A simple man without great wealth, but she hadn’t cared. Mostly she’d admired his integrity and his golden male beauty, not sure she was worthy of him. She usually felt plain and mousy. Her chestnut hair tended to be unruly. Her eyes were grey. Grey. How boring.
And yet, Lucan had thought her beautiful and wanted her. Sometimes the look in his eyes had taken her breath. She’d known with surety that he kept his body tightly reined.
Now she was pleased that he had. Physical union with Lucan would have been too wonderful to forsake. She wouldn’t have been able to walk away. But more than once she’d wondered—what would it have been like to be loved by a man like that?
Last night she’d come close to knowing.
For hours afterwards she’d thought of him and foolishly yearned for what almost happened between them. To make love with him would be foolish, even dangerous, if she hoped to remain free, but her body had wanted its way.
Lucan would return soon. She’d better forget that desire and concentrate on her inn instead.
Lucan told her to make construction plans, but she’d been modest in her choices because Lucan wasn’t a rich man. He had no fine mansion, no slaves. He had no gilded litter, no rich clothing, no jewelled rings. No clients waited in his atrium every morning to shower him with praise as they would for a wealthy nobleman.
Perhaps he’d saved his soldier’s pay. Maybe he’d hoarded his share of the rich spoils of Dacia. But it was likely that masculine pride forced him to claim more wealth than he truly possessed.
So she kept her construction plans to a minimum. She could use a larger kitchen, but moving out one wall would provide enough space. A larger dining area could be had by the same method, allowing for several more dining couches.
There were already ample bedrooms, thanks to the inn’s dubious past as a brothel. And the bathing room across the courtyard was a marvel of design. Sumptuous with pristine Carrara marble, it contained one large heated pool and a smaller unheated one. Surrounding the pools were comfortable seats for conversing.
That bath and the toileting facility beside it that had actual running water were two of the main selling points of the property, and Severina was extremely proud of them. She might add more to them in the future, but she wouldn’t do it now at Lucan’s expense.
She wanted to give Orthrus and Ariadne some privacy, however. The slaves’ quarters were small and uncomfortable. Ariadne currently shared a room with the cook, but after the wedding, she’d share Orthrus’s bed. Orthrus, however, currently slept with young Juvenal. It wouldn’t be proper for Juvenal and the cook to share a room, so Severina had been fretting about what to do.
She’d planned to sacrifice one of the bedrooms usually rented to paying guests. But the disadvantages of that were obvious, given her need to make a profit.
Unless she went along with Lucan’s proposal.
During the long, wakeful night she’d realised that the flat roof of the kitchen could become the floor of a small apartment built above it. The space wouldn’t be luxurious, but it would be private, a perfect little nest for lovers and a quaint but serviceable home when their babies began to come.
Severina had no doubt, given the way Orthrus looked at Ariadne and the way she looked at him in return, that babies wouldn’t be long in coming. Severina had once seen that same look pass between Donatus and Lelia, and now they had two beautiful sons.
Severina wondered whether the addition could possibly be completed by Ariadne’s wedding day. She’d like to surprise the couple with it, clean and comfortably furnished and ready for the special glories of their wedding night.
Severina could imagine their reactions already. Ariadne would squeal and then cry. Orthrus would stand dumbfounded, his huge, work-roughened hands clenching and unclenching in the struggle for words.
But his eyes would shine, and so would Ariadne’s, and it was that thought that now made Severina eager for the coming day despite her lack of sleep.
She and Lucan would fight to save the inn. Maybe she’d even consider marriage to Lucan as a business arrangement—just long enough to foil the censor, and only because people she loved were depending on her.
Severina took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, feeling a lot like the gladiatrix of old.
Chapter Six
Lucan’s blood was singing. It always hummed through his veins hard and fast whenever he faced a challenge. It was one of the few things he’d liked about being a soldier. Maybe the only thing.
The exhilaration hadn’t compensated for the long, weary days chasing down Rome’s enemies on the back of a horse. It hadn’t eased the unholy memories of watching men die. But the raw excitement that was the prelude to battle had at least given him something pleasant in the chaos.
Maybe that feeling was what he’d once sought in his youthful pursuit of women. Maybe that feeling, combined with lust, explained his desire to conquer.
But he’d been younger then and too foolish to understand that sleeping with the wives of senior officers wasn’t worth the excitement.
For that stupidity he’d been sent to a legion in Antioch as a punitive measure. Donatus had finally unsnarled the situation and brought Lucan back to his own cavalry, but the experience had been a humbling one for Lucan.
And a good one, too. He’d learned about consequences. And while in Antioch, he’d met men unlike any he’d known before. He admired their integrity and ultimately followed them into their Christian faith.
With that decision, he abandoned the pursuit of sin, but found he missed its fine exhilaration—until he chanced upon something that provided a similar fascination.
He’d been hosting a visiting Christian missionary and somehow the conversation at the dinner table turned to matters of money. Lucan believed, as did many others who practised his faith, that riches were a corrupting influence. Was it not the rich who exploited his fellow believers? Did not the wealthy put his brothers into chains and kill them?
‘It’s not that simple,’ the missionary had cautioned. ‘Money is amoral, neither good nor evil. It only becomes one or the other in the hands of the one who possesses it.’
The corners of the older man’s eyes crinkled as he smiled gently. ‘Money can be put to good use. I couldn’t continue my ministry, for example, if not for the generosity of those who work hard to have funds to spare for me.’
‘But that’s different,’ Lucan protested. ‘Of course we must share the good news we’ve received. Didn’t the Lord say so?’
‘He did. But he didn’t leave behind the gold for us to use, did he?’ The missionary chuckled. ‘That becomes our task, Lucan. To go to the world, yes. But if we can’t go ourselves, then to give to those who can. The more money is in our hands to give, the more people we send and the more people we serve. With money we help the poor, relieving the plight of widows and orphans. Wealth in the hands of a man strong enough to remain uncorrupted by it can be a powerful thing.’
Lucan pondered that. It was a seed planted in fertile soil. It gave him new purpose.
To
