Duke of Desire (Maiden Lane #12)(24)

He frowned at the name, his chest tightening. “You fell in love with your friend’s husband?”

“No!” Her eyes had widened. “Good Lord, no.”

“But you were going to marry Kyle,” he said softly. “That’s what everyone thought. That’s why the Dionysus assumed you were the bride at the wedding.”

She nodded. “Yes, we had a sort of understanding—nothing was ever said aloud, mind you—but we both knew that eventually he would propose to me. But then he fell in love with Alf—the woman he made his wife.”

“Ah.” He studied her, the still posture, the slim, white hands, the calm face. Had she not felt any regret when the man she’d thought would marry her turned to another woman? Jealousy? Rage?

Did it matter?

He had her now. She was his and he would not let her entertain other men—in body or thought.

Even if that made him a cad.

The door to the room opened and he turned to see Ubertino coming in.

The manservant grinned when he saw that Raphael was awake. “Your Grace! Praise God you’ve woken. I will tell Nicoletta to bring her soup and I will fetch some water.”

“Thank you,” Raphael said, and the manservant left again.

He turned to see that his duchess was stroking the cover of the book she still held.

“What part had you come to?” he asked.

She glanced up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Polybius.” He nodded at the book.

“You’ve read it?”

His lips twitched. “In Latin. And Italian, but a bad translation.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “I’m reading about the sack of Carthage. It was a brutal time. So many killed.”

“It was warfare.” He hesitated, but he was curious about what she thought. “Have you come to Hasdrubal’s wife?”

“Yes, I have.” Her pink lips drew down. “For a woman to do such a thing—to fling her two children into a fire and then jump in herself, cursing her husband? I think she must have been mad. Or much too proud.”

“You didn’t find her suicide noble?”

“No.” She stared at him. “Do you?”

He shrugged. “Carthage had fallen. The fate that awaited her and her children was rape and slavery. I can understand a proud woman choosing death over such a life.”

“And her husband?” she asked, leaning a little forward, her cheeks pinkened with passion at her argument. “What about cursing her husband, the father of her children?”

He felt his own face grow stony. “Hasdrubal surrendered to the Romans instead of fighting to the death. More, he begged for mercy. His wife had no obligation to stand by such a man.”

“Had she not?” his duchess asked softly. “By wifely love or honor or simple decency? She took his children—took herself—away from him at the moment of his greatest defeat.”

“Madam, I say he was a coward and she a noble lady.”

“Then I return,” she said softly, “that he was a man trying to live while she had given up all hope.”

He stared at her. Where did she find such na?veté? His lips curved in a mirthless smile. “There was no hope to live for, only slavery, rape, and death. The honorable thing to do was what she in fact did: suicide.”

“No.” In her fervor she placed her hand over his on the coverlet, though he thought she didn’t notice. “No. While there is life there is always hope. Where you see a coward begging for his own life, I see a man who despite his pride has decided to persevere. Remember that the siege of Carthage went on for three long years. Had Hasdrubal truly been a cowardly man he could have surrendered at any point during those years. Yet he did not. He fought. Only when the walls were breached and the city fallen did he throw down his sword. That is not the act of a coward.”

“And his wife?” he asked quietly, “What of she? Should she have lived as a slave? Perhaps as some Roman soldier’s whore?”

She lifted her chin. “Yes, I think so. To kill oneself is—”

He sneered. “You place Christian morality on a pagan queen.”

“No, let me finish.” She drew a breath, thinking, perhaps composing her thoughts. “In my view it is a waste to kill oneself, even if one is raped and degraded. Hasdrubal’s wife was the mother of two sons. She was a person in her own right. Even in slavery there is always the prospect, however slim, of escape. Of rising up and rebelling against those who have hurt you.”

He looked at her and wondered if she’d ever suffered in her life. Had ever found the thought of death preferable to the thought of living another day.

Dear God, he hoped not.

“And if she did escape slavery,” he said gently. “In this hypothetical world where Hasdrubal’s wife never flung herself on the fire, never sacrificed her children, let us grant her escape and let us grant her the impossible fortune of finding her husband again. Do you think that noble man, who begged on his knees from the Romans who had destroyed his city, would accept her back? Would he caress her face and never ask about the men who had rutted on her body when she was in captivity? Could he take to his bed again a wife so thoroughly defiled?”

“I don’t know,” she replied quietly, “but he should. Whatever might happen to her wouldn’t be her fault.” She looked him in the eye, her gaze gentle and ruthlessly earnest. “Just as if you had not rescued me from the Lords of Chaos, what might have happened to me that night would not be my fault. If I had been able to escape them afterwards, I would have. And I would not have taken my own life.”