by Louise Allen
‘What are you thinking about?’ Cleo asked. She sounded as though she was dozing and her head was tipped back against the point of his shoulder. A curiously silent and restful female when she chose to be...
‘Marriage,’ Quin said, half-asleep himself. He jerked awake and cursed silently. Great tact. What diplomacy. Tell her you are thinking about another woman, why don’t you?
‘What is her name?’ Cleo asked.
Oh, well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb and tell her, he thought. At least she would have no expectations of him, which had always been a faint nagging worry, given that they were going to be travelling together unchaperoned for weeks.
‘Caroline. Her father is a...a very influential man. It would be an excellent marriage.’
‘Would be?’ she asked. Was it his imagination or had her voice cooled and become closer to that of the woman he had first met. ‘You have not yet told her you wish to marry her? Is she in love with you?’
‘I haven’t done anything yet to fix my interest with her, if that’s what you mean. And, no, she doesn’t know me well enough to have those kind of feelings.’
Cleo swung her legs down and stood up. ‘And you don’t love her?’ she enquired, her gaze steady, and sardonically amused. ‘What a chilly arrangement. Practical, though.’
‘That is how society functions, on the basis of marriages of convenience and advantage between suitably matched partners,’ Quin said, wondering why he could explain something so self-evident and manage to sound like a stuffed shirt at the same time. It was the right thing to do and the right way to go about it for a man of his upbringing, class and ambitions.
‘I thought it was different in America,’ Cleo said. She ran down to the water side and took hold of Delilah’s rope.
‘Society works the same all over the world.’
Cleo managed to make a one-shouldered shrug into something almost graceful as she turned, towing Delilah behind her. ‘So you’re intending to marry her father, in effect. Very romantic.’
‘Who said anything about romance?’ Quin demanded, nettled, as his calming morning turned sour. ‘And who did you marry? The French army for a bodyguard?’
Cleo stopped and regarded him down her nose, every inch royalty confronted by a peasant. ‘Oh, you man,’ she said and swept on past towards the boat.
‘I damn well hope so,’ Quin said to her retreating back and received no acknowledgement beyond a toss of her head. Curse the entire female sex, he thought as he strode back to the boat in time to heave the goat back on board. And whose foolish notion was it to bring a goat of all things? Smelly, stubborn, needs feeding and watering and cleaning up after.
And I’m in a foul mood, he realised with sense of shock. Years of training and self-discipline had knocked that sort of futile fuming out of him. Or so he’d thought. All it took to rattle the composure of a man quite capable of dealing with seductive foreign widows, scheming, spying diplomats and apoplectic ministers was one gauche young woman with neither experience, education nor sophistication.
Quin settled his expression into one of bland courtesy and turned to Cleo, who was apparently admiring a large spider on the rushes. ‘May I help you into the boat?’
‘You may pass me the sickle, if you please,’ she replied. ‘We need to cut fodder for Delilah.’
‘I will help you into the felucca and you can give me the sickle.’
‘I would welcome the exercise.’
‘You should not be performing manual labour.’ Quin vaulted over the side of the boat, found the sickle, climbed back and surveyed the patches of scrubby foliage.
‘I had better not milk the goat or prepare the food in that case.’ Cleo sat down, spread her skirts around her in a flurry of blue cotton and began to unplait her hair with the air of a woman prepared to spend all day primping in the shade.
Quin slashed at the undergrowth for a few moments of blissfully violent activity, gathered up an armful of greenery and turned back, a well-crafted retort about suitable occupations for women on his lips. And promptly forgot every syllable.
He had wondered what Cleo’s hair looked like loose and now he knew. It looked like liquid molasses flowing in sunlight. It looked like silk, woven by a master weaver, it looked... He shut his mouth with a snap and walked past her to throw the fodder into the boat, making Delilah snort and stamp.
‘The men are stirring,’ he said, nodding towards the huddle of boatmen and, beyond them, the soldiers.
