by Louise Allen
‘No more water for a few minutes. It is dangerous when you have become so thirsty. You are not French.’
So, he must start thinking after all. ‘Would you believe, American?’ he offered.
‘Really?’ It seemed she would. Her brows lifted in surprise, but she did not reject the idea. The Americans were allies of France, of course.
‘It is a long time since I saw Boston,’ Quin conceded. A long time since he had visited his cousins in the Lincolnshire port of that name, that was. He was sent forth to die for his country from time to time, that went with the territory, but he preferred not to lie for it, if he could help it. Usually a little misdirection was sufficient. His lids drooped closed, then cracked open again as he became aware of his body as more than something painful and hot.
‘Who took my clothes off?’ He was naked under wet cloth that ran from collarbone to toes.
‘I did,’ his reluctant nurse stated crisply. ‘Oh, really,’ she added as his fingers tightened reflexively over the upper edge of the sheet. ‘There is no need to blush, I am a widow. I can assure you that one man is much as another to me.’
Quin unclenched his teeth. Damn it, he was not blushing. ‘But I can assure you, madam, that one woman is not much as another to me.’
‘You would prefer that I left you to die? I was not making comparisons, so you need not be alarmed.’ Now she was amused, although she did not smile. There was something about the way her eyes crinkled at the corner, the ghost of a dimple in her cheek. Then it was gone as her gaze swept over his shrouded form. He was going to blush in a moment. ‘That sheet is drying out. I had best replace it before I deal with your arm.’
There was the sound of cloth being agitated in water, the swish of her skirts as she moved. Quin clung to the edge of his sheet with a prudery that astonished him. With a wet flap that showered his face with droplets the weight of another sodden sheet landed on top of him. ‘Grip the edge of the top one,’ she ordered and yanked the lower sheet away from the foot of the bed with a snap that left him covered even as it administered a sharp slap of wet linen to his wedding tackle in passing.
Quin suppressed the word that leapt to his lips and released his death grip on the sheet. As he squinted down the length of his body he reflected ruefully that with the way it moulded itself to his form he might as well simply be wearing a layer of white paint. And goodness knew what was the matter with him. His experience with women was not such as to leave him blushing like a virgin curate when one ran her eyes over his body.
On the other hand, the woman advancing on him with a beaker in one hand and a bundle of unpleasantly sharp-looking implements in the other, was hardly a cheerful member of the muslin company.
‘You may have some more water and then I will clean up your arm.’ She settled on a stool beside him and Quin, his temper ragged, reached out to take the beaker before she could hold it to his lips.
‘It is merely a graze from a spent bullet.’
‘It is a gouge I could lay my finger in and it is infected. I really do not wish to have to remove your arm.’
‘Over my dead body!’ Quin managed not to choke on a mouthful of water. Damn the female, he could believe she was capable of doing just that, with her screaming victim tied to the bed.
‘Your choice.’ She shrugged.
‘Very well.’ Quin handed her the beaker and pulled the sheet away from his left arm. He’d been about to sit up, but one look at the festering mess left him glad he was flat on his back. This was not going to be amusing and he had no intention of gratifying his tormentor by fainting.
Chapter Two
Madame Valsac seemed competent, Quin had to admit. Her array of unpleasant tools were sharp and clean, she had hot water and sponges and torn linen all set out. She turned and studied him, momentarily distracting him with speculation about the colour of her eyes. Grey or green or greenish grey? Greyish green... He took a surreptitious hold on the bed frame with his other hand and gazed upwards past her right ear. It was a nice ear, framed by the hair she had pushed back behind it. Neat and elegantly shaped and—hell’s teeth!
‘What is your name?’
Distracting the patient to keep his mind off things, Quin thought, enduring an exquisite pang in silence. ‘Quintus Bredon,’ he said when he could catch his breath. ‘You can call me Quin.’ Might as well use part of his real name, there was less chance of mistakes that way. ‘And yours?’ He knew perfectly well, there could not be two women of her age with Woodward, but it was necessary to play the game and besides, he had not been told her first name. Given that she had stripped him to the buff, that at least should put them on some sort of intimate footing.
