodia instantly back to earth. Two guards were pushing their way past the doorman and into the atrium.

“We bring an invitation from the house of Flavius. And a message from your father.” One guard stepped forward and began reading from a tablet. He read that she and her father were invited to a banquet at the home of Emperor Titus himself, to be held in honor of the new amphitheater.