A Stray Drop of Blood (62 page)

He waited on his chaise while she got the boys settled, straightening when she came out into his room, dismissing Miriam and Phillip. He stood. She turned to him, and her hollow eyes suddenly sparked. He was fully expecting another argument to begin. Instead, she walked over to him calmly and pulled his mouth down to hers. Her lips were hungry, and her hands impatient.

He decided not to try for conversation after all.

~*~

It was the second night in a row Titus has accepted an invitation from Lucius to join him at some gathering in the city. The night before, Abigail had stayed up with a copy of a dialogue until his return, when she could convince her servants to leave her. This night, she found herself considerably irritated. They had been in Rome for many weeks and he had never left her alone of an evening. Yet when she accepted him as her lover, he went out? It was insulting. So rather than finding some excuse to stay up, she granted Miriam permission to sleep in her room, sent Phillip into Titus’s, and went to sleep.

His return awoke her. She heard his voice, Phillip’s muffled answer, and she sat up in irritation. If it woke her up, there was a good chance it would wake the children as well. Furious, she exited into his chamber, more irritated still when the moon’s angle told her it was only an hour or two before dawn. She felt Miriam come up behind her.

Titus was glowering at Phillip, who was saying, “I will not leave her alone with you when you are in this state. You are worse than drunk if you think I will.”

“
And you are worse than a slave if you think I would hurt her. Can a man not have privacy in his own room?” His words were slurred, and he only just noticed her. Looking her way, he did not so much as smile. “Hello, sweet one. Why do you not tell your lackey to leave us?”

Abigail stepped out from behind Phillip and put a hand on his arm. “It is all right, my friend. You and Miriam may go.”

Phillip bristled. “He is drunk and not in control of himself. I will not leave you with him like this.”

“
A slave and a eunuch dares to judge me!” Titus let out a mocking laugh. “Come here, my love, so I can show him that I will not hurt you.”

Abigail stared at him for a long moment as he stood there, his hand extended to her. His face was a cold mask, familiar but not a part of her better memories. It occurred to her only then that she had not so much as seen him smile at anyone but the children since the night of his father’s party, four days ago.

She stepped calmly toward him. “Keep your voice down. You will wake the children.”

“
Mistress!” Phillip objected.

Abigail put her hand in Titus’s when she was near enough, letting him pull her close and cover her mouth with his own. He tasted so strongly of wine that she was afraid she would get besotted just from kissing him. She pulled away when it became clear he did not care to.

“
You are drunk.” She put as much distance between them as she could, though his arms were firmly around her. She ended up leaning her head back so that she could look up at him.

“
I am not.”

“
You are.”

He seemed to consider. “Maybe a little.”

“
Quite a bit, from where I am standing.”

Titus shook his head. “I am not very drunk. You would know if I were; when I am very drunk, I am very mean.”

Abigail arched her brows. “And insulting Phillip is not mean?”

He all but growled. “He will not leave.”

Abigail sighed, seeing no peaceable solution to this dilemma. Finally, she turned her head toward her servants. “Phillip, take Miriam and go to bed.”

“
Mistress,” Phillip tried one last time, obviously distressed, “I realize you love him, but can you not see that he is not himself? Would you have him make a whore of you?”

Abigail let her gaze fall straight ahead. “I already have.” That rendered him speechless, so she said again, “Please, Phillip. Take Miriam and go.”

He obeyed, glaring threateningly at Titus all the while. Titus did not seem to notice, however, as he was too busy glaring in turn at Abigail. “Do not speak of yourself like that,” he said as the door closed behind the servants. “You are not so low, dear one. I love you.”

“
Do you?” She moved her eyes back to his, searching them as she had done on two occasions before. Once, she had found him lacking. The second time, she had seen potential, something in him to make her hope. This time she was far too confused to make sense of what she saw. “I believe you do, Titus, somewhere inside you. But you are letting yourself fall into your old habits. And the old Titus thought of me as nothing but a slave.”

His face hardened even more. He clenched his jaw, and she wondered if he was fighting her words or his own reactions to them. “I know you are not a slave. I love you.”

Her lips curved up, but it was hardly a smile. “You say that as though the mere statement can bend reality. Yet you treat me as though I am but another of your wenches to be taken at your convenience and ignored whenever you have something better to do. I have barely even seen you in the last two days, Titus.”

“
Two days is not such a long time.”

“
It is when I have nothing to do but sit around and wait for my lover to come home.”

Quite suddenly, his eyes lit with pleasure. “You have missed me. Why did you not simply say so, rather than try to make me feel guilty?”

She wanted to shout, “Because
I
feel guilty! Because I need to know that you are capable of feeling it too!” Instead, she quietly sighed, letting her eyes slide closed. “It is late. I am tired. I do not like to be awakened by the roars of a drunken man.”

“
I was not roaring, and I am not that drunk. Though it is late, and you are tired. My suggestion would be to go to bed.”

She nodded, prepared to turn back to her room and do just that. When Titus picked her up and carried her the few steps to his bed instead, she let out a frustrated breath. “Titus!”

He placed her on her feet long enough to pull her tunic over her head, then scooped her up again and deposited her on the bed. “You will be asleep soon,” he promised her with a crooked smile as he stripped himself and settled beside her. “Think of me as your lullaby. I will soothe you and tire you and keep you warm and content.”

She may have had better success in mustering an objection if he had not already figured out what sensations overwhelmed her. She fell asleep once again in his arms.

