Barbarian's Soul (12 page)

Only one other male had ever touched her, the fuller’s son. An untried youth, he’d wooed her foolish girl’s heart into believing he loved her and would make her his wife. He’d taken her innocence in a clumsy tryst and left her with nothing more than empty promises. She cast a wary look at Bran. This man would make no promises. He would simply take.

Those glittering eyes caught her gaze and held it for what seemed an eternity before his mouth curved into a sardonic smile. For a brief moment, Adria knew that were he to smile with humor instead of menace a woman could find herself lost in it. Distracted by the thought she was unprepared when his hand dipped beneath the neck of her tunic and plucked the pouch free.

She gasped aloud with equal parts humiliation and anger but refused to lower her gaze as he broke the cord and tossed the small bag to Menw. The one-armed man caught it easily, and with remarkable nimbleness opened it. He raised his head and nodded to Bran.

“And only an hour before sunrise,” Bran muttered.

A sudden, bone-deep fatigue tugged at Adria. She wished she could give into it, fall into a deep sleep and awaken on her pallet in Miriam’s apartment to find the entire debacle had been nothing more than a horrid dream. She glanced up at Bran’s stony expression. So much for wishes.

Adria squirmed in his hold. “You have what you wanted. Now let me go.”

Bran’s only response was another darkly amused look. He wrapped his hand around one of her wrists, indicated with a nod of his head for Menw to follow and started walking toward the
Campus Martins.

She guessed his answer was no.

The shadows were lightening to predawn gray as they approached Paulin’s establishment. Adria swallowed hard against the fear creeping up her throat. The barbarian was going to gain his revenge. He was going to expose her as the thief to the jeweler who would then have her arrested. An image of herself bound to a post writhing beneath the lash caused her to stumble. Bran growled, not bothering to slow his steps until she’d regained her footing.

Menw walked alongside her, though with his long legs he could easily have kept abreast of his master. Every few steps he would give her a look that wavered between curiosity and pity. Adria ground her teeth together. She did not want his pity. Sympathy was a useless emotion. It did not keep you safe as a twelve-year-old orphan, nor did it put food in your belly or help you survive the streets of Rome.

It also did not save you from rogue barbarians.

Bran stopped a few paces from Paulin’s door and glanced at the pale, dawn sky. “Woman, you’d best hope that the jeweler is still abed.”

No, she hoped the jeweler was not home at all, but yet again, her wishes were dashed to the ground when a visibly frightened slave opened the door at Menw’s knock.

“Menw!” the slave said with relief. “You’ve returned!”

And not a moment too soon if the purple bruises visible along his arms were any indication.

“Yes, Strabo,” answered Menw. “We have recovered the pieces.”

Bran tugged her closer against his side drawing the slave’s curious attention. Adria fumed at the possessive gesture. The poor boy in front of her was a slave, chattel in the eyes of the law. She was not and she resented the implication his actions caused.

Strabo opened the door wider and gestured them inside. Adria managed to keep up with Bran’s long strides, determined to appear as though she were here of her own accord rather than carted along like a sack of cabbages.

They passed through the inner courtyard, the same one she’d slipped into the day before. The same slaves who yesterday had been too absorbed in their drudgery to notice a strange girl in their midst, did so now. They cast furtive glances at her from bowed heads and she noted the two girls who’d been in the garden with her whispering together. They weren’t talking about her, but Bran. Why their appreciative looks should irritate her made no sense to Adria, but they stopped at her pointed glower.

“Please, wait here,” instructed Strabo as he showed them into the same tiny room. Bran pushed her down onto the lone stool, taking up a defensive stance behind it while Menw stood calmly beside his master. Of course they would be calm, she thought, they weren’t about to be arrested and tortured.

It seemed an eternity before Paulin returned with his slave. The jeweler’s expression was as dark as the black silk robe he wore. He raked the two men with a disdainful look before settling on Adria. A tight knot of dread settled in her stomach at the flare of lust in his eyes.

