Free Persona Non Grata by Ruth Downie

sighed. “Then I need to find some work. Even if this Severus is prepared to settle, we’ll have next to no cash left for the rest of the bills. The whole thing is a mess.”
    “You are tired,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “Everything will seem better in the morning.”
    “Perhaps.” Perhaps not.
    She moved his hand up and placed it on her breast. “I have told that slave she can sleep in my bed,” she said, wriggling closer to him. “That way, she will not tell your stepmother what I am doing.”
    “Good,” murmured Ruso, bending forward to nuzzle her ear. “Neither will I.”

13
    A CCORDING TO ARRIA, the family carriage was being repaired. According to Marcia, it had been being repaired for the last six months, because Lucius was too mean to pay the wheelwright, and that was why Ruso was having to drive them and Tilla into town this morning in this awful embarrassing thing , and why they were so hot.
    “You can’t blame Lucius for the weather,” he said, reining in the mules so that they were not trotting straight into the dust kicked up by the carriage that was currently speeding past the smoking kilns of Lollia Saturn-ina’s amphora factory. “Why don’t you both sit under parasols instead of wrapping up like dead Egyptians? I’m surprised you can breathe under all that.”
    Marcia gave an exaggerated sigh that said she thought her brother was extremely stupid, but she was not foolish enough to say so. “Because someone might see us, Gaius. Riding around on this .” The cart juddered as she emphasized the final word with a thud of her sandal against the footboard.
    Ruso remembered the faces of legionaries who had struggled miles across the wet British hills carrying wounded comrades: faces he might never see again if he could not find a way to get the farm out of Severus’s clutches. He said, “You could always walk.”
    She snorted. “I might have known you’d take Lucius’s side. And I don’t suppose you’ve done anything about the dowry, have you?”
“Not yet,” he agreed.
“But I need it!”
“Not this morning.”
“When, then?”
“I’m going to talk to someone.”
    “What? Lucius said you would sort it out! Who else do you need to talk to? You’re supposed to be my guardian!”
    “And you’re supposed to do what I tell you,” he pointed out.
    Marcia flung herself against the wooden backrest with a cry of “Ohh! What is the matter with this family? Nobody else has to put up with this!”
    “No, they don’t!” chipped in Flora from behind, where she was sitting with Tilla. “They don’t, Gaius. Really. If you weren’t off marching around with the army, you’d know.”
    “Over in Britannia,” observed Ruso, “the men pay a bride price to marry the women. Maybe I’ll ship you across there and sell you.”
    “How much did you pay for Tilla?”
    “I’m not married to Tilla,” said Ruso, who had no intention of admitting that he had bought her as a slave in the back streets of Deva.
    “There are girls my age who have been married for years,” continued Marcia.
    Ruso said, “Not from ordinary families like ours.”
    “At this rate I shall be as shriveled as a prune by the time you get around to it. And there’ll be nobody nice left to marry.”
    They were approaching the vineyards that fringed the entrance to the estate of the absent senator. Marcia’s hand on his arm was a welcome distraction from the tricky meeting he would face later with the senator’s devious lying bastard of an agent.
    “Gaius, you wouldn’t make me marry somebody repulsive, would you?”
    There was genuine anxiety in the hazel eyes, which were the only part of her face that was visible and which seemed to be blacker around the edges than was natural. “No,” he promised, wondering if he was about to shut off a useful source of income. “I wouldn’t make you.”
    “Good!” The note of triumph in her voice alerted him to the fact that he had just helped her score some