time she was bold enough to meet his gaze face on, her expression challenging.
Metellus took the challenge she offered, and stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Immediately he saw the boldness of her gaze disappear, to be replaced by uncertainty, fear even, her face losing all colour as she stiffened.
“May I be of assistance? Your slave seems…troubled,” he said, unable to keep the mocking tone out of his voice, as he came to stand next to her, so close, that her delicate scent, the slightest hint of roses, and something else, teased his nostrils and he felt his body harden once more. He watched, as hot colour once again surged into her face, and her magnificent eyes fell from his.
“No. No thank you. She will be fine once we set sail,” the woman said, her words stiff, brittle, refusing to meet his gaze. Then she turned her back on him, effectively dismissing him.
Metellus grunted to himself. What had he expected? True to form the woman had dismissed him out of hand. But he didn’t expect anything different. A patrician wouldn’t have looked twice at him, dressed as he was in a coarse, threadbare tunic of dark green. He would be beneath the likes of her. Spoilt, and feted, daughters of Senators did not mingle with men who worked on-board a ship.
Metellus frowned. Although he knew her to be the daughter of a Senator, equally she could also be married. An irrational burst of jealousy hit him as he contemplated the thought of her with another man. Annoyed with himself, and his fanciful musings, Metellus stiffened, and with one last look at the woman’s rigid back he walked away.
Livia gripped the wooden railings, staring sightlessly down at the busy dockside, her stomach clenching in anguish before she closed her eyes in mortification. Was he still watching her? She dare not turn around for fear of encountering his mocking gaze once again. Go away, she wanted to shout. Leave me be. Can’t you see I want to be left alone? To lick my wounds in peace.
The day had been an unremitting nightmare so far; and after Magia’s hysterical outburst a few minutes ago, the fact that a complete stranger had seen her slap her, had been the final straw.
Livia shivered as a gust of wind blew in off the sea. She wasn’t exactly pleased about being here either. If she had been told yesterday, that the gods had decreed she would have to board a ship at Ostia harbour, and set sail to Alexandria to marry a man she loathed, she would have thought they were jesting.
But the gods hadn’t been jesting. She really was here waiting for the trireme to set sail for the Egyptian city, and she was on her way to marry a man she had once threatened to kill if he laid his fat, sweaty hands on her person ever again.
She bit back tears which were in imminent danger of falling. She had to be strong – for both of them. There was no point in her becoming hysterical like Magia. But she couldn’t blame her tire-woman; the poor woman was elderly, and fully deserved to live out her days in relative peace in Rome, not find herself on the way to an unknown city, and an unknown land, halfway across the Empire. But like Livia, she had been given no choice. Livia’s brother – her half-brother actually – Flavius had seen to that - again!
This was the second time Flavius had meddled in her life, had effectively sold her to the highest bidder. The first time had been nearly four years ago when Livia had just turned sixteen. Flavius had been instrumental in persuading their father that a marriage between her, and the elderly Senator Faustus Grattus Galvus, would increase their father’s standing in the Senate. Livia, being a woman with no worth apart from her body, had had no choice, no matter how much she had protested at the time, and within a week she had found herself married to a man old enough to be her grandfather.
She shuddered, blocking out that period of her life which had made her so unhappy. And now, it was as if history were repeating itself, but instead of being a young girl of sixteen, she was a widow of twenty, on her way to marry another rich and powerful man for no other reason than to increase the political standing of the Drusii in the cutthroat arena of the Senate. Flavius, having reached the age of twenty-eight had recently been appointed quaestor, and was doing everything in his power to work his way up to gaining a place in the Senate, knowing full well that competition for the coveted seats was fierce. If it meant marrying his sister off to the highest bidder then so be it…
Naïvely, she had thought that her second marriage could have been a love match, someone she could have chosen rather than the men of her family, but that had been a foolish dream; a dream which would never have been allowed to happen as she well knew now.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about what lay ahead. Opening her eyes, she spent a few more minutes staring sightlessly ahead, until she risked turning to where the man had been watching her. Thankfully, he had gone, and the breath she hadn’t even realised she had been holding, hissed out of her lungs in relief.
The stranger had unsettled her. Not because he had seen her slap Magia. It had been the only way she could stop the older woman from becoming so hysterical, that she was fast becoming a danger to herself. No, it had been the mocking expression in his grey eyes as he watched her, judged her, and found her wanting, that had grated on her already stretched nerves. Maybe, if he knew what she had endured today, he might not have judged her so badly.
But if she were also honest with herself, he had also unsettled her in the only way a man could. Never in all her twenty years had one man made such an impact on her in such a short space of time, and she wondered who he was.
Slave? No, not a slave, for a slave wouldn’t have been so bold as to approach her; and a slave definitely wouldn’t have looked at her with desire in his eyes as he had done…and he wouldn’t have looked at her as if he’d wanted to devour her.
No definitely not a slave. She didn’t even think he was liberti either. Again a freedman wouldn’t have been as bold as he’d been, she was sure of that. That only left merchant or sailor. She favoured sailor, as his threadbare tunic and powerful body were evidence of a life of hard work, whereas merchants tended to be rich older men, content to let others do the hard work.
Livia shivered as she remembered the few brief moments their eyes had met, and the words he’d spoken to her. His voice had been a low husky rasp which had sent tremors of desire through her. She had never felt such an attraction to a man before. It had been visceral and instantaneous and she had been acutely aware of the height and power of his body.
And although he was big, he carried muscle rather than excess flesh, and he carried it well.
Very well indeed. She could see the many hours spent working on the ship had honed his body to the peak of physical perfection, if the width of his shoulders were anything to go by. His skin was a deep golden bronze, testimony to his work outside. His hair, a deep dark brown, almost black like a raven’s wing, had lifted with the breeze which blew in off the sea, and Livia had wanted nothing more than to run her fingers through it and feel the strength of him as she pulled him into her arms…
She had to acknowledge he was one of the most physically perfect specimens of manhood she’d ever seen. He even rivalled the gladiators she had seen perform in Rome’s arenas.
Mesmerised by his physical beauty, her eyes had been drawn to the one thing that marred his perfection – a scar which ran across his left cheek up into the hairline of his dark brown hair. But even the scar didn’t detract from the handsomeness of his face, rather it added to it, giving him a hardened, tough look which made her heart beat faster. Temptation had clawed at her, a powerful urge, that made her want to step forward and reach out her hand to stroke the hard planes of his face, to feel the strength of his body for herself.
But she hadn’t of course. Dutiful daughters, and half-sisters, of one of Rome’s most powerful families didn’t do rebellious things like that. To do so would be to ruin her, and her family’s reputations. And the reputation, and standing of the Drusii amongst Rome’s elite, was the one thing which had been drummed into Livia from the moment she had been born.
So she shook her fanciful thoughts away. Thinking about handsome men, and how their bodies would feel against hers as they kissed her, was the thinking