But that night she dreamed of the earth shaking, of thunder rolling in, of the midday sky turning black as night. She dreamed of a colorless world, with naught to brighten it but a single glistening, perfectly formed drop of blood that hovered in the air like the sun. In her dream she stirred, reached, tried to touch the crimson sphere, but it evaded her. In her dream she wept, stretched, demanded of God an explanation for why he withheld his salvation. Just before she awoke, she looked down at her own dream-created feet and saw that it was she who was moving away. And the drop of blood fell onto the world, erasing the darkness and leaving it bright as morning again.

But still she stood in the shadows.

Chapter Forty

Titus ran his fingers through the hair splayed over his chest, twisted it loosely around his forefinger, let the wave fall free again. Abigail slept as soundly as the children in the next room, and he was glad. Truly. She had seemed restless these last few days, even though he had refused any further invitations from Lucius for social activities. Staying home with her had not pacified the irritation he seemed to chafe within her. The last three nights she had been tossing terribly, caught in the throes of a bad dream. He had held her each time as she awoke shaken, trying to soothe her, but she had not even told him what haunted her in her sleep.

Tonight he was the one suspended in unrest. He had gotten a couple hours of slumber earlier, but now, perhaps an hour or two before dawn, he was wide awake. Loath to disturb Abigail, he tried not to stir.

A boring undertaking. His mind would not halt long enough for him to fall back asleep, but it did not come up with any particularly riveting thoughts, either. So he lay there and played with Abigail’s hair and tried to tell himself that there was some external cause to her recent moods aside from him. Perhaps they were even normal; after all, he had only really known her for a few months, he certainly had not seen every facet of her being yet. And had Jason not complained often enough about her attitudes?

His brows furrowed. He did not want to compare his relationship with Abigail to Jason’s. She was not his slave, he had not forced her to this, he did not hold her life in his hands. She had good reason to remain distant from Jason. And she had not loved him. Their current situation was quite different; she was just not acting like it right now. Perhaps it was because she was not yet accustomed to it, to him, to feeling these things. Perhaps she felt guilty for finding another so soon after her husband’s death. Perhaps she was afraid of what would happen once Ester arrived in Rome.

All likely reasons; none of them the real one. But he did not want to think about the sin. He knew that every night they spent in each other’s arms was wrong. Knew it, believed it. But the conviction, if present, was buried so deeply within him that it could not move him. One part of him said that he was making terrible mistakes, but another, louder part said it made no difference.

When blinded with pleasure, it was easy to push aside the guilt. Every time he looked at her and realized anew that she was his, that was all that mattered. He loved her as he had never loved another. Why should they not enjoy what they could while it lasted?

The knock on the door made him drop the lock of hair around his finger. It was still before dawn; what reason did anyone have for coming to his door? Hoping nothing was wrong, curious, he slid his arm out from under Abigail and eased out of bed. Slipping his tunic quickly over his head, he strode to the door. Opening it revealed a servant standing with a lamp, his father illuminated by its glow. Titus drew his brows together. “What is it?”

Caius’s gaze moved past Titus and into the room, undoubtedly to where the silhouette of Abigail’s figure was visible in the moonlight. “I am sorry to interrupt you, my son.”

“
I was not asleep anyway.” Titus pitched his voice low to try to avoid disturbing Abigail. “What is it?”

Caius turned his attention back on Titus. “You may remember that over a year ago one of our ships disappeared. We assumed it sank in a storm. I have just received word that it pulled into the harbor, and they assumed I would want to meet it right away; who knows where it has been or what it will have on board. Since you have been the one handling that business this past week, I thought you would like to accompany me.”

Exploring what happened to a mysteriously vanished ship or spending the next few hours trying not to toss restlessly–it was not such a hard decision. “Give me a moment.” He turned to the slave. “Help me with my toga.”

The servant put the lamp down and hurried to assist Titus in dressing. He did not miss the way his father’s gaze kept moving to the bed, though. It was only partly to prove a point that he moved and sat down beside Abigail once he was dressed. Brushing her hair back, he said at an almost-normal volume, “Beloved, wake up for a moment.” The light and motion in the room had begun to stir her anyway, so it was not difficult to get her to blink her eyes open. Titus smiled. “I am needed at the shipping yards, a craft we thought was lost has returned. I know not how long it will take me down there.”

Abigail nodded drowsily. Titus moved his smile down to her lips and kissed her gently. “I love you, Abigail,” he murmured quietly enough that his father would not hear. “I will see you later today.” He stood again and moved to join his father and the slave.

~*~

Abigail awoke with a gasp when something pounced on her.

“
Mother!” Samuel’s huge grin erased the instant worry. “Why did you not tell me?”

She pushed herself up, trying to clear the cobwebs of sleep from her mind. She had risen once to feed Benjamin, but the pull of a warm bed had been too great. She had fallen asleep again, and now it was far later than her usual time to rise. “Tell you what, small one?”

“
That Titus is now your husband! That means he is my father. He said so!”

Abigail sighed, a pain clenching her heart. She closed her eyes against the picture of the boy soon to be disappointed. “He is not my husband, Samuel.”

Confusion etched itself into his countenance. “But. . . you. . .”

His look at the bed told Abigail clearly how he had come to this erroneous conclusion. She barely stifled a groan. Why had she come back in here after Titus left, knowing how tired she was? She should have anticipated that Samuel may awaken before her this morning.

A lie sprang to her lips, escaping before she could think to stop it. “I came in here after feeding Benjamin to talk to Titus. He was gone, so I sat down to wait for him. I must have fallen asleep.” At least she was still clothed.

Samuel apparently saw no reason to question the explanation, but his grief was obvious. He slumped down and curled up in her lap. His face was buried in the blankets still covering her legs, so it was only the slight tremor that moved up his back that told her he was crying. Abigail felt the new, carefully constructed shell around her heart shatter. It felt as though it took her heart with it.