I, Claudia Read Free

had been together for seven years, long before Claudia took up as a dancer in Genoa, and having found each other, both of them lonely and starving and living off their wits, there wasn’t a single secret they hadn’t shared since.
    ‘Prrrrrr.’
    ‘Me neither.’
    Melissa had burned the evidence, Julia and Flavia had provided the perfect alibi. All the same…
    She drained the goblet in one swallow. She’d seen some sights in her time, but many moons would wax and wane before Claudia, inured as she was, would forget the corpse of Quintus Aurelius Crassus, a stab wound to the heart and two bloody, raw holes where his eyes should have been. This made the fourth such murder in the past six months and each of the victims had been a respectable, high-ranking official. The authorities, under that foul-mouthed midget Callisunus, were no doubt sweating their sandals off in the search for a common link. So far they hadn’t found it, but Claudia knew what—or rather who — that link was.
    Her.
    ‘We’ve got a problem here, poppet.’
    The cat snuggled up under her ear and drew a long, deep, contented breath.
    ‘It can only be a matter of time before they latch on to us, then dear old Gaius will know what we’ve been up to. Now we can’t have that, can we?’
    ‘Mrrow.’
    Gaius Seferius was old and he was fat and his breath smelled, but he was frightfully rich and, praise be to Hymen, he didn’t pester her for sex. His family was grown up, and he didn’t want another, although his position as one of the most successful wine merchants in the city had dictated that he ought to remarry. So why not take pity on the young and lovely widow of a judge from the Northern Provinces, grieving for an entire family wiped out in the plague? Providing she didn’t interfere in any of his activities, commercial or personal, Claudia had everything at her disposal. She bridged her fingers in concentration.
    ‘Shame patricians were out of the question, eh, Drusilla?’
    Too bloody canny, that’s why. Never dream of taking anyone on face value, no matter how tragic the circumstances. Pity, really, because Claudia was hellbent on having aristocratic children. She might not make the grade herself, but by Jupiter she’d get at least one son in the Senate if it was the last thing she did. One million sesterces, that’s what it needed. One measly million. Still. She had settled for a leading light in the equestrian order, the next best thing, and although the marriage hadn’t been consummated, compensation came in the knowledge that Gaius’s chest pains occurred with increasing regularity. It could only be a matter of time before tragedy struck and she was widowed ‘again’—and then she could think about bearing sons for promotion to the Senate.
    Yes, indeed. It was merely a question of waiting… Unfortunately, after less than a year of mixing with empty-headed matrons with whom she had nothing whatsoever in common, Claudia realized, somewhat to her disquiet, that wealth, social standing and a life of luxury were nowhere near enough. It wasn’t that she regretted the wheeling and dealing that had been necessary to hook Gaius, far from it, it was simply that she’d been living on the edge for too long to suddenly give up the thrills. In short, she needed stimulation. Thus to feed the giant cuckoo she had hatched, Claudia had resorted to her old business activities.
    ‘What do you think we should do?’
    Drusilla’s rough tongue was abrasive on her cheek, but she made no effort to draw away.
    ‘So do I, poppet. Because if we don’t find out who’s knocking off our clients, someone else will and that’ll really put the fox among our comfy little chickens.’
    She kissed the cat between its ears and swallowed a whole goblet of warm, honeyed wine. Drusilla lifted her face, twitched her ears in the direction of the door and let out a short, guttural growl. Claudia tapped the side of her mouth thoughtfully.
    ‘Yes, that had crossed