# Beguiled by Her Betrayer

Louise Allen

WHAT USE ARE DRAWING-ROOM MANNERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT? Falling unconscious in the Egyptian sand at Cleo Valsac’s feet is not part of Lord Quintus Bredon Deverall’s plan. He’s supposed to be whisking this young widow away from her father’s dusty camp and back to England—to her aristocratic grandfather and a respectable husband. Despite Cleo’s strong-willed nature, she can’t help but feel comforted by Quin’s protective presence. But she has no idea of this wounded stranger’s true identity…or of the passion that will begin to burn between them under the heat of the desert sun! “Allen reaches into readers’ hearts.” —RT Book Reviews on Married to a Stranger

Cleo wriggled back a little and he opened his arms to release her, half-thankful, half-regretful.

Then he realised she was simply putting enough space between them so he could kiss her. Who is seducing whom? he wondered. He bent his head and took the proffered lips. Just one kiss.

Her mouth, hot and soft under his, opened without him needing to coax. She was willing and yet, despite it all, shy. Quin took a firm grip on his willpower and kissed her with more gentleness than passion, his tongue sliding against hers, his palms flat on her back in the loosest of holds. She was trembling slightly, he realised, like a woman fighting emotion.

Quin raised his head. ‘Cleo?’ Her eyes were wide and dark and flooded with unshed tears. ‘Cleo—’

AUTHOR NOTE

Several years ago I stood in the temple of Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt, fascinated by the graffiti left by French soldiers around 1800, very high up on the walls. I soon realised that the very tops of the monuments were all that Napoleon’s troops would have been able to see because the sand had covered many remains to within feet of the roof.

Today, knowing so much about Ancient Egypt, we still marvel at these monuments, but I began to wonder how they must have seemed to these men, right at the beginning of modern archaeology. The more I read about Napoleon’s savants, the group of scholars he left with his troops in Egypt to explore this mysterious civilisation, the more I admired them for their courage and endurance.

The Nile valley is so beautiful and so romantic that I knew I had to set a story there, and gradually the characters of Cleo and Quin began to take shape.

I hope you enjoy reading BEGUILED BY HER BETRAYER as much as I enjoyed writing it.

## Beguiled by her Betrayer. Louise Allen


www.millsandboon.co.uk

LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember. She finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past—Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Louise lives on the North Norfolk coast, where she shares with her husband the cottage they have renovated. She spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in the UK and abroad in search of inspiration. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news, or find her on Twitter @LouiseRegency and on Facebook.

Previous novels by the same author:

THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER[*]

THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM[*]

THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON[*]

THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST[*]

THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST[*]

THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST[*]

PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS[**]

VICAR’S DAUGHTER TO VISCOUNT’S LADY[**]

INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER’S BRIDE[**]

RAVISHED BY THE RAKE[†]

SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL[†]

MARRIED TO A STRANGER[†]

FORBIDDEN JEWEL OF INDIA[††]

TARNISHED AMONGST THE TON[††]

FROM RUIN TO RICHES

UNLACING LADY THEA

SCANDAL’S VIRGIN

[*] Those Scandalous Ravenhursts

[**] The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters

[†] Danger & Desire

[††]Linked by character

and as a Mills & Boon® special release:

REGENCY RUMOURS

and in the Silk & Scandal mini-series:

THE LORD AND THE WAYWARD LADY

THE OFFICER AND THE PROPER LADY

and in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks:

DISROBED AND DISHONOURED

AUCTIONED VIRGIN TO SEDUCED BRIDE[**]

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Historical Note

Copyright

Chapter One

Early April 1801—Upper Egypt

There was shade down there and water jars sweating themselves cool and the start of the green growth that ran from the desert edge into the banks of the Nile. Too soon. Quin lay flat on the hot sand of the dune’s crest and distracted himself from thirst, heat and the throbbing pain in his left arm by concentrating on the tent below.

Tent was perhaps too modest a word. It seemed to consist of several interior rooms surrounded by shaded areas formed by poles and flaps of fabric which, he supposed, would collapse to make outer walls at night.

It was an immaculately neat and well-organised encampment, although there were no servants to be seen. To one side was an animal shelter with hitching rail and trough, on the other a reed roof covered a cooking area. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the banked fire, there was no donkey tied to the rail and the only occupant appeared to be the man in shirtsleeves who sat at a table in the deep shade of an awning, his pen moving steadily across the paper in front of him.

