Lindsey Davis - The Iron Hand of Mars

Just as I was about to spring from the dais and depart like a hero, Helena bent down to me. Her hair brushed my cheek. Her perfume enveloped me in a cinnamon haze. Her lips moved softly right against my ear: 'You can stop looking so pathetic. I wrote to him the day you left Colonia.'

Helena sat back. I crouched where I was. We watched the standard-bearer stamp his way decisively round two more infantry cohorts, then the trumpets stilled.

I looked up. Helena Justina tapped me gently on the nose with her knuckle, the one wearing the silver ring I had once given her. She did not look at me. She was gazing across the parade-ground with an expression of refined interest like any other high-born lady wondering how soon she could go home. Nobody but me could realise how obstinate, and how beautiful, she was.

My girl.

The chief standard-bearer of the XIV Gemina represented their senior tribune with the Emperor's Iron Hand. It was a handsome item, two feet high, and the man in the bearskin must be breathless from the weight. An armourer had regilded the chips in its decoration, but I happened to know that it had a dented thumb where I had bashed it against a bedstead in some crummy travellers' doss-house on my journey across Gaul.

'Are you staying with me, Helena?' I dared to ask meekly. 'No choice,' she said (after pausing to think about it). 'I own a half-share in your samian dinner service, which I don't intend relinquishing. So stop talking nonsense, Marcus, and watch the parade.'