‘I’m Julia.’
‘That’s pretty. You know our new Empress has the same name. Should I call you Empress, too?’
She giggled and he inclined his head with a feeling of satisfaction. At least he’d made someone feel better. ‘But now you need to stretch your legs and eat. We have tack biscuits and dried bacon.’
‘Perhaps I can offer something else?’
The woman sounded different all of a sudden and he looked up, surprised to find that she was smiling as well. It made her look even more alluring and his sense of satisfaction increased tenfold.
‘We have olives and bread, baked fresh in Vindomora yesterday.’
‘That sounds delicious.’ He stood up to face her again. ‘I haven’t had olives for a month.’
‘Then we’d be happy to share, wouldn’t we, Julia?’
The girl nodded and skipped happily away, following the maidservant around the back of the carriage.
‘You have a good manner with children.’ The woman was still smiling at him. ‘Do you have many of your own?’
‘None.’ He stifled a bark of laughter at the very suggestion. ‘But I like children. They see the world in a different way to adults.’
‘Maybe in a better way.’ Her face clouded for a moment and then cleared again as Porcia and Julia came back with a basket, spreading a blanket over the ground beside them. ‘Will you join us?’
Marius threw a quick glance over his shoulder towards his legionaries. There would be comments later if he sat down to eat with a woman. Not in his hearing, perhaps, but it didn’t take long for gossip to spread round a camp. He wasn’t known for being sociable at the best of times, especially with women. But surely there was no harm in a short respite...
‘I won’t ask any more awkward questions, I promise.’
The obvious embarrassment in her voice decided him. Clearly she thought it was her earlier behaviour making him hesitate and he felt the strange need to reassure her.
‘Then I’d be glad to, lady.’
‘Livia.’ She sat down on the blanket, curling her legs up beside her and tucking her stola beneath. ‘Mother of the Empress Julia.’
‘Livia,’ he repeated. He liked the name, not to mention the way her tongue flicked to the front of her mouth as she pronounced it. ‘Then you may call me Marius.’
Her lips curved again and he crouched down on his haunches beside her. That seemed a reasonable compromise. He wasn’t sitting down, not exactly, and if anyone asked—not that anyone beside Pulex would dare—he could say that they’d simply been discussing the journey.
‘She seems like a good child.’ He gestured towards the girl, leaping and dancing around the moorland now like an animal newly released from a cage.
‘She is.’
‘How
old?’
‘Four years last autumn.’
‘You’re a widow?’
‘As opposed to?’ Her smile vanished and he winced at his own tactlessness.
‘Forgive me, I didn’t mean to imply anything else.’
She gave him a long look and then shrugged. ‘It’s all right. At my age I suppose I could just as easily have been divorced.’
He lifted an eyebrow at the words. A lady didn’t usually mention her age, let alone the possibility of divorce. The laws around marriage had been tightened considerably over recent years, so that a man could no longer readily divorce his wife unless he could prove adultery, but for some reason he didn’t want to think about that.
‘Have you been widowed long?’