It was Portia, inevitably, who arranged it.
Portia had a gift for creating situations that looked accidental and were not, and her invitation to a small informal gathering at her home — a dozen women, afternoon wine, no particular occasion — was delivered to both Livia and Princess Daria with the cheerful innocence of a woman who would have been magnificent in espionage.
Livia arrived knowing exactly who else would be there.
Daria arrived, Livia suspected, knowing exactly the same thing.
They were seated near each other by the gentle management of their hostess, and for the first twenty minutes they spoke of general things — Rome in summer, the relative merits of different Alexandrian perfumes, a theatrical performance that was currently causing debate — with the careful courtesy of two people who are each waiting to see who will speak plainly first.
It was Daria.
"You write well," she said, during a pause when the women around them were occupied with a disagreement about the theater. "The treaty analysis. I read a copy that my uncle obtained. He should not have shown it to me." A pause. "I'm glad he did."
Livia held very still. "That document was—"
"Not attributed to anyone. Yes. But it had a particular quality of thinking that I recognized, from — other sources." Daria's expression was not hostile. It was simply honest in the way of someone who has decided that honesty is the only currency worth spending. "You see the gap between how policy is written and how it actually affects people's lives. That is not a common thing."
"My father was a senator," Livia said carefully. "I grew up watching."
"And learned more than most of the senators themselves." Daria looked at her directly. "I am not your enemy, Livia Varro."
The use of her name, unhesitating, landed somewhere complicated.
"I know," Livia said. "I hope you know the same is true."
"I do." Daria turned her wine cup slowly. "I will tell you something honestly, and I ask you to receive it as it is meant." She looked up. "I was raised to be a piece in a political arrangement. I have never, in my twenty-six years, been asked what I actually wanted. Not once." Something moved briefly behind her composed expression. "I do not love Lucian. I think you know that. I don't believe he loves me, which is a thing we have both had the honesty to acknowledge. What I have with him is — respect. Mutual understanding. The recognition of two people who have both been arranged." She paused. "What you have with him, from what I have seen and what I have heard, is something else."
Livia did not deny it. She was past the point where denial served anything.
"I am not in the business of asking you to step aside," Livia said. "That is not — that is not a thing I am capable of asking."
"I know that too." Daria almost smiled. "What I am telling you is that I am not going to be the obstacle everyone assumes I am. I am telling you that my uncle is a reasonable man and the review is going in a reasonable direction, and that I have my own thoughts about my own future which do not require a husband who is somewhere else." She picked up her wine. "I would like, if it is possible, to be something other than an obstacle in a story. I would like to be a person in it."
"You are a person in it," Livia said, and meant it completely.
They looked at each other for a moment across the small space between them, and something shifted — not into friendship, not yet, but into the possibility of it. The acknowledgment of two women who had both been moved around a board like pieces and had both, quietly and without permission, decided to become players instead.
Portia appeared at Livia's elbow with more wine and the expression of a woman deeply satisfied with herself.
"You two seem to be getting on," she said.
"Portia," Livia said, "did you arrange this?"
"I arranged a lovely afternoon gathering," Portia said serenely. "Everything else is entirely your own doing." She filled Daria's cup. "More wine, Princess?"
"Please," said Daria, and she almost smiled again, and this time she let it reach her eyes.