Читать «Scandal takes a Holiday (мдф-1)» онлайн - страница 7

Aren't we staying with Lucius and Maia?" Helena was fond of them both.

Not likely. Petro has been loaned a flash mansion by a damned construction magnate."

What's wrong with that?" Helena was smiling. She knew me.

I hate handouts." She nodded; I knew she too preferred our family to live quietly, with no obligations to patrons. Most of Rome operates on favours; we two had always made our own way. But we can go and have a free dinner!" There were limits to my high-mindedness. Back at the town house, Petro and Maia were already eating in one of their host's frescoed dining rooms. He had several. This was made airy by folding doors, currently flung open on to a small garden, where a tiled turquoise niche housed a sea god statue. A child's hat was hanging on his conch shell. Small sandals, clay animals and a home made chariot littered the garden area. Space was quickly made for us on the large, cushion-strewn couches. Maia gave us a calculating look, as she rearranged the children. Marius, Cloelia, Ancus and little Rhea, who were aged between twelve and six, all four of them bright as new carpentry nails, together with Petro's quiet daughter Petronilla, who must be about ten.

Are you staying or what?" demanded my sister. She and I came from a large, loud, quarrelsome family whose members spent much effort avoiding each other.

No, we've taken a holiday apartment, just the other side of the Decumanus," I reassured her. Maia did not want us cluttering up her already busy household, but she went into a huff. Suit yourselves!" Petronius came back from stabling Helena's luggage cart. It looks as if you've come for the rest of the season by the amount you have brought!" he said.

Oh it's holiday reading." Helena smiled calmly. I was rather behind with the Daily Gazette, so my father has lent me his old copies."

Three sacks of scrolls?" Petro asked her, in disbelief. Clearly he had poked through Helena's luggage without shame. Everyone knew that the strange girl I had chosen would rather have her nose in literature than tend to her two little daughters or walk to the corner market for a mullet and some gossip like a normal Aventine wife. Helena Justina was more likely to neglect me because she was deep in a new Greek play than because she was having a fling with another man. She did tend our daughters in her own fashion; Julia, at three, was already being taught her alphabet. Fortunately I liked eccentric women and was not afraid of forward children. Or so I thought so far. Helena fixed her gaze on me. The news all looks rather dull at the moment. The imperial family are at their country estates for the summer, and even Infamia has taken a holiday." Infamia was the pseudonym of whoever compiled the salacious scandal about senators" wives having affairs with jockeys. I happened to know that Infamia was shifty and unreliable, and if he really had taken a holiday, he had forgotten to clear the dates with his employers.