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day.”
    “Yes, it has,” Vix said, then crossed the cobbles in two long strides, shoved her up against a tenement wall, and began kissing her.
    Well, that’s different.
She’d been kissed before, of course—by Vix, for one, though they’d only been children; and more recently by a few of her suitors. Sabina had encouraged them, being immensely curious about the whole experience, but none of them had ever done more than brush their lips gently against hers and keep one mindful eye on the door to make sure her father wasn’t coming. Except for the one suitor whose understanding of the whole business had been to shove his tongue as far down her throat as possible, as if he were trying to find out what she’d eaten for dinner…
    “You’re too damned small,” Vix growled in her ear, and lifted her up off her feet for better access. Sabina chuckled low in her throat, tipping her head back for him and winding her arms about his neck. She was half crushed between the hard wall and his hard chest, but the one was warm, so warm, as though his blood boiled a shade hotter than the ordinary. She felt his heart thudding against her breasts, and tasted the salty coppery tang from his split lip. She touched the back of his neck, tracing an unhurried circle with one fingertip, and Vix gave a muffled groan and started kissing his way down toward her shoulder. One rough hand twined through her hair, dislodging the wilted poppies.
    “The idea—off my doorstep, you filthy things!” Light suddenly flooded the dark vestibule, and Sabina felt a sharp smack on the back of her head. Vix swore, and they both looked up at a housewife’s broad outraged face. “Thugs and trollops, disturbing decent people with your brawling and fornicating, the idea—”
    “Hadn’t even got to the fornicating yet, you cow!” Vix yelled, but Sabina took his arm, shaking with giggles, and pulled him off into the night with the housewife still frothing behind them.
    “Gods, how funny.” Sabina put a hand over her mouth and laughed through her fingers, feeling as giddy and high-sailing as a full moon. “Another first.”
    “Kissing in a doorway?”
    “Being shrieked at for a fornicating trollop. What fun.”
    “Could be more fun.” Vix stepped close again, his eyes just black shadows now in the dusk, but Sabina stopped him with a hand on his chest.
    “I’m afraid my father will be looking for me soon. He’ll worry now that it’s dark, and I don’t like to worry him. Besides, the house isn’t far.”
    Vix scowled, but stepped back. “Told you I’d teach you something better than a whistle, didn’t I?”
    “So you did.”
    His face fell visibly when they came up to the house after another block of frustrated silence, and he saw that there were household slaves waiting at the gate. “Damn.”
    Sabina laughed. “Hoping for a good-night kiss?”
    “Or something,” he muttered.
    Herself, Sabina had been pondering whether it would be wise to give him one… but the slaves were already hurrying out into the street to greet her. “Lady Sabina, you should have been back before dark!” She started toward them, pulling a fold of her
palla
up over her head and hoping Vix hadn’t left any marks on her neck that might need explaining. Behind her, she heard Vix’s footsteps turn back down the street.
    On impulse, she shooed the slaves ahead and then turned. “Vix!”
    He turned, tall and irritated in the torchlight. “What, Lady?”
    “You kiss much better now than you did at thirteen.” Sabina grinned and disappeared into the house.

C HAPTER 3
    PLOTINA
    The Empress of Rome prided herself on laughing very seldom. Life was a solemn thing, after all, and her position in the world demanded every possible dignity. But she could not help laughing when she saw the look on Hadrian’s face.
    “Dear Publius, don’t look so grim. It’s not a sentence of death, you know. Only a marriage.”
    “Which is a sentence of a different kind.” He