Man Eater Read Online Free PDF Page B

slogged to build up the business and a whim of the Emperor’s knocked it flat. Just like that.
    Not that Fronto let the matter rest. ‘What’ll it look like, Billi, my wife working in a dump like that? Jupiter alone knows where half those rags have come from, and you know what tongues are round here. Look at Fronto, they’ll say. Can’t keep his young wife satisfied.’
    Balbilla giggled. ‘Well, I know better, don’t I!’
    The age gap never bothered her, even with him being nearly as old as her Dad. The only thing that made her self-conscious was him having a position and all. She paused at the gate. Even if she weren’t quite sure what that position was… All the same, she thought, hurrying on, this was her father they were talking about.
    ‘I can’t leave him in the lurch.’
    ‘Of course you can, you soft dollop.’ Whenever Fronto scooped her into his arms, she felt six years old, loved and protected. ‘I’ve worked my balls off to give you the best, Billi. Tell him to sling his bloody hook.’
    How could she, though? She’d stood by while his family, his town, his business and now finally his health had trickled away. She owed her father that much.
    Dad’s right, though, Balbilla thought, stepping into the cool of the colonnade. It is a nice house. Grander than anything I ever expected, but then Fronto was in the army twenty years, he was bound to have a stash put by, stands to reason. Each time she looked around she felt the same tingle of excitement. A garden of her own! Servants, fancy linens, rings for every finger. Even a wet-nurse for the twins! And you wouldn’t have thought it of Fronto, not to look at him.
    Yet for all the gilded stucco and pretty mosaics, the house was nothing without her husband. Balbilla swallowed hard. It was dead important, too, what she had to tell him. She searched around for a rough edge of her nibbled nails to chew. He’s never gone off without saying nothing before. Idolizes them babies, he does, always tucks them up when he can—or at least said so when he can’t. She thought back to yesterday. What was it he’d said? There was work a bit north, that’s right. Nothing much, and he’d be back by supper time. She remembered that last bit. Back by supper time. Because he liked his food, did Fronto, and she always tried to give him a good meal to go to bed on.
    When he was home, that is. Since the army he didn’t really have a job—not what Dad called a proper job, any road. Private commissions Fronto calls them. Nothing regular, but he always treats his Billikins to a new tunic or a silver bangle when he comes home, and adds a bit to the house—a bust or a frieze or something—so it pays handsome. Whatever it is.
    Well, I suppose I’ll have to wait before giving him me message. Balbilla shrugged her shoulders, kissed her sleeping infants then trudged back up the hill towards her father’s shop. I expect he’s got held up, she thought as she passed the flushed face of the advocate’s secretary sneaking back into the law courts, and we’ll have a good old laugh when I tell him how worried I was.
    ‘You daft pudden,’ he’ll say. ‘You know I gets called out all hours.’
    Oh, he was a popular man was her Fronto. She just wished she knew why he hadn’t come home last night.
    *
    Watched pots never boil, this is a fact. They simmer gently for hours and hours, then the instant you turn your back, over they go, leaving a godawful mess for some poor sod to mop up. So staring into space with your fingers crossed is unlikely to improve a cat’s navigational facilities. Neither, Claudia acknowledged ruefully, is self-imposed starvation. While the midday meal had come and gone, who knows, there might be scraps in the dining room?
    Well, there was a scrap. Of sorts. On the couch beneath the window a knot of squirming limbs and tangled linen writhed like serpents, and a man’s doughy buttocks rose and fell in the grip of long, hennaed talons. Claudia spun on her