‘To satisfy my curiosity.’
His immodest gaze raked her form. Valeria forced her head to remain high. She was no longer a naive girl of fifteen in the throes of her first love, but a matron, a divorcée of twenty-one. She’d made the correct choice. This man stood before her, alive and arrogant, because of what she had sacrificed. Once she had whispered that it was enough that she knew he lived and breathed, but now she knew she’d lied. Against all reason, a tiny unacknowledged piece of her had hoped that he retained some feeling for her. That she’d meant more to him than a quick tumble in the temple gardens. That she hadn’t made a mistake in begging her brother Marcus to captain the early ship so that she and Piso could have one last night together.
‘And now that your curiosity is satisfied, I’m to depart quietly?’ Valeria tapped her sandal against the mosaic floor, struggling to retain control of her temper. ‘That is low even for a man of your reputation, Piso.’
‘You are as I expected you.’ His eyes smouldered. ‘You have more than grown into your promise, Valeria.’
Against her better judgement, a warm curl of pleasure stirred deep within her. She banished it.
‘Listen to me as you listen to other people’s pleas, and do not hold our past against me.’ She raised her hands in supplication.
‘Is there any point?’ He shrugged his shoulder. The dark green silk rippled across his chest. ‘My men are more important than gold. If your father wants me to sail him to Cyrene, tell him—from me—to be a man. To come himself and beg rather than sending … his perfidious daughter.’
She forced her lips to smile and show that his words failed to sting. She’d learnt other things hurt far more than words.
The thought of returning to the tiny apartment they now called home, and explaining her failure to her mother, was unthinkable. But to go on sitting day after day, helping to mend other women’s tunics or weave cloth, knowing her pride had prevented her from trying everything was unbearable. ‘How can you refuse? You owe my family a life debt. You should have captained that ship, not my brother. He switched places with you.’
‘Your brother died by circumstances of his own making. He proposed the change, not me. He’d quarrelled with your father. He wanted nothing more to do with his schemes. Keep your facts honest.’
Valeria clenched her fists and longed to scream. He was taunting her. He knew of another reason Marcus had done it—for them, because she begged. But she refused to mention that night, and instead focussed on the recent revelation that had finally given her family hope again. ‘Rumour has it that far from being dead, my brother now lives in Cyrene as a gladiator. He’d not have allowed you to suffer such a fate.’
‘He was a better man than I.’ Piso’s lips quirked upward. He was clearly enjoying her discomfort. ‘Obviously.’
‘All I ask is passage to Alexandria. Take me there and I’ll say the life debt is paid. ’
‘Why not use one of your father’s ships to sail to Alexandria? He has so many, and such loyal captains.’ His eyes taunted her.
‘My father is no longer in shipping.’ Valeria kept her head high. The ships were gone. After Marcus’s reported death, her father had lost all sense of judgement, alienating those closest to him, and developing a taste for gaming and high living, a habit that Ofellius had actively encouraged.
Piso must have heard the Aventine whispers. He probably knew that her father had not spoken a word since he discovered the true extent of Ofellius’s treachery. Dare she refer to it? Valeria ignored the ever-tightening knots in her stomach. ‘As you know, Ofellius cheated us badly.’
Instantly Piso’s face became a cold mask and she knew she had made a mistake mentioning his name. For the first time since she had heard the news of her brother’s survival, she faced the loss of all hope, for would Piso help her now?
‘It was your father’s choice to back Ofellius,’ he bit out. ‘He knew what the man was capable of doing.’
Valeria gulped a breath of life-giving air. ‘I also know what the man is capable of. I was married to him.’
‘Some people can’t see beyond the veneer of respectability and having their palms lined with gold.’
She flinched as the barb struck her but she managed to keep her voice steady. ‘My father knows of his mistake. He has paid for it in the harshest way imaginable.’ As have I.
‘No one held a sword to his back, Valeria. No one beat him within an inch of his life.’
No, they beat me and when that didn’t work, they beat the one man I adored. Valeria pressed her lips together and held back the words. He didn’t deserve the truth. She didn’t have to prove her worthiness to him. ‘Have you always made the right choices, Piso?’
‘I can look myself in the mirror.’ Piso hooked his thumbs into his belt, giving himself time regain control of his composure. When his steward had announced that Valeria waited amongst his clients with a petition, he should have sent her away, but the temptation to see her again after all these years proved irresistible. Her reasons for coming were no mystery—the entire Aventine buzzed about her quest to find a captain foolhardy enough to brave the winds. He’d even bet his steward that she’d show. The news about Marcus’s survival, however, was a surprise.
His interest in seeing Valeria was supposed to be purely academic, as one might have for a once-beloved statue—dispassionate and uncaring. But he was unprepared for the intense desire laced with anger that coursed through him the instant he saw her treacherous face again.
Valeria had destroyed his world once. He had believed her lies and half-truths about how she’d always love him and want to be with him. Despite the beating he’d received, he had clung to the knowledge of her love to keep him alive. Then, through the haze of pain, her unmistakable voice had filled the room with the life-destroying words that she was marrying Ofellius and wanted nothing more to do with Piso, had never loved him and never wanted to see him again. Less than a week later, his ribs taped and his soul aching, and with two women to support him, he’d watched the radiant bride as she threw nuts to the crowd on the way to her new house. Her gaze had slid over him and he’d called himself a fool.
Later the Aventine rumour mill had worked overtime detailing her fabulous dinner parties and the clothes she wore, and he’d had a hard time remembering that once she had been a fresh-faced innocent.
Last year, like the scheming witch she was, when she realised Ofellius was on his way out, she divorced him, fleeing back to her father and his wealth. Except that her father’s once-mighty empire of ships lay in ruins, lost through both his and Ofellius’s bad judgement and neglect.
‘It will be a cold day in Hades before I voluntarily help you or your father, Valeria.’
Her face contorted with barely suppressed fury. ‘This is about not my father or me, but Marcus.’
‘Six years, Valeria. Marcus might not welcome you, even if he is alive. He bore little love for your father’s new friends. You know how they fought over the direction the business should take.’
‘Marcus could fight, better than anyone. He trained with gladiators. My brother could survive and I have to know if he did.’ She stood there with her head proud, shoulders back. Her layers of tunics clung to her curves, enhancing her figure rather than hiding it, but there was no denying the slight fraying around the hem and the uneven dyeing of the cloth. Valeria had fallen in the world and he should rejoice in it.
But she stood wrapped in her stola of Roman respectability with a beseechingly earnest expression on her face, and the temptation to believe her coiled itself around his brain.
‘I’ve no interest in the answer,’ he said, quashing his feeling.
‘It