Two slaves appeared with his heavy wooden chair. Paulin sat down, snapping his fingers. Two more slave girls rushed forward, dark circles reflecting their fatigue. One held a tray with a goblet, the other a silver pitcher of water. The vessel was silently and efficiently filled and presented to Paulin. Adria licked her dry lips as the jeweler took a long drink.

“My time is valuable,” he said, “and I am not amused that it has been wasted by your treachery.”

Adria felt Bran tense behind her. But Menw was the one to answer.

“Honored one, there was no treachery, certainly not on the part of my master. An unfortunate turn of events, I grant you, but there was no duplicity.”

Paulin grunted his doubt. He selected a fig from a tray offered by a third slave girl and considered them for a long moment. Adria did not trust him. There were too many of his kind in Rome; self-serving and manipulative, reaping the most benefit from any situation no matter the cost to others. He might wear fine clothes, but he was no different than Tiege. She sent a sideways glance to Menw, the essence of patience. Paulin had already attempted to cheat them with his inadequate offer for the jewelry. This added inconvenience tilted the scales of the deal to his side.

“Who is the girl?”

The question caught Adria off guard. Why the sudden focus on her? Paulin sucked on the fruit, openly leered at her. Despite the heat of the morning she wished fervently for a cloak. Instead, she gripped the sides of the chair to keep from shielding herself. She would not add to his power by showing her discomfort.

“She was not with you on your last visit.”

She held her breath, waited for Bran to accuse her. “This...” Bran paused.

Adria straightened her shoulders. Do it, she wanted to scream, condemn me. Punish me for doing what I must to survive. A wash of tears stung her eyes but she blinked them away, refusing to show any weakness. As if he sensed her distress, the barbarian grasped her shoulder with one hand. She shrugged him off, gritted her teeth in anger when he replaced it with a firm squeeze. She would fight, she would not go to the slaughter like a meek lamb.

Bran released a slow breath which sounded angry and irritated at the same time. “This girl is the one who found your jewelry. She returned the pieces to my servant.”

Adria snapped shut her mouth which had dropped open. What was he doing? She dared a glance over her shoulder. Bran did not look like a man with scruples or compassion. While his expression was a careful mask of indifference she sensed an underlying emotion that she wasn’t certain she wanted to identify.

Paulin gave a short laugh, filled for all its brevity with scorn. “This gutter trash found these gems? And returned them?”

Adria chafed at the insult. She took Bran’s warning when he squeezed her shoulder again but forced her gaze to remain on the jeweler. Arrogant bastard.

“Yes,” Bran answered. “That is what I am telling you.”

Gods, the jeweler must hold a death wish, Adria thought, to risk calling Bran a liar.

Paulin raked the three of them with a skeptical look. After a moment’s consideration he snapped his fingers. Strabo hurried forward and took the bag from Menw. The slave opened it and laid the necklace, earrings and bracelets on the table.

Adria was struck again at the beauty of the jewelry. So simple, yet so elegant. Any woman would feel like a queen adorned with such finery. Perhaps even gutter trash.

Paulin leaned back and folded his hands over his chest. “I’m eager to return to my bed and get this business behind me. Strabo, bring my coffer.”

The slave, attuned to his master and eager to avoid further abuse had already anticipated his request and set the chest on the table. Paulin drew out a large key from beneath his sleeping robe, a match to the new lock securing the chest. He emptied a pouch into his hand and began to count. “Three-hundred-and-fifty
aureus
.”

Menw inhaled sharply, but it was the anger emanating from Bran that drew Adria’s attention. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat, waited for him to explode into a rage.

But when he spoke Bran’s voice was just as even as before, though it held a layer of warning a deaf man could hear. “The price is five hundred
aureus
.”

A sly smile curled Paulin’s lip. “Ah, yes but that was before the unfortunate events of yesterday. It was quite terrifying to have been robbed and to have the mutual respect and regard of a fellow tradesman brought into question.”

“Mutual respect?” Bran spat out. “When has a Roman respected anyone other than his own reflection?”

“Bran,” Menw warned in a low voice.

Bran cut off his servant with a sharp word in his foreign tongue. Adria saw the resignation as well as the stung pride in the other man’s sad eyes.