‘Madame Valsac. You may call me madam.’
Thank you, madam!
She did something that made his vision swirl and darken and then, suddenly, the worst of the pain eased. ‘There, that is clean now. How did you do this?’
‘I stood in the way of a bullet from a group of Bedouin raiders.’ Quin matched the indifferent courtesy of her tone. ‘Careless of me, but I woke to find them removing my camels and all my gear.’
‘Careless indeed.’ She began to bandage his arm. ‘You were alone? What is an American doing in Egypt?’
‘I was with a small group of engineers, but I wanted to get back further south to study the way the river flows and they intended to stay another few days. I am interested in building dams.’ There was no way to avoid fabricating the story of how and why he was in Egypt. The books he had studied so carefully on board ship had left his head spinning with pharaohs, weird gods, indecipherable hieroglyphs and wild theories. Trying to fool a scholar about his level of knowledge was impossible, better to pretend something he was at least able to discuss in English.
‘I had no idea the emperor had Americans amongst his savants.’ She tied a competent knot and laid his throbbing arm back down. ‘You will be glad to hear there is a small detachment of troops at Shek Amer, just to the south of us. They will be delighted to meet you, I have no doubt.’
‘No doubt.’ Hell and damnation, that was the last thing he needed. The plan was to warn Woodward and his daughter that the Mamelukes were advancing from the south. It was, in fact, the truth, although he had no intention of adding the rest of the facts, that this was in support of the French, besieged in Cairo by a combined British and Turkish force. No one, French ally or not, would want to be in the path of the lethal mounted Mameluke militias under Murad Bey. He’d intended to persuade the Woodward and Madame Valsac to take a boat north with him, not telling them they were heading straight into the arms of the British.
Now he had to deal with French soldiers who would know there were no engineers in the area and who might even have received the news that General Abercrombie was harrying the French out of Alexandria. And there was a strong probability they would also know there were no Americans amongst the motley group of scholars, scientists, engineers and artists who had found themselves stranded with the army when their beloved Napoleon abandoned them almost two years before. Bonaparte had returned to France and staged the coup that gave him complete power and the title Emperor, and had left his generals to manage as best they might.
Quin eyed the woman he was rapidly coming to think of as his adversary as she stood and began to clear her instruments away. Nobody’s fool and apparently cool to the point of frigidity, she was not going to be easy to panic into flight. If the worst came to the worst, he was going to have to steal a boat, kidnap her and leave her father to his fate.
Madame Valsac turned at the doorway, the light behind her, and looked back over her shoulder, her figure outlined through the fine linen of her robe. His body, cheerfully ignoring the looming presence of nearby French troops, heat-stroke, fever and his feelings about the woman’s personality, stirred under the weight of wet sheet.
‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked. ‘I thought I heard you moan. I have opium if the pain is very bad.’ From her tone it sounded as though she would as soon hi
t him over the head and render him unconscious that way, if it caused her less trouble.
‘No, nothing at all,’ Quin lied as he closed his eyes. ‘Everything’s just perfect.’ I really, really did not join the diplomatic service for this...
He had actually joined it because sitting on his courtesy title as a marquess’s fifth, and very much unwanted, son did not appeal, despite a modest estate and an equally modest competence to maintain his style. His four elder brothers—the wanted sons with the real names—they all had their roles. Henry was the heir, learning to be a marquess. James was the spare and learning to be a marquess’s right-hand man in the time left in a packed schedule of wenching, gaming and sporting endeavours, Charles was a colonel in the Guards and looked so good in his uniform that one forgot that he was as dense as London fog and George was a clergyman, clawing his way up the hierarchy towards a bishop’s throne with unchristian determination.
‘It will have to be the navy for you, Quintus,’ Lord Deverall, Marquess of Malvern, had announced on Quin’s fourteenth birthday. It had been a convenient conceit, naming him for a number. It meant the marquess could always remember his name.