As he hoped, Cleo got to her feet, swept her hair over one shoulder and paddled out to the side of the boat. ‘If you please, Mr Bredon.’
So, I’m back to Mr, am I? Quin thought as he put his hands around her waist and lifted her to sit on the edge. As she swivelled round her hair swung, brushed across his hands, sending a shudder of desire through him. He closed his eyes, his hands still lightly resting on the curve of her hips, and searched for some sort of control.
Cleo put her hands on his shoulders and bent down, making it a hundred times worse as her breath brushed his cheek and her hair spilled around them. ‘Quin?’
‘I felt suddenly dizzy. I’m sorry.’ Better to sacrifice his pride by admitting weakness than tell her the truth: I want you so much it hurts. He pushed away from the side of the felucca. ‘I’ll go and see where Laurent is aiming for today.’
He walked away without looking back. Was she watching him as he went, as unsettled by that moment as he had been? More likely she was thinking what a poor specimen he was, with his nightmares and irregular birth and apparent weakness.
* * *
He wants me. There had been no mistaking that intense stillness. Dizzy, indeed! That had been lust, rigorously controlled because, of course, what use would Quin Bredon have with her, beside the comfort of her body? He had his sights set on Caroline, the woman of influence he hardly knew. She could only hope that Caroline would not be disturbed by his nightmares because she could not imagine some well-bred lady hugging her husband out of his bad dreams.
Cleo eyed the minor chaos of the boat, considered what to do about breakfast, shrugged, sat down and braided her hair. That, loose, had been what had set Quin off, she was sure of it. Men were strange creatures.
* * *
The felucca was tidy when Quin returned. Cleo had given her father his breakfast and had done her best with the mess he had created since the day before.
‘Here.’ She pushed a plate towards Quin when he climbed on board, his face relaxed into something close to a smile. ‘The men brought me duck eggs, eat yours before it gets cold.’
Quin took it with a murmur of thanks and settled down in his usual place, back to the mast. ‘Laurent is picking up rumours,’ he said without preamble after a few mouthfuls. ‘The British have landed a force from India under General Baird at Coseir on the Red Sea, due east of here. They will be marching on Kene.’
‘But that must be well over a hundred miles of desert.’ Cleo stared out at the edge of the dunes, lapping against the green, fertile strip of farmland, half-expecting to see the British redcoats breasting the summit.
‘They are used to hot climates and there are established caravan routes across from here.’ Quin wiped the crust of flatbread around the remains of the egg. ‘It has made Laurent anxious to reach Cairo.’
He seemed to find that mildly amusing, but perhaps his antipathy for the other man accounted for that. ‘But there will be fighting,’ she said, answering his mood rather than his words.
‘There will. I expect Baird will march down the river to Cairo. Général Belliard must look to his fortifications.’
‘Perhaps they will meet with the Mamelukes and that will hold them up,’ Cleo said hopefully.
‘Perhaps. Look, Laurent’s barges are casting off.’ Quin pitched his voice to the boatmen who were talking in the stern. ‘Are you ready, my friends? Let us give chase to the soldiers.’
* * *
Cleo watched the river banks slipping past, her pleasure in the jo
urney turning to apprehension. Cairo, when she had known it before, had been hellish, but she had hoped that almost three years of French rule would have restored the streets to order so that daily life could resume. Now she was fleeing from not one but two armies and straight into a city that would be preparing for a siege.
‘Don’t worry.’ Quin came and sat beside her in the prow. ‘I’ll look after you.’ He must have read the scepticism in the look she gave him, for his mouth curved in a wry smile. ‘Trust me.’
‘To do what? Make the war go away?’
‘To do the best for you.’
‘You know what that is? I am glad someone does.’ She had stoically endured the time in the desert, not daring to dream when there was no escape possible. Now she was moving towards the city, towards the sea, and she still did not have a plan of any kind. In the place of numbness was fear, a fear she dared not voice or allow to show, or she thought she might give way to it.
