Free The Barbarian's Mistress by Nhys Glover Page A

have to dress as her mistress and share the litter with him. If anyone asked where she was, it would seem only natural that the handmaiden had accompanied her mistress on the trip. As long as there were no witnesses who would notice the lack of a handmaiden as they left, they’d be safe.
    It would take a week for his lamb to reach Pompeii and complete her marriage. How was he going to keep her absence hidden that long? He should have come up with a better plan. He should have sent them by sea and risked Salvia’s spies telling her where Anniana had gone. Another mistake to add to his long, long list of mistakes.
    He couldn’t get it out of his head, the thought of his innocent little lamb being forced to watch her brother rape her beloved handmaiden. How could he have been so blind as to not have seen how far that sly little monster would go? Hadn’t he caught him pulling the wings of a bird when he was only five? That he’d been torturing his lamb all these years, and he hadn’t known of it… horrifying.
    With a mother like Salvia , it made sense that two of his four children would take after her. He’d become aware of her sickness and corruption not long after he got her with her fourth child. Her belly already rounded, he’d walked in on her games with a slave she’d recently bought as her ‘bodyguard’. A big, rough brute of a man, Bibulus couldn’t believe that a refined patrician would ever let someone like him have her body. But he’d seen it for himself. And ignored it.
    There had been a steady series of such slaves in Salvia’s bed since. Vali had been the best of them, and he still regretted not standing up to Salvia when she told him she planned to sell him. His finances had never been the same since. A mistake -- just one of so many.
    But he was attempting to right some of those mistakes now. All he could hope for was that the Vali he had known four years ago was still loyal to Anniana. If he had given her over into a monster’s hands, he’d never forgive himself.
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
     
    When they left the Albion Hills behind them, they began to move faster through the flat Pontine reclaimed marshlands. To their right, high sand dunes blocked their view of the Tyrrhenian Sea. To their left, some ten miles distant, was the Volscian Mountain Range. There was less road traffic here, as most travellers had opted for a smoother canal ride. The long, straight canal ran parallel to the road on the side closest to the dunes and was dotted with rough canal boats that were being pulled along by donkeys. Lara envied them their comfort.
    They pushed on through the late afternoon, watching the fiery sun begin to sink behind the dunes. That was when Vali began to scan the flat land to their left. It was crisscrossed by muddy waterways and dotted with clumps of spirelike pine trees. Eventually, he selected a drier section of the land and drove the horses across it to the shelter of the largest and densest stand of trees in the area. Hidden behind these trees, their campsite would be less obvious to passing travellers on the road or canal.
    Lara sighed as the carrus came to a halt, just as the sun finally dropped behind the dunes. It had been the longest day of her life. Every muscle ached, her skin burned hotter than a furnace, and she was so tired it was a strain to even breathe. Her body was filthy, her hair unkempt and sticky from the citron juices Vali had used on it. She smelled bad.
    And she was happier than she had ever been in her life.
    The new person that she was, this Lara the liberti, was a freedwoman, and for all the hardships , that was how she felt. Free. She was on a journey between her old life and her new, her only companion a childhood friend, a changeable warrior from a distant, unimaginable land. No walls surrounded her, no roof blocked the sky from her view; she was part of the natural world for the first time in her life.
    ‘Stay there until I get the blanket spread,’ the new