The Warrior's Bride Prize. Jenni Fletcher

pretty. You know our new Empress has the same name. Should I call you Empress, too?’

      She giggled and he inclined his head with a feeling of satisfaction. At least he’d made someone feel better. ‘But now you need to stretch your legs and eat. We have tack biscuits and dried bacon.’

      ‘Perhaps I can offer something else?’

      The woman sounded different all of a sudden and he looked up, surprised to find that she was smiling as well. It made her look even more alluring and his sense of satisfaction increased tenfold.

      ‘We have olives and bread, baked fresh in Vindomora yesterday.’

      ‘That sounds delicious.’ He stood up to face her again. ‘I haven’t had olives for a month.’

      ‘Then we’d be happy to share, wouldn’t we, Julia?’

      The girl nodded and skipped happily away, following the maidservant around the back of the carriage.

      ‘You have a good manner with children.’ The woman was still smiling at him. ‘Do you have many of your own?’

      ‘None.’ He stifled a bark of laughter at the very suggestion. ‘But I like children. They see the world in a different way to adults.’

      ‘Maybe in a better way.’ Her face clouded for a moment and then cleared again as Porcia and Julia came back with a basket, spreading a blanket over the ground beside them. ‘Will you join us?’

      Marius threw a quick glance over his shoulder towards his legionaries. There would be comments later if he sat down to eat with a woman. Not in his hearing, perhaps, but it didn’t take long for gossip to spread round a camp. He wasn’t known for being sociable at the best of times, especially with women. But surely there was no harm in a short respite...

      ‘I won’t ask any more awkward questions, I promise.’

      The obvious embarrassment in her voice decided him. Clearly she thought it was her earlier behaviour making him hesitate and he felt the strange need to reassure her.

      ‘Then I’d be glad to, lady.’

      ‘Livia.’ She sat down on the blanket, curling her legs up beside her and tucking her stola beneath. ‘Mother of the Empress Julia.’

      ‘Livia,’ he repeated. He liked the name, not to mention the way her tongue flicked to the front of her mouth as she pronounced it. ‘Then you may call me Marius.’

      Her lips curved again and he crouched down on his haunches beside her. That seemed a reasonable compromise. He wasn’t sitting down, not exactly, and if anyone asked—not that anyone beside Pulex would dare—he could say that they’d simply been discussing the journey.

      ‘She seems like a good child.’ He gestured towards the girl, leaping and dancing around the moorland now like an animal newly released from a cage.

      ‘She is.’

      ‘How old?’

      ‘Four years last autumn.’

      ‘You’re a widow?’

      ‘As opposed to?’ Her smile vanished and he winced at his own tactlessness.

      ‘Forgive me, I didn’t mean to imply anything else.’

      She gave him a long look and then shrugged. ‘It’s all right. At my age I suppose I could just as easily have been divorced.’

      He lifted an eyebrow at the words. A lady didn’t usually mention her age, let alone the possibility of divorce. The laws around marriage had been tightened considerably over recent years, so that a man could no longer readily divorce his wife unless he could prove adultery, but for some reason he didn’t want to think about that.

      ‘Have you been widowed long?’

      ‘Two months.’

      ‘Only two?’

      He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. If Scaevola had arrived in Coria a month ago and the betrothal had been arranged before he’d left Lindum then it meant that her brother must have betrothed her within weeks of her husband’s death.

      ‘Only two.’ She repeated the words quietly, though with a distinct edge of bitterness.

      He frowned at the implication. Bad enough that she was being sent to marry Scaevola, but to betroth her while she was still in mourning... He felt a flicker of anger towards the unseen brother. What kind of man would do such a thing?

      ‘You looked surprised when you saw Julia.’ She sounded anxious this time. ‘Weren’t you expecting her?’

      He hesitated briefly and then shook his head. So much for not asking awkward questions...

      ‘No, but I only received my orders this morning. Perhaps it was simply an oversight.’

      ‘It wasn’t.’ She clasped her hands together in her lap with an air of conviction. ‘My brother must not have mentioned her.’

      ‘I understand it was your brother who arranged the betrothal.’ He wondered what on earth was compelling him to pursue the subject.

      ‘Yes.’ She gave a bleak-sounding laugh. ‘He knows an opportunity when he sees one. But I suppose there’s no turning back now...’

      He felt an obscure sense of discomfort. The wistful note in her voice made the words sound like a question, as if she were actually asking him to let her turn back, to let her escape.

      Escape? The word entered his head unexpectedly, increasing his sense of unease, though he resented its meaning. He wasn’t her captor and Coria wasn’t a prison. He was only following his orders, escorting her to a new life with a new husband, that was all. There was no coercion or force on his part. If anything, he was protecting her. There was certainly no need for him to feel guilty, even if something about her made him feel strangely defensive.

      ‘Is that what you want, to turn back?’ He asked the question before he could think better of it and saw her eyes widen with a look of surprise.

      ‘Yes...no... I don’t know.’ She looked and sounded genuinely torn. ‘That is, I want to see the wall. I’ve always wanted to see it, ever since I was a little girl...but not like this.’ She clamped her lips together as if she were trying to stop herself from saying something else and then couldn’t resist, her blue-green eyes blazing with sparks of defiance as the words seemed to burst out of her. ‘As for Lucius Scaevola, I wish he’d never come to Lindum. I wish he’d never set foot inside my brother’s tavern. Most of all, I wish I’d never heard his name!’

       Chapter Four

      ‘We’re almost there, lady.’

      Livia pulled back the window curtain at the sound of Marius’s voice. He was walking beside the carriage, looking no different to the way he had earlier, as if the day’s march had been nothing more than a light stroll. His uniform still looked pristine, without so much as a speck of dust on it. How was that possible?

      ‘You mean Coria?’

      ‘Take a look.’

      He gestured ahead and she craned her head out of the window, surprised to see that they were already entering the outskirts of a small town. There were shops and stalls and taverns as well as several stone villas, more than she would have expected at such a remote outpost.

      ‘Most visitors from the south are surprised.’ Marius gave her a knowing look. ‘But not everyone here is a legionary.’

      ‘But I thought it was a fortress?’

      ‘It is. Over there.’ He pointed down the street towards a tall stone palisade fronted by two massive watchtowers. ‘This is just the vicus,