by Louise Allen
Quin went quite still, then stepped back out of her embrace. ‘Your enthusiasm is enchanting, Miss Woodward,’ he said politely and Cleo felt the chill in her veins. ‘However, no thanks is expected or required. Now we have the finances settled, would you be ready to depart for Alexandria in the morning? I wonder if the woman who has been attending to your needs would be prepared to travel with you until you find a suitable maid and we locate a ship.’
Once, not very long ago, she had grown a carapace of glass over her feelings, had learned to ignore emotion and show none. Then Quin had entered her life and it seemed her shield was crazed with cracks and weaknesses.
Cleo reached for the tattered remains of her dignity. ‘Certainly I can be ready,’ she said. ‘And I will ask Maggie now. Thank you, gentlemen. Father.’ She picked up the letter for the banker, considered attempting a curtsy and, instead, simply nodded and walked out.
Quin reached the door before her and opened it. ‘I will find us a more comfortable river boat than our little feluccas,’ he said.
I wonder if that is a peace offering. ‘Excellent. Thank you, Lord Quintus.’ And she smiled and he bowed and she swept out into the baking sunshine, wondering if she was ever going to recover from the embarrassment of throwing herself at a reluctant man in public.
Tomorrow she was going to have to face Quin again. She was going to have to travel with him for weeks. And he was going to be kind about it. And gentlemanly and pretend nothing had happened. That none of those kisses had been exchanged, that she hadn’t made a fool of herself just then.
Once she had believed that all she needed to be happy was to be free of her father and independent. What an innocent you were, Cleo Woodward, she thought as she walked back, her soldier escort at her heels. What you need to be happy is freedom, money and no men. Ever.
* * *
Even after three days at sea the freshness, the cool breeze, the lack of dust were still pleasures to be savoured. Quin drew a deep breath down to his diaphragm and folded his forearms along the ship’s rail as he watched a school of dolphins playing in the bow wave of the Dorabella.
The merchant ship, bound for London from the Levant, was making good progress towards Sicily and the next friendly harbour at Syracuse. It hadn’t been the first possible ship, but it combined good lines, strong armaments and a captain Quin felt knew his business. Almost as important as the good navigator and the guns, it had as a passenger Madame da Sota, the expansive—in every sense—wife of a Levantine merchant in London.
Madame might be flamboyant, but she was also obviously respectable and kindly. She would be delighted to chaperon Miss Woodward, who must have the spare cot in her cabin, she declared. Her maid could share a cabin with Maggie, they would all get on delightfully.
Maggie Tomkins was another woman for whose presence Quin was giving thanks daily. Given the chance to accompany Cleo to Alexandria she had offered to go all the way to England, explaining that life as an army wife had lost its charm for her and she wanted to be home with her son.
Quin, with a vast inward sigh of relief, had surrendered Cleo to the care of the women and took himself off, whenever possible, to the opposite end of the ship to wherever they were.
Sir James had taken him to one side the morning they departed for Alexandria on the large felucca he had hired. He had not needed Sir James’s words of caution, but he had listened patiently anyway.
‘Her grandfather is expecting her back in perfect condition,’ the diplomat said. ‘His support for our department and our work is invaluable, especially when it comes to securing the ear of the king and the purse strings of the Treasury. Never forget that, Deverall.’
‘Certainly not, sir. Although there is a limit to how perfect Miss Woodward’s condition can be, given that she’s a widow. I suppose the duke does know that?’
‘He does and he’s not best pleased about it. Still, we want to make sure she doesn’t arrive home even less of a virgin than she is now, don’t we?’
Quin had no illusions about what his superior was saying and could understand his concern. If he was in Sir James’s shoes, he’d be laying down the law, too. ‘Miss Woodward is impulsive and unused to society, Sir James. I believe that her display of...affection yesterday was simply an innocent reaction to excitement and relief over the money. She doubtless regards me in the light of a brother.’
