their shrill song. Instead he stared across the atrium at a slender young woman in a plain, long, light-blue tunic. She was standing in the opposite doorway, her dark hair tied back in a simple pony tail. She stared back at him. Then she began to walk steadily across the tiled floor, round the shallow pool in the centre of the atrium, her pace slowing as she approached him. Cato tried desperately to read her expression, for any hint of the despair or joy that the next moment might bring.
‘Julia Sempronia.’ He bowed his head formally, not knowing why he did it and feeling foolish.
‘Cato,’ she replied softly. ‘Cato … My Cato.’
Then with a patter of her slippered feet she rushed into his arms and held him tight and Cato felt a warm wave of relief sweep through his chest. He pressed his cheek down against her hair and closed his eyes as her scent, almost forgotten, rushed back amid a confusion of memories and emotions.
Julia drew back and he opened his eyes to see her staring into his face. She reached a hand up to touch his lips, then moved her fingers lightly and uncertainly to trace the line of his scar. Then he saw a tear gleaming at the corner of her eye, where it swelled like a tiny translucent pearl before it rolled down her cheek.
Cato felt his heart torn in two as he regarded her. Much as he loved and desired Julia, Cato wanted to leave Rome at the first opportunity and get far away from its deadly cross-currents of deceit and treachery. He and Macro would be leaving to rejoin the army campaigning in Britannia. Nothing could sway Cato from that. Those were the terms that Julia would have to accept if she still wanted to have him.
‘What’s wrong, my love?’ Her brow furrowed anxiously.
Cato took her hands in his. ‘We must talk.’
