Jenny: Broken

Master Lucius straightened and looked hard at the slave-girl. She averted her gaze and went about her work with numb silence. She would be pretty, he thought in passing, if she smiled. He glanced across the clearing at the Guttersnipe, hands on hips, telling something to Wulf. Wulf gestured widely; the Guttersnipe gesticulated with still more violence. Though they were too far away for him to hear their debate, as he predicted, Wulf shrugged and did as she said.

Coming back round to Domitia, he thought no two girls could be more different. But he left it where she did, lying broken to one side of the issue, in the hopes that presently, later, when things stopped whirling, she might look at it and love it, and pick it up to put it back together.

And then he wondered what it was she had broken.

"I'm going to give Pliny a tongue-lashing on the Great Day, so help me, Master Lucius!" the Guttersnipe shouted across the lawn.

He waved at her and gestured to Domitia. "Here we go. Help me up, girl." He put his foot in the stirrup and grunted as much as his horse as he heaved himself upward.