‘And you appear to regard me as a blind old fool, Deverall,’ Sir James said, the hint of a dry smile on his lips. ‘However, I have every confidence that your zeal for this particular mission and your ambitions for a suitable marriage to advance your career will trump any unsophisticated charms Miss Woodward may possess.’
‘Sir.’ Quin swallowed his irritation at such an explicit warning. How could he resent what he thoroughly deserved? ‘You are quite correct, Sir James, although unsophisticated is not the word I would use for Miss Woodward. She may be completely ignorant of polite society but she has a range of other talents that are going to take the ton by surprise, I suspect.’
‘If her grandfather lets her loose before he’s had them shaken out of her, perhaps you’re right. But I know his Grace’s methods. He’ll have chaperons and tutors and lord knows what else lined up to turn her into a pattern-book young lady within a Season, mark my words.’
The sun moved behind a cloud, the dolphins gave a few last heart-stopping leaps and vanished and Quin felt a sudden wave of depression. Cleo was unique and to turn her into just another well-bred female on display in the Marriage Mart seemed as great an act of vandalism as taking a Greek statue and recarving it into some sentimentally pretty garden ornament.
And I will have contributed to that. I will have made it possible. He struggled for the hundredth time with the sense that he was betraying her by keeping quiet about her grandfather. But she had no understanding of how things should be, he told himself, again for the hundredth time. She would probably try to bolt or do something foolish, but once she was safely with her grandfather she would soon discover the advantages of the situation.
But it wasn’t enough, he knew it. Cleo dreamt of freedom, of the power to make her own decisions, to be her own woman. The fact that this simply was not a possibility for a well-bred lady was no answer to that dream, to that passion.
And yet he had given his word he would bring her back to England. His word, his honour and, plainly, his duty, argued for seeing he achieved it without risk of Cleo taking off and putting herself in danger or creating a scandal before he could retrieve her.
It was the first time his inclinations, his personal feelings, had been opposed to his duty, he realised. He had worked hard to secure his place on the ladder of his new career, to be accepted as himself, a man forging his own name and his own destiny, not in the shadow of the Malvern escutcheon.
Brace up, he told himself. You gave your word and you will do your duty to your country or you aren’t fit to hold the aspirations that you do. And it is the right thing for Cleo, whether she likes it or not. To tell her that he was taking her to her grandfather might ease his conscience for a while, but then he would have to deal with the consequences when she rebelled, as she surely would.
‘Brooding, Lord Quintus? Or seasick?’ Cleo’s voice right behind him brought him swinging round before he could get his expression under control. ‘Oh! I am sorry, you really are upset about something, aren’t you?’ Her tone shifted instantly from the lightly sarcastic edge she always seemed to use to him now to something genuine and kind. Its softness hit him like a punch in the gut.
She held her broad-brimmed hat on her head with one hand, the other catching at the flying ends of the scarf that should have secured it. The breeze and the sea air had brought the colour up in her cheeks and the relief from the daily grind of her previous life was already beginning to show in the graceful, relaxed way she moved now.
‘Upset? No, just thinking about...work. Various obligations.’ He shrugged and managed a smile. The obligation to continue to deceive you. The obl
igation not to touch you. The obligation not to kiss you. The obligation not to get to know you very, very well indeed, Augusta Cleopatra Agrippina Woodward Valsac, you infuriatingly unique woman.
‘How troublesome, I do hope it is not keeping you awake at night.’
The edge was back and with it something else, an undertone that had him wondering if she was kept awake by something herself. Fear of the unknown, no doubt.
Quin wrestled again with the temptation to tell her the truth in the hope it would quell that fear if she knew what her fate was to be. He could tell her that she need not concern herself about making a new life in a strange homeland, that she would be pitch-forked into a gilded cage of privilege and wealth. But that was what temptation did, gave you justification for doing the wrong thing, and he had to resist.