‘No, my lord.’ He was not used to contradicting the marquess, simply because the man did not speak to the cuckoo in his nest if he could avoid it, so the opportunity rarely arose. ‘I do not excel at mathematics and it is essential for a naval officer,’ he explained.
The Marquess of Malvern, five foot ten of slender, sandy-haired refinement, the model that Henry, James, Charles and George matched exactly, had glowered at him. Quintus, already as tall, blond and, most inconveniently, the spitting image of his mother’s lover, the late and unlamented Viscount Hempstead, had stared back. ‘Then what the devil am I to do with you?’ the marquess demanded.
‘I am good at languages,’ Quin stated. ‘I will be a diplomat.’ And that had been that. An appropriate tutor, a degree from Oxford, a few favours called in at the Foreign Office and Lord Quintus Bredon Deverall was neatly off the marquess’s hands. And he was just where he wanted to be, on a career path that would, if he applied himself, see him with an ambassadorial post or a high government position, a title of his own and an existence entirely separate from his family.
And here I am in the middle of this God-forsaken desert, a war breaking out north and south and plague sweeping the land in a most appropriately Biblical manner. If I’d wanted to be a soldier, I’d have learned to shoot better, if I’d wanted to be a doctor, I’d have paid more attention to my science lectures and if I’d wanted to march across hundreds of square miles of sand, I’d have been a camel, he grumbled to himself, then grinned. It was, despite everything, an interesting change from endless negotiations, diplomatic dinners and decoding correspondence in six languages. Madame Valsac was going to be a thorn in his side, but he was confident that he could handle Woodward. How difficult could one scholar-turned-inept-spy be to manage?
* * *
‘No,’ Sir Philip said flatly without looking up from the letter he was reading. ‘You are not gadding off to flirt with officers. Who will look after that damned man? You seemed to spend all day today dodging in and out attending to him. Who will cook my dinner? And I need you to take notes when I measure the courtyard of the temple.’
‘I am going to the next village, Father, not Cairo. I have no desire to flirt with French officers, one was more than enough. I will be back in time to cook your dinner, for I will leave after breakfast, and if Mr Bredon is still not fully himself tomorrow I will leave food and water by his bed.’
Surely after twenty-four hours he would soon recover and she could get him out of her bed space? It had been tiring, rising every hour to sponge his face and get water between his lips and, however tired she was, it had been strangely difficult to get back to sleep each time. Mr Call-Me-Quin Bredon was a disturbing presence whilst semi-conscious and in a fever. Goodness knows what he would be like in his full senses. She was not looking forward to another night with him.
Cleo finished sweeping the sand from the mat around her father’s trestle table and gathered his day’s paperwork into a tin box. He would want his supper soon, but there was the remains of the spit-cooked kid and some flatbread and dates, so that would take little time. Then, when he retired to his bed with a book, she’d clear up, water the donkey again, feed it, secure the tent flaps, check on her patient and, at last, go to bed herself.
‘Mr Bredon can visit the officers himself,’ a deep, slightly husky, voice remarked. Cleo dropped the lid of the box, narrowly missing her fingertips. The American, draped in a passable attempt at a toga, was leaning against the tent pole. He was white under the tan and he was supporting his left wrist with his right hand, but his blue eyes were clear and there was a faint, healthy, trace of perspiration on his skin.
‘You must excuse me, sir, but I failed to ask Madame Valsac your name,’ he continued with as much smooth courtesy as a man entering a drawing room.
Cleo got a grip on herself. This was becoming untidy and she disliked untidiness. Mr Bredon should be lying down so she knew where he was and what he was doing. If he made himself even more ill, she was stuck with nursing him that much longer. ‘This is Mr Quintus Bredon, who should be in bed, Father.’ Mr Bredon merely smiled faintly. ‘He is an American and was set upon by Bedouin raiders,’ she reminded him. ‘Mr Bredon, this is my father, Sir Philip Woodward.’
