Celtic Fire(61)

Aulus staggered into Lucius’s path. Lucius gritted his teeth and drew up short. Stepping neatly to one side, he kept his eyes fixed firmly to the fore as he strode toward his residence. He feared if he caught sight of his brother’s tortured countenance one more time, he wouldn’t have to worry about going mad. He would draw his sword and plunge it into his own belly if only for the slim hope that once he was safely dead, Charon might row him across the River Styx and into oblivion.

The porter admitted him to the foyer and Lucius nearly knocked the man to the tiles in his haste to slam the door. Yet for all his solidity, Aulus simply plodded through the wood and resumed his post at Lucius’s side.

The porter cleared his throat. “Is everything all right, my lord?”

Lucius muttered an oath in place of an answer. The man withdrew hastily.

A women’s scream pierced the air.

Lucius darted toward the sound. An enormously fat woman—Aulus’s Roman cook, he thought—tottered on the bench by the courtyard fountain. Her face was contorted with terror. Her hands, knotted into her skirt, shook so badly, Lucius wondered that the fabric of her tunic hadn’t ripped.

Nosing about at her feet was the apparent source of the woman’s terror. A hulking black dog sniffed at her toes, its ragged tail whipping back and forth. Just beyond, one of the flower beds Rhiannon had so painstakingly weeded lay in ruins, its dirt and greenery strewn across the gravel path. Lucius let out an aggravated sigh. How had the misbegotten canine gotten into the house?

Rolling mounds of flesh quivered at the cook’s heaving breast as she drew in a great gulp of air. Lucius watched, half fascinated, half repulsed, as she prepared to shatter his ears a second time.

“Cease!” Lucius spoke a moment too late. His command was lost in the unholy shriek that emerged from the woman’s throat.

The porter had entered the courtyard on Lucius’s heels and now stood cowering behind him. The rest of the household had also appeared—Candidus from the receiving room, the rest of the slaves from the kitchen. Vetus, clad only in a linen towel, scowled from the entrance to the baths. Even Demetrius had dashed out of the library, scroll in hand, moving faster than Lucius would have thought possible.

The dog placed one enormous paw on the bench near the cook’s fleshy foot and barked. The woman snatched up the skirt of her long tunic, revealing calves of which Lucius would have preferred to remain ignorant. She screamed a third time, but not one spectator moved to her aid. Apparently none had the courage to interfere with a hulking creature the size of a small bear.

“For the love of Jupiter,” Lucius muttered, striding forward. He drew up sharply when Aulus staggered into his path, his ghostly mouth open in a silent scream. The scent of fresh blood poured off him. Lucius’s gut heaved.

Then Rhiannon came into sight at the corner of his vision, her footsteps light on the stairway. She leapt over the bottom step and ran into the garden. Aulus vanished.

Lucius’s relief at his brother’s disappearance was so intense that he staggered back, nearly falling. By the time he’d recovered his balance, Rhiannon had caught the scruff of the dog’s neck and was tugging furiously. To Lucius’s surprise, the beast allowed her to haul it away from the bench.

He reached her side just as she’d persuaded the dog to lie down.

“He won’t hurt you,” Rhiannon was telling the cook. “He’s quite docile.”

“Did you bring that creature into my house?” Lucius demanded. Rhiannon blinked up at him, but before she could answer, Marcus came running from the direction of the latrine.

“I’m sorry,” he said, panting. “I just left him for a moment. I won’t do it again.” He threw his arms around the animal’s neck and raised his wide dark eyes to Lucius. “Please don’t send Hercules away.”

“Hercules?” Lucius asked, dumbfounded. It was about the unlikeliest name for the sorry beast he could imagine. The dog lifted its head and added its appeal to Marcus’s, its tail beating an even rhythm in the dirt.

“Please, Father?”

Demetrius camouflaged a chuckle with a cough. Lucius shot the old man a quelling look. The last thing Lucius needed was a flea-bitten monster disrupting his household. He opened his mouth to deny his son’s request.

The words never came. They died on his tongue when he looked into Rhiannon’s golden eyes.

“Please, Lucius?” she whispered.

Her voice, soft and pleading, sent an erotic image spinning through his brain. He imagined her naked on his bed, opening her thighs to him, saying those exact words. He held her gaze and let his desire flow into his eyes. A slow blush crept up her neck, as if his fantasy had leapt from his mind into hers.