‘Yes, it keeps me awake,’ Quin admitted, adopting the neutral smile that was virtually the first thing that a budding diplomat learned. I lie awake thinking of you, of that generous mouth against mine, making sweetness not sarcasm. I remember the soft curves of your body and the length of those lovely gazelle’s legs and imagine them naked, twining with mine. I imagine that austere oval of your face transformed by your passion as you come beneath me, over and over again, crying out my name as I bury myself in you and the flame burns through my blood...
‘It is really very trying,’ he added as he held her gaze and willed her not to look down to where his thoughts would not permit the slightest diplomatic cover-up. ‘After the tranquillity of the desert a ship under full sail does not make a quiet or easy bed.’ Not when I am lying on the thistles of desire and the stones of an uneasy conscience. His muddle of mixed metaphors made him smile a little and he saw her relax.
‘I like the motion,’ Cleo said. She seemed full of a natural perversity since they had boarded ship and was ready to disagree with any opinion Quin expressed. ‘It is wild and different. We are going somewhere at last and I feel almost free. Soon I will be, completely.’ She untied her hat and let the wind take her hair, whipping it into a banner of brown silk.
‘Almost?’ Quin queried as he turned back to his position at the rail. Think about the here and now...
Chapter Fourteen
‘Madame da Sota does her best to shackle me. These clothes.’ She made a sweeping gesture at the skirts of her high-waisted gown. ‘The shoes. Wretched stockings and garters! Everything pinches or needs holding down in the wind. And I am not allowed to complain because that is unladylike and of course I must wear them. I do not expect I should have mentioned stockings and garters to you. It was much easier when I could wear what I wanted and put a tob sebleh on top.’
Quin tried to imagine Cleo at Almack’s in Egyptian dress and found it was all too easy. He disciplined the smile that was tugging at his lips and made room for her when she spun round and joined him at the rail. Her elbow poked against his, a sharp pressure he could not ignore. Just like her.
‘But you get on all right with madam?’ he queried. ‘She is not of the ton, of course, being a merchant’s wife, but she is undoubtedly a respectable chaperon.’
‘She is kind,’ Cleo agreed. ‘But she never stops talking and I am not used to that. You are much more restful.’ The point of her elbow was removed as she threaded her arm through his and leaned against his shoulder. She trusts me. ‘Where should I buy a house to live?’
‘In London? It is usual to rent, but even so, a whole house in a good area would be very expensive. There are houses where one can rent an entire floor as an apartment though.’ He was careful not to say you. Even so, it was hellish, spinning this web of make-believe for her when the first thing he must do when they reached London was to put her in a carriage and take her to her grandfather. Where did honour lie in all of this? Was there something flawed in him because of his birth that he could not see the honourable path clearly, as his superiors so obviously did?
‘London is so very expensive, then?’ Cleo snuggled against his side without the slightest self-consciousness, using him as a windbreak, he supposed.
How the blazes she managed to forget those moments of shared physical intimacy back in the camp outside Cairo he had no idea. He certainly could not, yet Cleo appeared airily unconcerned about past kisses and caresses.
‘Very expensive,’ Quin said, dragging his mind back to her question. ‘Lodgings, servants, provisions.’
‘Oh. Do you have a London house?’
‘I have an apartment in Albany, which is apartments mainly used by gentlemen needing a pied-à-terre. It is just off Piccadilly in the St James’s area.’
‘But you will have one when you marry?’ He nodded. ‘A whole one? Then you are rich.’ Quin shook his head and she laughed. ‘Ah, you will marry a rich wife!’
‘Perhaps.’ Lady Caroline was certain to be very well dowered and a London house might come as part of the settlement. Her father, the Earl of Camden, owned one that was diagonally across the square from his own father’s house. Quin grinned wryly at the thought of his father’s reaction if he set up home there. The cuckoo in the nest ending up with a promising career, a lovely wife, noble in-laws—that would chafe.
‘Thinking about her makes you smile.’ Cleo leaned forward to look at his face properly. The wind had whipped up the colour in her cheeks, her eyes were bright and her hair whirled around her like the wild locks of a creature of myth.
‘I was thinking that you look like a maenad with your hair like that.’
