The Warrior's Bride Prize

‘Was he a good husband?’

‘Yes, he was very kind.’ To begin with, she added silently. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened later...

‘It’s not right.’ His voice hardened again. ‘You shouldn’t be forced to re-marry so soon.’

‘It’s a common enough story. My brother is a man of business. He makes alliances with people who can be useful to him. My first husband was a wine merchant and Scaevola’s a tribune. I imagine that Tarquinius thinks he might prove useful one day.’

‘He’s probably right.’

‘So he’s sent me here to be married again. Even though neither of us like or want the other. Even though this time...’

‘This time?’ He prompted her as she stopped mid-sentence.

‘This time,’ she went on, choosing her words with care, ‘I thought that maybe things would be different. I thought...’

She swung towards him impetuously, tempted to tell him all the rest of her hopes, to tell him everything about herself and her heritage, too—the real reason she wanted to see the wall—so quickly that she bumped straight into his chest. At some point he must have moved closer to her, so that now the full length of her body was in contact with his, her breasts pressing against the hard contours of his mail shirt. His arms came up, instinctively it seemed, to steady her, so that he caught her around the midriff, one hand on either side of her waist.

For a moment she forgot to breathe. At the back of her mind she could hear a small voice telling her to move away, but her body didn’t appear to be listening. She was standing face-to-face and chest to chest with a man who wasn’t her intended in almost broad daylight, on a walkway for anyone to see, yet she couldn’t seem to do a single thing about it. Her hands were still loose at her sides, but she had to fight the temptation to lift them up around his shoulders, just as she was already lifting her chin, tilting it up so that she could look deep into his eyes, her pulse accelerating at the look of raw desire she saw there.

She licked her lips, the thin sliver of air between them seeming to crackle and spark as if they were in the midst of a lightning storm, making her breasts tighten and her blood heat in response. Still holding her gaze, he slid his hands inside her cloak and she found herself swaying, leaning forward as if he were pulling her towards him by some invisible string, her eyes closing and lips parting as he lowered his head towards hers.

Then he stiffened, yanking his hands away as he took a step backwards. ‘Forgive me.’

Forgive him? She opened her eyelids again, though for a moment she found it hard to focus. What had just happened? He’d been about to kiss her, she’d been certain of it, and she’d been going to kiss him back. She’d been ready and eager and excited. For the first time in her life she’d been about to kiss a man she actually wanted to kiss and then he’d pulled away as if it had all been some terrible mistake.

She felt a rush of shame, mortified as much by his pulling away as by the fact it had happened at all. As if her situation wasn’t bad enough already—now he was rejecting her, too!

‘It was my fault. I walked into you.’ She pulled at the edges of her cloak, wrapping it tightly around herself.

‘No, you’re grieving for your husband. I should not

...’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘My apologies, lady... Livia.’

She lifted her eyes again in surprise. It was the first time he’d used her praenomen since they’d arrived in Coria and now it only made her more confused. Never mind the rest of his words! Nothing about her being betrothed to another man, only you’re grieving...

The idea was so ludicrous that she almost laughed out loud. Grieving for Julius? Maybe she ought to be, but how could she mourn for a man who’d made her life a misery for the last five of their ten years together? Who’d called her a deceiving whore before he’d disinherited both her and their daughter? She’d grieved for the man she’d married a long time ago. She wasn’t going to waste so much as a minute grieving for the man he’d become.

For a split second she was tempted to say so, to denounce her former husband out loud, but she’d never told anyone the misery of her first marriage and she wasn’t about to start now, especially to a man whose very presence seemed to undermine all her self-possession and who’d just rejected her...

‘I have to go.’ She darted around him, making for the steps, relieved that this time he didn’t insist upon accompanying her. ‘Julia must be awake by now. I should go to her.’

Chapter Seven

Julia was still fast asleep, Porcia, too, in a small pallet bed on the other side of the room, as Livia stood in the open doorway of their shared cubicula, trying to get her thoughts back into some semblance of order. She didn’t know what had come over her on the palisade. Her pulse was still racing and not just because of the speed at which she’d fled back through the fort.

It had been an accident, bumping into Marius, yet the memory of it was seared so deep in her mind that she could almost feel the warm, solid pressure of his hands on her waist again, making her knees tremble and her nerve endings tingle anew, as if she had no control over her own body.

They hadn’t kissed, but just standing so close to him had provoked a physical reaction she hadn’t known she was capable of. That side of her marriage had been unpleasant at best and painful at worst, a brief and uncomfortable joining of bodies after which Julius had left her chamber almost immediately. It had brought her joy in the form of Julia, but a guilty part of her had been relieved when he’d turned against her and stopped coming to her bed. That had been the one positive of Tarquinius’s interference.

What would going to bed with Marius be like? she wondered. She’d never imagined wanting to share a bed, let alone her body, with any man, but something about him made her curious. No, more than that, positively aroused by the idea. He’d awoken yearnings she hadn’t known she possessed and yet it hadn’t just been a physical attraction either. Despite her initial irritation and his customary sternness, she’d felt drawn to him as a person, too, genuinely wanting to know more about his past, even wanting to tell him about hers as well. She’d come perilously close to telling him everything, as if he were the kind of man she could tell everything to, although she’d settled for a half-truth instead, admitting that her mother was a Briton without specifying which side of the wall she’d come from.

It had been a moment of madness, one that had put them both at risk. They’d been standing on the ramparts in full view of anyone who’d cared to look up, though fortunately they’d been far enough from the barrack blocks that she didn’t think anyone had. There had been no sign of the guard when she’d run away either, as if the very sight of Marius had been enough to dismiss him, but it had still been a dangerous thing to do. If anyone had seen them together, it would have looked like a tryst and then Scaevola would definitely have refused to marry her, and Tarquinius would have had no compunction about cutting her and Julia off completely—and then where would they be?

If only she’d been the one to put a stop to their kiss! Then she might have maintained some semblance of dignity, but she hadn’t. She’d wanted to carry on, to do more than just touch him, to feel his lips moulded against hers and his hands on the rest of her body, so much that for one insane moment she’d risked her whole future and that of her daughter, too.

She must have been mad, but what about Marius? What had he wanted? For a few seconds, she’d thought that he’d wanted to kiss her as well. He’d bent his head as if he’d been going to, but then he’d drawn away and apologised, as if it had just been an instinctive reaction that he regretted. He’d even tried to take the blame, apologising again for touching her while she was grieving, as if she ought to be grieving, which in other circumstances she supposed she would have agreed with.

She rested her head against the door frame and groaned softly. What must he think of her now, a recent widow wandering around an army camp on her own, betrothed to one man and throwing herself into the arms of another? It was no wonder he’d pulled away. He’d probably been horrified—although he hadn’t seemed horrified. His expression had looked torn, as if he’d been genuinely surprised by his own reaction to her, as if, perhaps, he’d been fighting his own inclinations when he’d pulled away. Was that why he’d done it, not from repulsion, but because he’d been trying to do the honourable thing?