She braced her shoulders, afraid that Quin would give her one of his comforting hugs. If he did that, she thought she would probably burst into tears and the prospect appalled her. But he did not touch her and she breathed out the air she had dragged down into her lungs.
‘I think you need security, comfort, the normal life of a baronet’s daughter or an officer’s widow. I know a city under imminent threat of siege may not be the best first step, but we’ll sort it out as we go along. Trust me,’ he repeated.
Cleo looked at his confident face, the jut of his nose, the set of his jaw. He’s a man, she thought, with all a man’s failings—but I do trust him. Am I a fool? ‘Very well, I will trust you.’
And then Quin did catch her in a one-armed hug and dragged her against his side for a moment. Cleo blinked hard and the tears did not fall. Inside a small, fragile flicker of something began to burn. At first she did not recognise it and then she realised what it was. She was looking forward with hope, curious about the future. This man, with all his flaws, had given her that.
* * *
Seven days brought them to Benisouef, one day, the boatmen agreed, from Cairo. It also brought the news that Murad Bey had died of plague on the march north and his men under their new leader had sided with the British.
‘I doubt that makes them any more or less dangerous to us,’ Quin said as they sat around the fire on shore that evening. Her father was grumbling that they hadn’t needed to leave Koum Ombo after all and Quin was showing far more tolerance than Cleo was feeling with her parent.
Cleo swirled her coffee around in the cup, her attention not on the thick grounds in the bottom, but on Quin’s profile in the firelight. As Cairo approached he seemed tenser, more focused on his own thoughts, which seemed strange when she would have thought that he would have been relieved to be free of the burden of looking after her and enduring her father’s bad temper.
He had even taken to sleeping as far from her makeshift cabin as possible on the small boat. When she questioned it, making a joke that her snoring must be driving him away, he smiled faintly. ‘Delilah is more nervous at night than you are. She needs me more.’
‘It is strange we have had no news from the north,’ she said now as she tipped the dregs of her coffee into the embers. ‘Did you notice, the past few days we have seen nothing large coming south, only local fishing boats.’
Quin shrugged, but she noticed he glanced towards the soldiers’ camp a hundred yards away. ‘The Cairo authorities may be restricting movement if they’ve heard about Baird’s landing, which they must have done by now. They won’t want large shipping down here to fall into his hands.’
‘I suppose that’s it.’ She stood and began to gather up the cups and coffee pot.
‘Have you sewing things I can borrow?’ Quin asked. ‘Scissors and needle and thread?’
‘Why, yes, but if you need anything mended, I will do it.’
‘I can manage. Is the sewing kit on our felucca?’
‘The light is too poor to sew now.’ Cleo dumped things into the bucket and straightened up, hands in the small of her back to rub out the slight stiffness of another day spent sitting on the boat.
‘I can manage,’ he insisted. ‘Can you get them now? And an old tob sebleh if you have one. I’ll replace it for you in Cairo.’
‘A tob sebleh? But why?’
‘I just need something dark blue,’ Quin said vaguely.
He was determined to be mysterious, she could tell. Cleo climbed on board using the box someone had set by the stern as a crude step and went to dig out her sewing roll and her oldest tob sebleh. She found a voluminous black habera and a long burko to veil her face and laid those aside. She hated the veil, but it was risky to draw attention to herself in a northern city, until she was within the walls of the French compound.
When she got back to the fire her father had gone and Quin was hunkered down amongst the boatmen, talking Arabic, low-voiced with a great deal of gesticulation. The men seemed to be listening intently, but they all fell silent as she drew near and dropped the bundle of blue cloth.
‘Thank you,’ Quin said with an obvious intonation of, And good night, to the words.
