Scowling, I paid up; then we left the restaurant.
We walked slowly on the road by the shore while we waited for her bearers to reappear. The hard note remained in her voice: 'Do you want me to introduce you to Aemilius Rufus in Herculaneum?'
'No thanks.'
'So you won't go!'
'I'll go if I find I need to.' She exclaimed with annoyance as I tried to rally her. 'Look, let's not fight… Here are your chair men. Come on, fruit-'
'Fruit?' That got her, bursting into her rare, sweet, unexpected laugh.
'Did Pertinax have a pet name for you?'
'No.' Her laughter subsided instantly. No comment seemed necessary. Then she turned to me with a deliberate look. 'Will you tell me something? Was it when you were working at my ex-husband's house that you changed your mind about us?'
My face must have answered her.
I remembered the comfortable stylishness of that house on the Quirinal, which I knew had been a wedding gift from Marcellus to Helena and Pertinax. Only the gods could say what other sumptuous luxuries had been showered on the young couple by their relations and friends. Geminus and I must have catalogued some of it. Tortoiseshell bedheads. Mosaic glass serving bowls. Gold filigree plates. Exotic embroidered coverlets Queen Dido might have slept under. Polished maple table tops. Ivory chairs. Lampstands and candelabra. Camphorwood chests… and innumerable perfect sets of spoons.
'Marcus, surely even you could understand that if a house was all I wanted, I would never have arranged my own divorce from Pertinax?'
'Just being realistic!'
Helena slipped from my side and into her chair before I could even consider how to say goodbye. She closed the half-door herself. The bearers were stooping to the carrying poles; I grasped at the door, wanting to hold her back. 'Don't!' she commanded.
'Wait-shall I see you again?'
'No; there's no point.'
'There is!' There had to be.
I gestured the bearers to stop but they would only take orders from her. As the chair lurched when they raised it, I glimpsed her expression. She was comparing me with Pertinax. Rejection by a husband who was too crass to know what he was doing had been bad enough; though since no senator's daughter has much say in the choice of her husband, Pertinax was simply a false entry in life's ledger that could be cursed and written off. To go straight from him to a cynical lover who left her after the most casual kind of usage was entirely her own mistake.
Of course, I could have told her it happens every day. Women who know they know better frequently cast themselves at treacherous men whose sense of commitment only lasts as long as the rascally smile that gets them into bed…
Unlike Helena Justina, most women forgive themselves.