Household Gods

full force, every bit as strong as the day she found herself in Umma’s body. It was like being slammed in the face with a long-dead salmon.

She must have grimaced. Calidius Severus slanted one of his lopsided grins at her. It warmed her in ways she hadn’t expected, and didn’t, at the moment, particularly want. “Always something in the air that lets you know when you’ve come to a town,” he said dryly. “You do stop noticing after a while, the gods be praised.”

“A good thing you do, too.” Nicole tried her damnedest not to breathe. Yes, dammit, she’d lost the immunity she’d taken so long to acquire.

At least it cooled her down, and let her look at her companion through something other than a hormonal haze.

She let him lead her back through Carnuntum. She was reasonably sure she could have found her way back to the tavern without him; she’d come to understand that the main streets of the city were laid out in a grid, a sequence of large squares. But in between these wider avenues, lesser streets and alleys twisted in a bewildering maze.

Those were, at the moment, dry. For that, Nicole was deeply grateful. None was paved, and few had sidewalks.

Calidius Severus walked her back to the tavern. Outside the door, he hesitated. Nicole hadn’t seen a man hesitate like that since her dates worried more about acne than about five o’clock shadow. Working up the nerve to kiss me, she thought with a glimmer of amusement. If he hadn’t hesitated, if he’d tried to take a kiss as if he were entitled to it, she would have sent him on his way, with a clout in the ear to remember her by.

Because he was so diffident about it, so obviously unsure she’d allow it, she let the kiss happen. He tasted of wine. For all his shyness going in, he knew how to kiss. He was eager, but he didn’t try to swallow her alive.

Something quivered, deep down inside. It wasn’t desire, not quite, but a shadow of it: an awareness that if she wanted to, if she let it happen as she’d let the kiss happen, she could feel desire.

She didn’t know which of them broke the kiss first. If it was Calidius Severus, he was in no hurry to let her go. As close as he held her, she couldn’t be in any doubt as to how he felt about it.

Before things could get awkward, she slipped out of his arms.

He stood flatfooted, still reaching for her, though she’d moved just out of reach. “Umma — “ he began.

She tilted her head. “Yes?” she asked. She didn’t mean to be unfriendly, but neither did she want him to think she wanted to hop into bed with him then and there.

One thing she’d seen before this, and for which she gave him credit, was that he did actually listen to her. He paid attention not only to what she said but also to how she said it.

His frown, right now, said he understood perfectly well that that yes didn’t mean, Yes, let’s do it. “You’ve been funny lately,” he said.

Nicole laughed. Once she’d started, she found she couldn’t stop. Part of it was the wine. Part was the sheer magnitude of Calidius’ understatement, and how little he knew, or could know, how great it was.

He waited with commendable patience for her laughter to run down. When at last it did, he said, “I didn’t think I was that funny.” His tone might have been wry, or it might have been bewildered. With a shrug that matched it, he turned away from her and headed across the street toward his own shop.

She watched him go. She didn’t know what she was feeling. Regret. Relief. A little guilt — and that made her angry, because she’d wished herself into this place to get away from just this kind of emotional bullying. She hadn’t wanted him. Why should she feel as if she’d done something wrong?

She turned abruptly, pivoting on her heel, and stalked into the tavern.

It was empty except for Julia, but, from the looks of the cups and bowls that the freedwoman was scrubbing, business had been brisk just a little earlier. Bread was baking, fresh and fragrant. The aroma of garlic and herbs wafted from the pot over the hearth. Julia had made one of her pot-dishes for the evening trade.

Julia didn’t seem to notice anything odd in Nicole’s face or gait. She was grinning, in fact, and clapping her hands. Nicole wondered dourly what Julia had been up to while she was away.

“Well?” the freedwoman pressed when Nicole didn’t say anything. “Did you have a good time at the beast show?”

Watching animals fighting and killing one another, watching the lionesses pull down and feed on the condemned criminal — no, Nicole had not enjoyed the show. But that wasn’t quite what Julia had asked.

In Indiana and later in California, Nicole had gone to plenty of lousy movies and still come home happy. She didn’t know that happy was the word she’d have used of herself at the moment, and yet… “Do you know,” she said, surprised and not altogether displeased, “after all, I think I did.”

11

Sextus Longinius lulus came into the tavern one day not long after the beast show. He waited politely while Nicole took her latest batch of bread out of the oven. She nodded to him, not particularly surprised. He wasn’t what she would call a regular, but he came in now and then, bought a cup of the middle-grade wine, and drank it slowly as if he actually savored the stuff. Sometimes she thought he came as much for the excuse to get out of the house as for the wine.

Today, however, he seemed oddly tense. He set a shiny brass sestertius in front of her and said, “Let me have a cup of Falernian, Umma. I’m going to be here for a while. Might as well start off with the best. I’ll go back to the cheap stuff later, when I’ve stopped caring what it tastes like.”

Nicole lifted her brows as she drew him a cup of Falernian. She’d never heard him sound so determined about anything.

It dawned on her slowly. Too slowly, if she wanted to be honest about it. She thrust a finger at him. “Don’t tell me. Fabia Ursa’s in labor.”

“She is that,” Longinius lulus said. “Chased me out of the house, too. ‘No place for a man,’ she said — you know how women do. ‘None of your business. Go get the midwife, go get my sister, go get my friends, and go away.’ I knew I’d end up here, and you’re right next door anyway, so I saved you for last.”

Frank had been at the hospital with Nicole when Kimberley and Justin were born. She’d been glad to have him there, holding her hand and coaching her through labor and birth. She hadn’t known he’d fall for a blond bimbo before his son took his first step.

Carnuntum had no hospitals, as far as she could tell. Babies were born at home. And fathers were not welcome in what was obviously women’s work. Female friends and relatives of the mother joined her instead to celebrate the new life. Nicole rather liked that, even if it left the father out of his own child’s first hours. Being there at his children’s births hadn’t kept Frank from running off with the first big-busted babe who came along.

Another sestertius clanked down on the bar, startling Nicole back into the here- and-now. “More of the same,” Longinius lulus said. “Then you’d better go on over. Julia can get me the rest of the way drunk.”

Nicole nodded. “All right. But why —?” she stopped. Why wasn’t that hard, not when she let her brain run for once ahead of her mouth. Fabia Ursa had had two babies already, and lost them both. Her husband wouldn’t have been worth much if he weren’t worried.

Nicole thrust the coin back toward him. “This one’s on me, “ she said firmly. “Everything will be all right. You’ll have yourself a fine daughter or son to be proud of.”

Longinius left the coin where it was, and gulped down the wine without seeming to taste it. He’d been keeping up a good front, but his face was paler than it might have been, and his hand shook as he set down the cup. “Fabia’s been praying to Mother Isis. Pray the rest of the gods it helps.”

“It can’t hurt,” Nicole said, which was true enough, if a little on the lame side.

Sextus Longinius lulus nodded solemnly; the Falernian was hitting him hard. “Egyptians are the oldest people in the world. If their great goddess can’t keep a mother safe, no god can. She’s had practice, she has.”

“I hope it all goes well,” Nicole replied. That was also true. Whether Isis existed at all, let alone had any power to help Fabia Ursa… well, who knew? Liber and Libera had brought Nicole here, hadn’t they? Maybe Isis would answer the woman’s prayer.