Leda is a gladiatrix, before she became a gladiatrix she was the daughter of a Roman Senator who fell in love with Marcus Flavius Donatus. That love led he to be exiled and disowned. When Marcus returns to take up his role as senator after his father's death he discovers her and decides that she's going to marry him.

Leda is now used to a certain amount of freedom and she's hiding quite a big secret. Marcus is also carrying around some serious baggage which needs resolving.

Now it's not a bad read but as a person who has read too much (and done a degree) in Classical Civilization there were parts that just didn't work. I'm very sorry but there is pretty much no way that the senator having Christian leanings wouldn't be a bigger scandal that it was made to be, and pretty much no way that some scions of the upper classes would associate themselves with the, then, religion of the slave and lowest classes. There were also a few other points that just didn't sit right with me, from a historians point of view, that lost it rating points. Still it was quite readable and the conflict and love between the characters quite believable. ( )