‘Sir Philip.’ The blasted man even managed a passable bow while keeping control of his toga. ‘I must thank you for your hospitality. May I ask, which day this is?’
‘You arrived here yesterday at about this time,’ Cleo said as she picked up her broom. ‘And you have been feverish ever since. I suggest you go back to bed.’
Her father grunted and waved a hand at the other folding chair. ‘Nonsense. He’s on his feet now, isn’t he? You’re a scholar, sir? What do you know about this stone they’re supposed to have dug up at Rosetta eighteen months ago, eh? Can’t get any sense out of anyone, couldn’t get to see it in Cairo.’
‘I’ve heard of it, of course, Sir Philip, but I did not see it in Cairo either.’ Bredon raised an eyebrow at Cleo and gestured towards the chair. She shook her head, flapped her hands and mouthed sit. He was too heavy to have to pick up again if he collapsed. With a frown, he sat. ‘But I am an engineer, I fear I know nothing about it, nor about hieroglyphic symbols.’
‘Yes, but are they symbols?’
Cleo rolled her eyes and left, abandoning her patient to his fate. He would not be able to beat a strategic retreat as Thierry had used to do by pleading military business and she had no time to wait around while her father lectured a new victim. On top of everything else she supposed she had better get his garments clean and mended if he was out of bed. The conceit that Mr Bredon might descend on the French camp, toga-clad like a latter-day Julius Caesar if she did not, almost stayed her hand. It was an amusing thought, but perhaps not practical.
She dropped the galabeeyah and his cotton drawers into the wash tub, grated in some of her precious store of soap and pummelled until they were clean. Once they were hanging up on a tent pole where they would dry within the hour she found a new cord for the drawers and a length of white cotton for a turban. Mr Bredon obviously did not know he needed to keep his head covered in the intense sunshine.
‘Magical symbols...’ Her father’s voice reached her from the other end of the encampment. ‘Don’t agree. Obviously a secret priestly code...’
She could almost feel sympathy with Mr Bredon. Almost. Cleo dragged his bed frame into the furthest section of the tent and found room for it next to the storage boxes. If he was well enough to talk to her father, he was certainly not in need of nursing all night in her own bed space, thank goodness. Her privacy was a precious and deeply treasured luxury. She removed the wet cotton quilt he had been lying on and made the bed up afresh, then went back to her own space to tidy it. She hated disorder. Hated it. And sand. Most of all, sand.
‘Chinese?’ That was M
r Bredon. Father must have got on to the theory that Egyptian writing was a form of Chinese. Or was it the other way around?
Cleo watered the donkey and tossed it the last of the wilting greenery she had gathered that morning by the waterside. She would fetch more tomorrow on her way back from the military camp. Her back ached and she leaned for a moment against the dusty grey rump of the little animal, scratching the spot on his back just where she knew he liked it. ‘Your work is finished for the day,’ she informed him. Now for supper.
* * *
Quin found Madame Valsac spooning honey from a jar into a dish with the concentration of someone who was bone weary, but was keeping going by a dogged attention to every detail. He had found his robe, clean and sun-dried, his mended underwear, a turban cloth and his sandals neatly piled on a bed that she must have dragged into the other room and made up by herself.
The donkey was mumbling the remains of its feed, the encampment was tidy in every detail and the trestle table was laid for a simple meal. And he had spent an hour or so doing nothing more taxing than listen to Sir Philip lecture on Egyptian antiquities and try to stay awake in the evening heat.
Quin changed into his clothes, made a sling out of the length of cloth and went back out, steadying himself against the momentary flashes of dizziness and cursing his weakness under his breath. There was a basket of bone-handled cutlery on the end of the table and he began, one-handed, to lay three settings.
‘No need for you to do that. You should be resting.’ There was no hint of weariness in the cool, unemotional voice, but she did not attempt to wrest the basket from him.
‘I have been resting while I conversed with Sir Philip.’