‘Good night.’ Cleo retreated, controlling the impulse to flounce. Trust me, Quin had said and she had agreed and had meant it. Now all the nagging doubts that had almost sent her to confide in Laurent came back. Foolish, she chided herself. By this time tomorrow they would be in a French-held city and all the powers that had protected her and her father before would be there. And this time she was the widow of a French officer, which would give her some status of her own.
Even if Quin was some kind of spy, on a mission she could not begin to imagine, it did not affect her. Trust me.
Chapter Ten
When everything was in order for the night, Cleo paused, her hand on the flap of the cabin hangings, and looked back to the shore. One of the younger men was unwinding his long turban cloth, the fabric glowing red in the firelight. He handed it to Quin, straightened the brown felt libdeh that formed its base and began to wind a new turban, white this time.
Cleo shrugged, went into the cabin, lay down and tried to sleep. There was too much to keep her awake, she thought, grumpy with tiredness, as her eyes refused to close or her mind to let go. She still had no concrete plan for what she might do when they reached Cairo, for so much depended on what they found there. She felt guilty about leaving her father and angry with herself for being so weak.
And then there was Quin and the undeniable fact that she desired him, which was embarrassing and uncomfortable. The man was as good as betrothed to some female he hardly knew... Which means he can have no real loyalty to her yet, an insidious little voice whispered. He could lie with you in good conscience.
He doesn’t want me, she argued back. He kissed me, but that was just for comfort. She had missed not only Quin’s slumbering presence on the other side of the hangings every night, she realised, but also the countless small contacts. He was a tactile man, given to a touch to the hand along with a word of thanks when she passed him food, a brush of his palm over the crown of her head when he swung past her on the boat to help with the ropes, a swift hug when he thought she looked tired. All that had stopped ever since the afternoon he had pressed her to trust him.
Cleo shifted again, restless and puzzled. And where was he now? She had been lying awake for at least an hour and yet the boat had not rocked with him boarding and neither had Delilah bleated a welcome.
Cleo opened the flap to look over the side. Quin was still by the fire, alone. He had built it up and, bathed in its light, he was bent over fabric spread across his lap. Cleo shook her head, defeated by its folds and the shifting light. Was he making himself some kind of disguise?
Thoroughly awake now, she went back to her bed and found her little knife and its sheath by touch. There was nothing to be done until they reached Cairo. If Quin was a spy, then Laurent could deal with him. If he was a danger to herself or her father then she knew how to protect herself. And if she wa
s wrong to suspect him, then he would have her silent apologies.
* * *
They reached the first of the pyramids by mid-morning and her father was happier than she could recall him in months as he crouched at the rail making notes and exclaiming. ‘See? Dashur!’
Cleo found herself almost as excited. The pyramids had fascinated and awed her on their way south, now she stared again, entranced until Quin distracted her by ordering the two feluccas to come alongside each other and then jumping aboard her father’s boat.
‘What are you about, sir?’ Her father turned from his sketching and made a grab at his papers as Quin bundled those off the makeshift table into the nearest chest and began snapping the padlocks closed. ‘Stop that! I need my papers!’
‘They are safer locked up,’ Quin said as he hung the loop of cord with the keys around his neck and jumped back to Cleo’s boat. ‘Yalla! Yalla!’ he shouted to the steersmen, for all the world, she thought indignantly, as if they’d been camels.
But the men grinned and began to work the boats out into midstream. Whatever Quin was about, they were in on the secret.
‘Sakhara,’ her father said, still torn between indignation and his obsession with the monuments.
‘Never mind the pyramids,’ Cleo said. ‘We are going to run into the barges!’
She held on to the side, her heart in her mouth, but the boatmen handled the feluccas as if they were swallows, darting over the surface of the river, hawking for insects. The boats flashed between the lumbering barges with insolent ease, their sails full of wind, the current bearing them along.
On the barges men shouted. Cleo saw Laurent run to the side and wave his arms, his mouth moving, but his words were caught on the breeze and tossed away. And then they were through, past Tora, and ahead was Gizah and the great pyramids on their left and the city on the right.