Celtic Fire(29)

He exited the headquarters building, drawing an inquisitive look from the sentry. The first torches were sparking to life on the high battlement above the west gate. “At least my love of order has kept me breathing,” he muttered. “Which is more than I can say for you. If you’d had a care for something other than fantasy and roses, you might be alive rather than rotting in a fort cemetery on the edge of the Empire.”

The words had no sooner left his lips than Lucius wished them unsaid. Aulus’s expression had gone hollow, his eyes bleak. His fingers worried the purple stripe on the edge of his toga.

Lucius halted at the door to his residence and braced his arm on the cold wood, a fierce wave of loss breaking over him. The pale figure tormenting him wasn’t Aulus. Aulus was dead. Gone. But until his shade was banished, Lucius would not be able to mourn. His arm began to shake.

“Commander?”

Lucius whirled about. Gaius Brennus stood a few paces away, eyeing him curiously.

“Is there a problem, Quartermaster?”

“I thought to ask the same of you, sir.”

Lucius waited a beat, until Brennus looked away. “The difficulty lies entirely with your troops,” he said succinctly. “They are a disgrace. I expect to see every able-bodied man—save those on sentry duty—mustered on the parade grounds at cockcrow. In full battle dress.”

“Yes, sir.” Brennus pivoted and took a step toward the barracks.

Lucius’s brows shot up. No soldier in the Legions would turn his back on a senior officer. He cleared his throat. “Quartermaster. You have not been dismissed.”

Brennus halted. “Your pardon, sir.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow at dawn, soldier. Clean your armor before then.”

The quartermaster’s expression hardened. “As you say, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

The sentry at the northern gatehouse called a faint, “All’s well.” After a pause that was a fraction too long, the cry was repeated by the guard at the east gate. Lucius’s hand clenched into a fist, but when he rapped on the door of his residence, the force of his blow was controlled, the sound precise.

The porter, a lean Celt with an unruly mane of blond hair, admitted him immediately. Lucius gave instructions for a late supper to be laid in the dining room. The man bowed and hastened in the direction of the kitchens.

Habit prompted Lucius to approach the house altar, where he lifted one of the lares at random and murmured a rote prayer he didn’t believe would be heard. It was only when he replaced the figurine on the stone table that he took a good look at the brass god. An unclothed man in his prime, sporting a grotesquely huge erection.

“Potency.” Lucius glanced toward Aulus, anticipating his brother’s smirk. A warm wash of air, rather than the chill to which he’d grown accustomed, caressed his skin. The foyer was empty.

His gaze immediately sought Rhiannon. Did the Celt nymph wield some dark power over the dead? Could she be a witch? The thought unsettled him. She hardly fit the description of such a creature that Horace had given in his Epodes.

He found her in the courtyard garden. She was sitting on a bench near the fountain, so still she might have been chiseled from marble, save for a wary flicker in her golden eyes. He drew closer, removing his helmet and abandoning it at the base of a rosebush. Perhaps she would be more at ease if his head was bare.

She’d tamed her fiery mane into a thick braid that fell over her shoulder to curl at her waist. Lucius much preferred it unbound. He imagined sifting his fingers through the strands and spreading them over her naked body like a curtain of flame. He’d gladly plunge through such a barrier to claim her.

Never before had a woman stirred Lucius’s lust so completely. Julia had not, and Lucius had wanted his first wife with a rare fervor, even though their marriage had been a political pact arranged by their fathers. Once married, however, he’d found Julia to be spoiled and petulant, more of a girl than a woman. After Marcus was born he’d hardly cared when his wife barred him from her bed. The brief sorrow he’d felt at her death had been purely for his son’s sake.

The women of the East, in contrast, had been lush and inviting, and knew bedchamber secrets unheard of in Rome, but Lucius had found their docility tiring. Now, faced with this slip of a woman who hadn’t hesitated to put an arrow in his ass, his rod hardened so painfully he feared it would snap. If he slaked his need on her body, would his obsession fade?

He seated himself beside her on the stone bench. She made no response to his presence.

“The night falls far later here in the north than it does in Rome,” he said at length.