Read Online Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough - Free Book Online Page A

by marriage, Gaius Marius. I am aware that you are closely related to Sulla's family, but neither my own family nor my husband had any quarrel with Sulla. Your own dichotomy between Marius and Sulla is more pronounced than any Brutus can lay claim to.”
    “Oh, you argue like an advocate!” said Caesar appreciatively, and finally smiled.
    “I will take that as a compliment.”
    “You should.”
    Caesar got up and walked round the desk, held out his hand to help her rise.
    “Am I to have no answer, Gaius Julius?”
    “You will have an answer, but not today.”
    “When, then?” she asked, walking to the door.
    A faint but alluring perfume came stealing from her as she preceded Caesar, who was about to tell her he would give her his answer after the elections when he suddenly noticed something that fascinated him into wanting to see her again sooner than that. Though she was irreproachably covered up as her class and status demanded, the back of her robe had sagged to expose the skin over neck and spine to the middle of her shoulder blades, and there like a finely feathered track a central growth of black fuzz traveled down from her head to disappear into the depths of her clothing. It looked silky rather than coarse and lay flat against her white skin, but it was not lying as it was intended to lie because whoever had dried her back after her bath hadn't cared enough to smooth it carefully into a crest along the well-padded knobs of her spine. How it cried out for that small attention!
    “Come back tomorrow, if that is convenient,” said Caesar, reaching past her to open the door.
    No attendant waited on the minute stair landing, so he walked her down two flights to the vestibule. But when he would have taken her outside, she stopped him.
    “Thank you, Gaius Julius, this far will do,” she said.
    “You're sure? It's not the best neighborhood.”
    “I have an escort. Until tomorrow, then.”
    Back up the stairs to the last lingering tendrils of that subtle perfume and a feeling that somehow the room was emptier than it had ever been. Servilia… She was deep and every layer was differently hard, iron and marble and basalt and adamas. Not at all nice. Not feminine, either, despite those large and shapely breasts. It might prove disastrous to turn one's back on her, for in his fancy she had two faces like Janus, one to see where she was going and one to see who followed behind. A total monster. Little wonder everyone said Silanus looked sicker and sicker. No paterfamilias would intercede for Brutus; she hadn't needed to explain that to him. Clearly Servilia managed her own affairs, including her son, no matter what the law said. So was betrothal to Julia her idea, or did it indeed stem from Brutus? Aurelia might know. He would go home and ask her.
    And home he went, still thinking about Servilia, what it would be like to regulate and discipline that thin line of black fuzz down her back.
    “Mater,” he said, erupting into her office, “I need an urgent consultation, so stop what you're doing and come into my study!”
    Down went Aurelia's pen; she stared at Caesar in amazement. “It's rent day,” she said.
    “I don't care if it's quarter day.”
    He was gone before he had quite finished that short sentence, leaving Aurelia to abandon her accounts in a state of shock. Not like Caesar! What had gotten into him?
    “Well?'' she asked, stalking into his tablinum to find him standing with his hands behind his back and rocking from heels to toes and back again. His toga lay in a massive heap on the floor, so she bent to pick it up, then tossed it out the door into the dining room before shutting herself in.
    For a moment he acted as if she hadn't yet arrived, then started, glanced at her in mingled amusement and— exhilaration? before moving to seat her in the chair she always used.
    “My dear Caesar, can't you stay still, even if you can't sit down? You look like an alley cat with the wind in its tail.”
    That