Read Online The Saint's Mistress by Kathryn Bashaar - Free Book Online Page B

you’re prettier than I am, and, look, I
    found a good man. Think how well you might do.” She hesitated. “So, this boy? He’s in the past
    for you?”
    “Yes,” I gritted through my teeth. I had gone to the midwife with Miriam after work today
    instead of meeting Aurelius as usual, and had avoided thinking about what might happen
    tomorrow and the next day and the next. But, now, talking to Numa, I felt my decision was
    made. I would get rid of the baby and I would get on with my life: forget about Romanized men
    with their reading and their fine food and their ways of using common women, and find myself a
    good plain husband with olive trees and a herd of goats. It occurred to me that Aurelius had
    gotten what his friend Marcus had been ready to take by force that first evening, and I had given
    it away for free. He’d just been more subtle than his friend about how he went about gaining it. I
    blushed to remember, and my heart stiffened with renewed fury and determination. “Yes,” I
    repeated. “He is in the past.”
    We kept walking. We walked one hour, two, more than two, until the glowing ripe peach of
    the sun reddened the sky in the east. And still I didn’t bleed. The child lived.
    31

CHAPTER SEVEN
    He was waiting for me outside Miriam’s shop when I turned into the alley the next morning. I
    ignored my heart’s leap, and refused to make eye contact with him as I approached.
    He was leaning on the building, looking this way and then that. “Where were you yesterday?”
    he asked without preamble when I reached the door to the shop.
    I still refused to meet his eyes. “Trying to get rid of your baby, just as you asked,” I hissed.
    “Well?”
    “Well, I’m sorry to tell you it didn’t work – and, yes, I’m okay, thanks for asking.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “I just said I was.”
    “You’ll meet me today, right? In the square like always?”
    I was still angry with him. I longed to tell him to go sell himself at a slave market, but I
    carried his child. I hated myself for it, but I also carried a small hope for something from him; I
    didn’t know what. Still not looking at him, I agreed to meet him that afternoon at our usual place,
    and then I went upstairs.

    He was waiting for me in the long shadow of the well, all concern. “How are you feeling?” he
    murmured.
    Working hard to keep my heart from softening, I shrugged.
    He cupped his hand under my elbow, steering me onto the road to Urbanus’ town house. “I
    spoke with Urbanus this morning. He wants to talk to us together this afternoon. He may be
    willing to set up a household for me in Carthage.”
    I stopped walking and finally met his eyes. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean a small house and a servant. So you and the baby could join me.”
    Against my will, hope began to blossom in my heart. What if it actually happened? I imagined
    myself and Aurelius, and our child in a house in the city of Carthage, with its markets and
    theaters far beyond anything we knew in Thagaste. I imagined having a servant put a meal in
    front of us every evening, dining at leisure in our cool, marble-tiled house, practicing our
    grammar and rhetoric while our child played.
    Although the evening was cool, I was flushed and sweating by the time Urbanus’ door slave
    let us in and led us to the sitting room, grateful for the watered-down wine which another slave
    poured for us.
    Urbanus soon joined us, stretching himself out on the couch opposite us, and motioning
    wordlessly for a goblet of wine.
    “So you find yourself in a predicament,” he said.
    Surprised by his bluntness, I nodded, looking down.
    “Have you considered getting rid of it?”
    I looked up. “I already tried. It didn’t work.”
    Urbanus nodded, frowning. “Well,” he continued, “I have high hopes for your young man. I
    think you know that. At risk of swelling his head so it won’t fit through the doorway and he’ll be
    stuck in this room forever, I will tell you that he