pulled herself from the vessel with feline grace. ‘You die to honour profit.’
He craned his head and saw her shadowy figure lifting the skirt of her tunic and squeezing it back into the urn.
Felix cackled. ‘You wield your tongue as well as you do a gladius.’
‘And you wield your boasting as well as you do your deceit.’
Cal smiled to himself. Perhaps what she lacked in judgement she made up for in wit.
She jumped in place, apparently attempting to dry herself. Finally she drifted beneath the torchlight near Cal’s cell and he gave her a glance.
Her efforts to squeeze herself dry had been for naught. She was still dripping wet. Her large dark eyes blinked beneath thick, water-clumped lashes that glistened in the torchlight and played off her ebony hair, which had come loose from its braid in places in small, distracting spirals. Worse, the top of her threadbare tunic was soaked through, giving a full view of her breast wrap, which was itself so thin that he could see the dark shadows of her nipples beneath it.
He had never seen anything so erotic in all his life. Her big, blinking eyes, her bouncing curls, her small, shapely breasts and thinly veiled nipples: perhaps she was divine after all. Maybe she was the very naiad that had been painted on the urn itself, come to kiss him with her sultry lips.
Although those sultry lips were currently twisted into a Medusan scowl. ‘You deliberately succumbed to the Satyr,’ she accused Cal. She stepped forward and gripped the bars of Cal’s cell gate. ‘Do you deny it?’
Cal did not look her in the eye for fear he might turn to stone. ‘Do you not have some escaping to do?’ he asked.
‘I asked you a question.’ She folded her arms over her bosom and that was a shame. But he could still observe how her skirt clung tightly to the shape of her thighs. She was lovely, female and completely without defence. Did she not understand how quickly he was able to move? That he could simply jump to his feet, pull her body against the bars and have his way?
‘You say nothing because you know that I speak truth,’ she spat. ‘You deliberately succumbed to the Satyr, though it was obvious that you were the better fighter.’
Cal grinned. ‘Did you hear that, Felix?’ he called. ‘She said I am the better fighter.’
‘Rubbish,’ replied Felix.
‘Your second opponent had expected to die,’ she continued. ‘I saw him begging you for a merciful death.’
‘And I damn well gave it to him,’ he grumbled.
He did not wish to think of the Syrian’s death. The man had been a farmer, not a fighter. He had been purchased by Brutus only weeks ago—a field hand who had been put up for sale as a punishment for attempting an escape. He had not been a bad man—not like most of the gladiators who came in and out of Ludus Brutus. Still, the governor had decreed his death and the governor had to be obeyed.
‘So you admit it?’ she pressed.
‘Admit what?’
‘That you deceived everyone.’
Why were Roman women so unrelenting? ‘I admit nothing.’
‘The only true fight was the first one,’ she observed. ‘You relieved the Ox of his head with little effort.’ She pushed her face between the bars. ‘You lie there acting as if you are proud of your deception. They call you Beast, but in truth you are a snake.’
Ha! If only he were a snake. Then he could slither through the bars of his cell and devour her whole. Surely that would shut her up.
Her scowl deepened and he waited in dull irritation for her next accusation. Would she remind him of the gladiator’s sacred oath, perhaps? Or would she explain the Roman code of honour and then recite it for him ad nauseum while she shook her little plebeian finger at his nose?
‘You defied the gods,’ she spat.
‘Which gods? Whose?’
‘You ruined my father.’
‘Your father ruined your father.’ This was almost as diverting as swordplay.
‘I know that you are famous,’ she said. ‘I have heard your name at the baths and seen it scrawled in graffiti. Why would you deliberately destroy your own reputation by rolling beneath the Satyr’s blade?’
‘And what of my reputation?’ Felix called cheerfully. ‘Have you also heard it spoken at the baths?’
‘And mine?’ called another gladiator from down the hall.
But the woman paid the other gladiators no mind. She seemed bent on making Cal alone suffer.
‘Do you think I care a wink for my reputation?’ Cal asked mildly, but her scowl remained fixed, as if she had not heard him.
Typical. In his experience, Roman women never heard what they did not wish to hear, never did what they did not wish to do and rarely saw beyond their own toes.
She was staring down at her own toes now, as if they alone could tell her everything she wished to know about what had happened that night. ‘By the gods, it was all theatre!’ she exclaimed at last. ‘All of it! You were told to kill the German spectacularly and that is what you did. And the Syrian knew he was going to die before he even set foot upon the sands. Those first two bouts were designed for you to win the crowd’s favour so that they would call for mercy when the time came. Your lanista knew it. The ringmaster knew it…’
She gazed up at the stone ceiling, thinking, and Cal observed the elegant length of her neck. ‘Even the governor knew it! And the gold-toothed merchant—he knew it, too. That is why he smiled when you had the Satyr at the tip of your blade. He already knew you were going to lose.’
Cal did not know whether to be impressed or furious. He settled for a smirk. ‘You are remarkably perceptive for one so naive,’ he said.
‘I am not naive.’
‘Your denial of your own naivety is itself naive.’
‘You speak in knots. I assure you that I am quite the opposite of naive.’
‘And what is that exactly?’
She paused, searching the air, and he observed the fine cut of her jaw. ‘Un-naive.’
‘Your cleverness slays me.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You are clearly trying to distract from admitting to your deception.’
Her accusations were growing tedious. Fortunately, he knew how to shut her up. ‘And you are trying to distract from admitting that you wish to lie with me.’
The woman gasped. And there it was, that look of fascinated derision—though on her face it more closely resembled straightforward disgust. ‘That is absurd,’ she snapped, then added, ‘The very thought is an abhorrence.’
An abhorrence?
