I let Larius drive. I reckoned if I tried my hands would shake.
She unsettled me. I had wanted to see her but now I had, everything about the occasion left me shifting in my seat.
Nero was plunging straight towards the olive grove, eagerly showing off how well he knew the way. Larius sat with one arm on his knee, unconsciously copying Petronius. He turned sideways to inspect me.
'You look as if you'd been poked in the ear with a broom.'
'Nothing so subtle!' I said.
'Excuse me,' Larius goaded heartlessly. 'But who was that?'
'That? Oh, her in the ribbons? The honourable Helena Justina. Father in the senate and two brothers on foreign service. Married once; one divorce. An adequate education, a passable face, plus property worth a quarter of a million in her own right-'
'Seemed a pleasant sort of woman!'
'She called me a rat.'
'Oh yes, I gathered you two were very close!' my nephew declared, with the candid, casual sarcasm he was honing to perfection nowadays.
My brain was wanting to race, and I was trying to prevent it. All the way down to the olive grove I scowled in silence. Larius whistled jauntily through his teeth.
Rather than think about Helena, I considered Caprenius Marcellus. He might not be active politically now, but he was still keenly alert. He must have known all about his son's plot while Pertinax was alive-and probably encouraged it. I bet he knew where Aufidius Crispus was too.
I wondered if Marcellus had invited Helena to visit him in order to pick her brains about developments on the official side after his son's death.
Meanwhile I had no doubt Helena had abandoned me. I could hardly believe it. Six weeks before things had been so different. Remembering, a slow, rich warmth spread into me, fixing me where I sat… And what would that smart young lady be thinking now? Whether to have a pound or two of Lucanian sausage or a great fat conical sheep's cheese from the Lactarii Mountains for her lunch. Helena had a spanking appetite; she would probably need both.
Larius and I ate our apples in the olive grove.