“Our agreement was for five hundred
aureus,
for the commissioned pieces you requested for the valued client who will pay you twice the amount.”

“They are used goods,” replied Paulin smoothly. “Thus, their value is depreciated. However, I am not an unreasonable man.” Adria’s chest tightened as the jeweler leaned toward them. “Give me the girl and I will give you the full amount.”

Chapter Seven

T
he squeal of the pig barely registered with Bran as he strode into the path of a cart carrying the unfortunate swine to the butcher’s market. The donkey pulling the cart brayed and kicked its hind legs in a fit of temper as the irate driver attempted to regain control and implored his gods to bring a curse on Bran’s head.

Too late for that, he thought darkly. The gods were entertaining themselves quite nicely without the invocation.

Continuing down the lane, his thoughts tumbled in a storm cloud of anger. In one hand he held a sack of three-hundred-and-fifty
aureus
. In the other, the source of his current black mood; a slip of a girl with the curves of a woman and amethyst eyes, eyes sparking with temper and boring a hole into the back of his skull.

He’d lost his mind, Bran decided. Two years of fighting in the arena, living in chains, enduring a degradation so complete that at one time the protesting donkey would have been worth more in the Roman world than he, a slave. Through it all, he’d managed to hold onto a sliver of sanity only to lose it to a mere female.

He’d had every intention of doing exactly what he’d promised when they’d entered the jeweler’s house. Collect his fee, turn over the little thief and reclaim the small measure of respect he’d lost beneath the Roman’s scorn.

His gut tightened at the memory of Paulin’s lecherous offer and he berated himself all over. Turning the girl over to him would have been a simple solution and he would have gotten the full price for his goods. But even as the thought formed he had rejected it.

Giving the girl over to the Roman seemed a betrayal to her at some level. Not that he could explain why. He certainly had no connection to her, no interest in her save regaining his property. She could have disappeared into the streets of the city never to be seen again and he’d have gone on about his business without a second thought. She was a Roman. She did not matter.

But by Danu, the girl had spirit.

She hadn’t cowered or begged for mercy from either himself or the jeweler. No, his little thief had sat there in rebellious silence, every line of her body rigid with pride. He’d felt the enormity of it through his touch, had caught impressions of fierce loyalty and determination with his gift. Loyalty only to herself, he was sure, but loyalty he understood. Those same emotions had helped him endure every miserable day of his enslavement.

That that kinship stirred his blood was of no consequence.

“Where are you taking me?”

An image of capturing her lips with his own popped into Bran’s head, displacing the memory of her breasts brushing his chest. “To my house,” he answered gruffly.

“Your home?”

“No,” he snapped, sparing a glance over his shoulder and instantly wishing he hadn’t. Her chin was lifted in silent defiance, that luscious mouth was pressed into a tight line, those eyes sparked violet fire. He marveled that he hadn’t been incinerated on the spot. “My home is not this pestilence-filled cesspool.”

“Mine is,” she answered, tugging ineffectually against his hold, “and I want to go back!”

Well, he did not and why would she? The city was crowded, noisy, the streets filled with refuse and human waste. And that was some in the more affluent areas. The hole he’d found her in had been worse. “No.”

“Bastard,” the girl muttered beneath her breath.

He’d been called much worse.

“You cannot keep the girl prisoner,” said Menw, ignoring their arguing.

“Yes, I can,” he answered curtly, rounding the corner of the street that led to the modest mud-brick house he rented. “There will be payment for the coin I have lost.”

Behind him the girl gasped. Bran slanted a look first at Menw’s disapproving frown then to the girl’s pale expression. It took him all of two heartbeats to realize what they thought he’d meant by payment. He ran a hand through his hair. He was many things. A killer. A monster. He was not a rapist.

He leaned toward her and lowered his voice so that only she could hear. “Be assured, when I take a woman to my bed, she comes of her own will and with gratitude.”

Bran heard her breath hitch and watched as a deep blush crept up her neck, the maidenly reaction doing nothing to dampen the fire in her eyes. His cock twitched at the enticing contrast. With effort he stifled a groan and continued. “You will work in my household to repay the difference in my profit.”