“Come on,” Jemma said, taking Elijah’s hand.
“Where are we?” Something was nagging at Elijah’s memory but he couldn’t bring it to the surface. Swallows were diving and reeling in the open courtyard, flying around the standing pillars, under the roof, and out the other side.
“A Roman balineum,” Jemma said.
“Baths,” Elijah said, puzzling it out. “I thought they’d been torn down. Or fallen down, years ago.”
“Just forgotten.”
“What do we do next?”
“The baths are this way.” She led him among the pillars, curved to the right, and a floor paved with half-cracked and dingy blue tiles appeared. There had been mosaics there once. A single blue eye stared up at Elijah from a fractured tile, the curve of a lion’s tail from another.
Jemma descended broad shallow steps and the air turned hazy. She walked ahead of him through a warm mist that clung to her hair and turned her pelisse from a rich ruby to a dimmer mauve.
Then they came out into the bath. It was very large, filled with clear water from which rose tendrils of steam. The room had walls of varying heights on three sides, and was sheltered on the fourth by a great bank of overgrown lilacs. There was no sign of the small monk. Without hesitation, Jemma walked around the bath and stood on the other side. He began to follow her, but she shook her head.
“It’s divided into men’s and women’s baths, don’t you see?” She pointed down into the clear water. The tiles on the bath’s floor were intact, and clearly divided in two. He could see there must have once been a separating wall, but it had either disintegrated or been torn down.
The men’s side, where he stood, depicted a battle scene, a confusion of rearing horses and spears. The women’s side, where Jemma stood, depicted women bent over spindles, listening to a harp player.
Jemma smiled at him and took off her pelisse, dropping it on a bench. Underneath, she was wearing a much simpler garment than usual, one that laced in front. She began unlacing it as Elijah tried to pull himself together.
“We’re—We’re bathing.”
She inclined her head, raising one finger. “Separately. As befits a holy place.”
He looked around. “Holy?”
“Dedicated to Apollo. The Roman god of medicine.”
“How on earth do you know of this place, Jemma?” He was astounded. He wouldn’t in a million years have pictured his sophisticated, urbane wife frequenting a run-down ruin of a bath house. Under the water, brilliantly colored tiles glinted like fish scales sliding against each other. The spring air was just cold enough that steam drifted between them occasionally, like a transparent curtain.
“How is it heated? When did you first come here? Who was that man? And—where is he now?”
“He’s down below, tending the fires,” she said.
And the questions failed in his throat because she had finished unlacing and, with a simple gesture, slipped off her gown. She was wearing neither a corset nor panniers. Her petticoats must have been part of her gown, because now she wore only a chemise, and Elijah could see the lines of her hips, round and lush, the slender curve of her waist, the beguiling weight of her breasts.
“Jemma,” he said hoarsely.
She raised her arms and began pulling pins from her hair. It fell around her shoulders and below, the shining sleek color of old gold. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. She would have made Apollo cry with desire.
Lust slammed into him along with an urgent, male, possessive claim. She was his, damn it. She was his wife, and he hadn’t had her, hadn’t been with her, hadn’t taken her—
He tossed off his wig. He wrenched off his coat and threw it on the bench behind him, pulling his shirt over his head—
Caught sight of her fascinated eyes through his lifted arms. He stayed there for a moment, arms crossed over his head, one hand holding his shirt.
“I truly have to stay on my side of the baths?” he asked. Elijah looked down at himself. Taking vigorous exercise at the boxing salon made him feel better after long nights of useless talk. So he supposed that his chest was more muscled than those of many gentlemen.
And…it seemed she liked that. Jemma’s mouth was a perfect ruby circle. He bent over, slowly, and pulled off his boots.
“I should take everything off?”
She nodded.
“Everything?”
She cleared her throat. Damn, but he was enjoying this. “Everything,” she said firmly.
“But you haven’t.”
She looked down at herself as if she’d forgotten that her body existed. “I thought I’d wear my chemise,” she said, and then looked at him again.