“Father,” Julia protested, “do you really believe I would so disgrace both you and myself?”
Licinius’s eyes softened as he looked at her. “I should hope not, girl,” he growled. “I just wanted to make it clear to this young man.”
“I should hope not indeed,” Gaius muttered. But there was little danger; he found it hard to believe that Julia would ever be overcome by emotion. She was certainly different from Eilan, who had thought of his best interests before her own, and now was suffering the consequences.
Would they now hasten her into a marriage of convenience with someone more “suitable” as they were trying to do with him? He suddenly pictured her, beaten or bullied into compliance, tearful, wretched, perhaps weeping. She was, after all, of noble birth as the Britons counted such things, and an alliance with her family could be considered advantageous – as this marriage with Julia would be politically advantageous for his father – and, he supposed, for him.
But I am sure that if they try she will refuse it, he thought then. She has more integrity than I. Ecstatic as his union with Eilan had been, there had been moments when she had almost frightened him. Or perhaps it was his own response that had made him afraid.
Julia smiled with an appearance of timidity. It was, Gaius thought, assumed for her father’s benefit; the last hour had taught him that anything less timid than Julia — except maybe one of Hannibal’s war elephants — would be hard to imagine. But maybe her father still thought of her as a shy child; fathers were the last to know what their children were really like.
But that made him think of Eilan again; her father had trusted him, and look what had happened; he could not fault Julia’s father for being more careful.
The duties of an officer attached to the Procurator’s staff turned out to include a number of tasks which would probably have been easy for Valerius, but which for Gaius, whose tutor had been pensioned off several years ago, were as stressful to the mind as his first weeks in the army had been for his body. Fortunately these tasks were often interrupted by assignment to escort duty for visiting dignitaries.
He was not much used to cities, but he soon learned to find his way around well enough. Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Governor, had instituted a program of building of which Londinium had been the first beneficiary. The Britons had been a pastoral people, whereas Roman life centered around the city, with its shops and baths, its games and theaters. A bridge linked Londinium with the south and other roads stretched away to the north and westward. Along these arteries came trade from every corner of the province, and the ships that anchored at the wharves carried goods from all over the Empire.
Shepherding the strangers gave him an excuse to explore, and expose him to visitors of high station. When Gaius got up the nerve to ask him, Licinius said that he had planned it that way.
“For of course, if this marriage is successful —” he said, and broke off without finishing the sentence. “You know, I have no sons; no child at all but Julia, and if things went as they should, she should be allowed to succeed me, and perhaps even attain to senator. But of course a woman, no matter how capable, can only bestow her rank on her husband. That is why it pleases me so much that she should marry the son of my oldest friend.”
Only then did Gaius really understand Macellius’s plan. Married to Julia, Gaius could legitimately aspire to the position for which his father’s injudicious marriage had disqualified him. He would not have been human – nor Macellius’s son – if he had been indifferent to the possibilities. Living in Londinium had already altered his perspective, and he was beginning to understand what he would have been giving up if he had run away with Eilan. Had she been ill used? He could only hope she knew that nothing on earth – short of his father’s will or the threat to Eilan herself -could have made him abandon her.