‘A crazed follower of Dionysus?’ she said and laughed. Of course, she would know all the classical myths and legends. ‘Is that flattering, I wonder? Would I enjoy being driven into a frenzy by strange rites? Iron would not wound me, nor fire burn me. I would subdue wild bulls and tear men to death with my bare hands, draw wine and honey and milk from the rocks.’
Spray flew up as the ship plunged into the trough of a wave, showering them in droplets. Quin drew Cleo against himself in an instinctive gesture of protection and found he was lost in her beauty and her fierce spirit. Against the backdrop of deep blue sea, her hair streamed out like a living thing. Her eyes were wide and wild and she was laughing with the sheer joy of the elements. Free, unique.
Maenads lured men into the woods with their wild dances, then they turned on them, rending them until their blood drenched the earth. Caught in the exhilaration of the wind-swept, sea-soaked moment, Quin could understand why a man might take that risk.
He pulled her tightly to him and bent his head, caught the scent of milk and honey on her lips, smelled the crushed herbs and grasses beneath her bare feet, heard the roar of the sacrificial bulls in his ears.
Make love to her, every instinct screamed. No one will know. You want each other... The ground lurched beneath his feet and became the wooden deck of a ship. The scents of a night-time forest became tarred rope and sea salt, the roaring was replaced by the flap of a sail and the scream of a gull.
‘We’ll be over the side in this sea,’ Quin said and was surprised to hear how steady his voice was. ‘We’ve changed tack, which is why she is rolling so much more. Come and sit on this hatch cover—much safer.’
Cleo looked at him out of wide sea-grey eyes, her face pale under the golden tan, her lips parted. She had felt it too, that wildness, that reckless attraction. Thank God we’re on a ship, Quin thought. Nowhere to go, no privacy. No risk of this getting out of hand.
‘My clothes are wet,’ Cleo said. ‘I will go and change. I expect we will meet at dinner.’
Quin watched her go and forced his mind into some semblance of calm common sense. He could not seduce the granddaughter of a duke—not that much seduction would be needed, it seemed. He especially could not seduce the granddaughter of this particular duke.
The ship gave another lurch and settled into a new tack. Quin began to pace up and down the deck, glad of the exercise as a distraction from physical and mental discomfort. Leaving aside the moral issues, he was on a mission and he could no more compromise it out of desire than he could take mon
ey from a foreign power or gossip about state secrets.
To be utterly practical, he lectured himself, you cannot afford to make a mull of this. He had worked too hard to reach his present position and to risk it now for a few snatched kisses, perhaps a tumble in some empty cabin, was insanity. He was a mongrel pretending to be a pedigree animal. One day, with the right wife by his side, and with hard work and good fortune, he would rise to the top of his profession, serve his country well, gain his own title, sire sons to carry it on and shake off the stigma that he felt like a brand, however politely the whispers about his birth were ignored by society.
And he had to believe this was for the best for Cleo, however much she might try to kick over the traces when she discovered she was being handed over to her grandfather and not released into the life of independence she fantasised about. She was a well-bred young lady, however unconventional her upbringing, and she had a place in the haut ton. It was her destiny, Quin assured himself, and he owed it to her to make sure she achieved that position. She had saved his life and she had trusted him enough not to betray him to Laurent.
He just wished the nagging feeling would go away that he was clipping the wings of a falcon and pushing her into a cage. If only he did not have to deceive her.
* * *
‘How long will we have ashore in Syracuse?’ Cleo asked as the ship glided to anchor in the bay. She tilted the parasol madam had lent her to shield her eyes and studied the town that rose from the bay, a hill studded with buildings in golden stone.
‘The ship sails tomorrow as soon as they have filled the water casks and unloaded some cargo. I will need a few hours to make calls. I can see no reason for you to go ashore, Miss Woodward.’ Quin glanced at her, then back to the letter that had been rowed out to him from the shore.
‘Shopping, exercise, sightseeing,’ she said, modulating her terse words with her best smile. It was wasted as Quin folded the paper and tucked it into the breast of his coat.