Marilyn Todd - Man Eater

‘Yes, sit down, Muscles, he’s just winding you up.’ With a thigh-revealing swirl of her skirts, Tulola stepped over her couch and began stropping the carving knife as Pallas pretended to pout. ‘Will this make it better, sweetie?’ She tossed Pallas a boned pheasant stuffed with onions and asparagus and sensuously licked the sauce off her fingers.

‘Of course it won’t,’ the gladiator sneered. ‘The fat slob can eat a whole farmyard at a single sitting.’

Yes, thought Claudia, whereas Tulola devours the farmer.

‘Gourmet food is an art, my boy,’ Pallas replied, sinking his teeth into the dripping fowl. ‘In its pursuit, I have squandered fortunes and-’

‘-not one your own.’

‘That’s enough,’ the keeper of the harem chided Timoleon. ‘I won’t have you keep taunting my house guest.’ Tulola ruffled the fat man’s hair. ‘I’m very fond of Pallas, aren’t I, Lover?’

‘Positively attached,’ he replied drily, eyeing up the remnants of the fish course. ‘Pass those oysters, will you? Criminal to see them wasted.’

As the conversation turned to which were tastier, oysters from the Lucrine rocks or those from Tarentum, Claudia was acutely aware that throughout this charged interchange, the gaze of Marcus Cornelius Orbilio had been in one direction and one direction only. As her wine was topped up, she tried not to think of the way he had chinked his gaming cup against the lip of her glass in the close confines of her bedroom.

‘Now before my poor boar starts shivering with cold, let’s move on to the business of carving,’ purred Tulola, and as the beast was sliced open to reveal a whole goose, which in turn was stuffed with a pullet stuffed with a thrush, Claudia ensured her eyes went anywhere except opposite.

‘I wish I’d been fit for the chase,’ growled Sergius. ‘I do enjoy a good hunt.’

You’re not the only one, thought Claudia. I know policemen who use sex the way hunters use spears.

‘That’s the trouble with these pimples the Umbrians call hills’ Corbulo heaped her plate with carrots and broccoli and celery. ‘They’re only fit for bloody hunting. Where’s the scope to cultivate the soil, eh?’ He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘Isn’t land the most important thing of all?’

‘What? Oh. Oh, yes. Absolutely.’ And that business about the ulcer. I’ve seen you, Marcus Cornelius. Every time the wine jug comes round, your hand closes over your glass, which means you, sir, are on the wagon.

‘Don’t you love it, Claudia? The living, breathing soil?’

‘Unconditionally.’ I can see why Gisco’s wife succumbed. Sleek, witty, urbane? Tinged with danger round the edges? Just the ticket for a woman tired of the marriage bed and seeking outside adventures.

‘The way it changes with the seasons, filling the barns and the vats and the cellars?’

‘I’ll say.’ How many more women have you strung along, who’d grieve for the tragic waste should the charioteer make you sing castrato?

‘It nurtures us while we live, hugs us when we die.’

‘My dear Corbulo, I couldn’t have put it better myself.’ What’s wrong with me tonight? Every time I look up, my cheeks start to burn. Dammit, I should never have called for that jug of white wine earlier. Red and white never mix.

‘Claudia,’ the Etruscan’s painted hand closed over her own, ‘would you say we get on well?’

From under her lashes she was aware of a certain twinkle coming from the star of the show and hotly turned to face the man beside her. ‘Damned right we do.’ A short while ago that arrogant son-of-a-bitch over there was sincerity personified, a girl could have been fooled into thinking she meant more to him than a quick tumble, but now look at him. One camel later and he’s absorbing adulation the same way he’d take medallions of honour to hang round his belt.

‘That’s what I thought.’

Trophies, that’s what he’s after. Well, I have news for you, Marcus Cornelius, I have been a trophy wife, and it’s rewarded me with a grand house, my independence, a business empire and a pile of glittery gold pieces.

‘You know Sergius is winding up the first stage of his operation?’

‘Mmm?’ You get sod all for being a trophy mistress.

‘I’ll be moving on after that.’

With a truculent toss of her head, she smiled at Corbulo. ‘What? I mean, what…what about the new shipment of animals? Won’t you stay on to train them?’

Grey eyes searched hers. ‘I could, if I wanted, but you know how I yearn for Etruria. What do you say I work your land with you when my contract’s up?’

‘Corbulo!’ Just how silvery can a laugh get? She hoped it carried. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Steaming,’ he admitted, taking a tighter grip. ‘How else do you think I’d pluck up the courage to ask?’

Across the hall Orbilio had stopped eating. ‘Do you know how to pinch vines?’ she asked. There was no way Smartypants could make out the words, though.

‘Well, no-’

‘Or which cycle of the moon is right for racking?’ From that distance it’s body language that counts, and accordingly Claudia covered the trainer’s callused hand with her own. To one side, a group of musicians filed in and began to play.

‘You know full well I don’t, but,’ he beckoned the slave to top up his goblet, ‘you’re extending, aren’t you? Sergius has made me a rich, rich man, Claudia. Together, you and I, we could afford both plots, not just the one. What say we raise cattle?’

Shit! She stared into her glass for several seconds, pretending to listen to the music. He wasn’t the first man to want to follow Claudia Seferius to the ends of the earth, washing her feet with his sweat, but… Shit, shit, shit.

‘Keep training the beasts, Corbulo.’ Gently she removed her hands from his and stood up. ‘You have a natural affinity with animals, the land would stifle you.’

‘There’s good profit margin in hides and beef-’

A furtive glance showed a man opposite, propped nonchalantly on one elbow. Dammit, hasn’t he got anything better to do than watch me?

‘Not as high as with wine,’ she explained softly, ‘and I can’t afford to diversify.’

‘You can. We can! It decreases any risk of losing the vintage because a late storm rots the grapes where they hang-’

‘I will not have cows on my land.’ She concentrated on the click of the castanets.

‘Cabbages, then. Or bees and wheat. Claudia, we could keep chickens and goats-’

‘And what? Train them to pull carts reined by monkeys? Corbulo, I’m a wine merchant,’ she said, searching with her toe for her second sandal. ‘Vines are my business and as much as I appreciate the offer-and believe me I do-I need to work alone.’

An ochred hand closed over her wrist and pulled her gently towards him. ‘You want to talk about needs?’ he asked huskily.

Claudia felt the tingle of citron and woodsmoke in her nostrils, red dust on her skin.

‘Corbulo, Corbulo,’ she said, tugging softly at the loops of his hair. Marcus Cornelius Orbilio was sideways on now. She remembered his profile lit first by moonlight, then by lamplight. She tasted sandalwood and juniper in her mouth. ‘I can’t alter my plans.’

Citron versus sandalwood. Grey eyes versus charcoal. Braided loops versus wavy mop. Prince and pauper, pauper and prince. She heard cymbals and drums banging inside her head, as though the musicians themselves had moved in.

Then, suddenly, it stopped and everything fell into place.

‘Leastways,’ she added quietly, ‘not in the way that you mean.’

For in that instant, in the fraction of a second between the end of the music and the applause starting up, Claudia Seferius had made a decision.