Seduced By Her Rebel Warrior. Greta Gilbert

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СКАЧАТЬ had never learned to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, despite having been married two more times. Atia’s second marriage had been worse than the first. After the old Senator had died, her father had married her to an ill-humoured tax collector as payment for a debt.

      The man had been spiteful and rough with Atia, and had often criticised her looks, calling her less than what he deserved. On the rare occasions that he had visited her bed, he had been intent on harming her. And though the poppy tears had helped her endure the pain, they had not been able to shield her from his anger, or the bruises that had always decorated her skin after those terrible nights. Thank the gods her father had chosen to end the marriage and make Atia available for a better alliance.

      Though that better alliance had proven to be folly. A prominent Senator, her third husband had claimed to be her father’s ally and had eagerly sought Atia’s hand. But on their marriage night, he had explained to Atia that he preferred not to see her face during the coupling act. The very next day he had introduced Atia to his mistress.

      As it turned out, the Senator had been a spy. He had married Atia to learn more about her father’s efforts to secure Hadrian’s rule. When her father had learned of the Senator’s treachery, he had slain him at the baths and taken his finger as a prize.

      Atia took another sip of wine. Now Lydia was motioning Atia towards her once again. Atia leaned forward and her friend whispered in her ear. ‘Love will always be elusive to women like us. But why not seize a little bit of life before it passes us by? A bit of pleasure? We are not getting any younger.’

      Atia lay back on the couch and nodded her assent. Indeed they were not. Lydia was already a grandmother and Atia would have been if... She paused. If she had appealed to her husbands enough to get with child. She smiled and took another drink. The tears of poppy were simply a wonder. They made even the most difficult thoughts somehow easier to think.

      ‘I have been sleeping on the roof for many months now, in truth,’ said Lydia, tracing the rim of her glass. ‘I enjoy the night sky every night.’

      Atia peered at Lydia. Was it the effect of the tears or did her friend seem to glow? ‘How would one go about such an endeavour?’ she asked casually, then filled her mouth with a wedge of melon.

      Lydia grinned. ‘One must simply select the rooftop mattress one desires and then pay for it.’

      ‘Pay for it?’

      ‘Of course. Or offer some kind of gift in exchange. I recommend the Nabataean-made mattresses. They are especially comfortable.’

      Atia could not conceal her wonder. Her closest friend was having an affair with a Nabataean man, whom she compensated with coin and gifts.

      It was all very commercial, though she supposed that, in a sense, every union was so. Marriages were always negotiated and every woman was for sale. Or perhaps rent was a better term. Atia herself had been rented three separate times, in three separate marriages. She had never had any aspirations of love or pleasure. She was simply an object of trade in the economy of her father’s shifting alliances. If she survived beyond her prophesied death, she did not doubt that she would become such an object again.

      Atia gazed at her friend in admiration. Why should she not strike her own bargain for a change? There was something liberating about the idea and it occurred to her that one would not have to be beautiful or desirable in such an arrangement. One would only need to be rich. And rich Atia was.

      A vision of Rab’s dazzling grin filled her mind. Go away, she told it. He was her father’s prisoner, after all—the worst possible candidate for a lover. Besides, he had exploited her good will and sought to flatter her towards his own ends. It terrified her—how close she had come to believing his deception. She was certain that, had she allowed their encounter to go on for even a few more seconds, he would have tried to kiss her.

      And she would have kissed him back. That was what scared her the most. It was as if his body had been beckoning hers, pulling her towards him by some invisible force.

      Thank the gods she had not fallen into his trap. She was not a desirable woman: her father and all three of her husbands had made that abundantly clear. And for the first time in her life that knowledge had served her well.

      The tears were hitting her now—a great rush of them. They cooled her limbs and flooded her mind with bliss. She began to laugh. How little any of it mattered, she thought. In forty days she would likely be dead.

      Her laughter bubbled over the couch and flowed out into the dining room, mixing with the chords of a lute and catching the attention of her father, whose raised couch gave him full view of the room. His arm was a blur of movement. It was almost as if he was motioning to Atia.

      Atia’s heart took a plunge. He was motioning to her. She ceased her laughter. Her head swirled. She could hardly stand upright in such a state, let alone face her father. Yet she knew she did not have a choice. She stood and steadied herself, then smoothed her stola and crossed the room.

      ‘Good evening, Father,’ she said, squatting at the side of his couch. She struggled to gather her wits.

      ‘May I ask what is so funny?’

      ‘I was just speaking with Lydia,’ Atia said. ‘About sleeping on the roof!’ Her father gripped her wrist and pulled her close.

      ‘You are cold.’ He searched her eyes. ‘You have indulged in tears of the poppy.’

      ‘Just a few drops. To relieve my headache.’

      His grip on her wrist grew tighter. ‘They cloud your judgement. They make you even weaker.’

      ‘Yes, Father.’

      He released her wrist. ‘The guards tell me that you asked for time alone with the camel man this afternoon. Why?’

      Here it was—the moment she had been dreading. ‘To gain his confidence,’ Atia stated. ‘For further interrogation.’

      ‘And what did you discover in your time alone with him?’

      Atia paused. She felt as if she were balancing on some invisible rope. ‘He claims his father was a pomegranate farmer.’

      ‘That is all?’

      ‘He was very tight-lipped.’

      Her father scowled. ‘Did you at least discover his name?’

      ‘Rabbel. He goes by Rab.’

      ‘Rab, son of...?’

      ‘Junon.’

      ‘Junon? What kind of a name is that?’ Her father paused. ‘Ah, it is as I suspected, then.’

      As he suspected? What exactly did he suspect? Atia could not think. A panic was rising inside her. It was mixing with the softness of the drug, making her dizzy and confused. Her mind seized on a vision of Rab cowering in his cell, his bright new toga stained with his own blood. ‘What will you do with him?’ she asked.

      Her father only shook his head. ‘You have grown too attached to the tears, Atia. But that will soon be remedied.’

      ‘Father?’

      But he motioned her away СКАЧАТЬ