Quin narrowed his eyes against the dusty sunlight. Mid-fifties, burly, salt-and-pepper brown hair: that was certainly his quarry, or one of them at least. Sir Philip Woodward, baronet, antiquarian and scholar, neglectful husband, selfish widower and father and, very possibly, traitor.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye betrayed robes caught in the light breeze. Someone was approaching. Quin shifted his gaze to where the monumental columns of the temple of Koum Ombo rose from the enshrouding sand, dwarfing the mud-walled huts of the little village of fishermen and farmers beyond it. The person leading a donkey must be familiar with the area, for they spared no glance for the great ruins as they passed them by. It was a woman, he saw as she came closer, clad in the enveloping folds of a dark blue tob sebleh, but like most of the country women of Upper Egypt, unveiled. A servant—or the other person he had been sent to find?

Madame Valsac, widow of Capitaine Thierry Valsac of Napoleon’s Army of the East, daughter of Sir Philip Woodward and, maybe, another traitor. But unlike her father, whose safety was of little concern to the hard-faced men who had briefed Quin, Madame Valsac was to be extracted from Egypt and restored to the custody of her grandfather whether she liked it or not, and regardless of where her loyalties might lie.

That this might prove troublesome, hundreds of miles from the coast and the invading British army, in the path of France’s fearsome Mameluke allies who were believed to be heading north at that moment, and in the midst of one of Egypt’s periodic outbreaks of plague, had not concerned the gentlemen in Gibraltar. Quin was a diplomat who spoke French and Arabic and knew enough of antiquities to pass as one of the French savants, the scholars left by Napoleon to explore Egypt under the protection of his underpaid, diseased, poorly resourced army. That, so far as they were concerned, was sufficient qualification.

‘Classical antiquities, my lord,’ Quin had pointed out. ‘My knowledge of Egypt is virtually non-existent.’ Nor am I qualified in kidnapping females, he might have added, but did not.

‘Plenty of time to read it up on board ship between here and Alexandria,’ his unsympathetic superior had retorted. ‘Just remember, the Duke of St Osyth wants his granddaughter back, never mind if she’s taken an entire French regiment to her bed. Her father no one wants, but if he’s a traitor, then we need to know the ins and outs of it. Then you can dispose of him.’

‘I am not an assassin, my lord.’ Quin had said it with an edge missing from the protest about his lack of knowledge of Egypt. He might be ambitious, but he drew the line at murder.

‘Then introduce him to a hungry crocodile or lose him in the desert.’

Quin blinked to clear his vision and realised that the black dots swimming before his eyes were not flies.

The woman and the donkey were close now. She spoke as she passed the man sitting under the awning, but he made no reply. A servant, then.

She halted the donkey and began to heave the water jars from its back with the economical strength of someone accustomed to manual labour. She filled the donkey’s bucket, poured more water into the large storage jars and finally carried a pitcher to one of the open-sided shaded spaces facing the dune where Quin lay.

Through the insistent throbbing in his head it took him a minute to realise what she was about. The woman pulled the cotton folds of the tob sebleh over her head, removed the twisted cloth that tied up her hair and was unfastening the sash around her waist before he assimilated not only the colour of her hair—honey-brown, waving and most decidedly not Egyptian—but the fact that she was about to strip off her under-tunic and bathe.

He did not ogle women in their bath like some Peeping Tom, any more than he fed inconvenient baronets to the crocodiles. Quin rose to his feet, surprised at how unstable the shifting sands were. Now was the time to put his plan, such as it was, into effect.

One step down the slope and he knew it was not the surface that was making him so unsteady. Hell, I’m sick, he thought, getting his legs under precarious control as he half-slid, half-ran. He hit the flat ground at the foot with a force that jarred his spine and took six weaving steps towards the woman. She made no move and no sound, simply stood there, her hands arrested on the knot of her sash, staring at him.

Quin halted a yard from her. ‘Bonjour,’ he managed before his knees gave out and the ground came up to meet him. ‘Mada—’

* * *

Cleo regarded the sprawled, bareheaded figure clad in a dusty galabeeyah for a long moment, sighed, then raised her voice. ‘Father!’

‘I am working. Is it time to eat?’

‘No. There is a man here, unconscious.’

‘Leave him.’ Her father sounded irritated at the interruption and not in the slightest bit curious. But then this slumped heap of humanity was a person, not a ruined temple, or an inscription, let alone a fresco, so his lack of interest was only to be expected.

‘He will die and then he will stink,’ Cleo retorted. Only a direct threat to her parent’s comfort and convenience would shift him, she knew that very well.

There was a muttered curse, then her father appeared. He poked the recumbent figure with the toe of his boot. It shifted slightly. ‘Not dead. And not Egyptian. Frenchman, no doubt. Where do you want him?’

‘I do not want him at all, but on the other bed frame in my room, I suppose.’ Cleo pushed aside the hangings and stripped the spare sheets and her few clothes from the bed, leaving only the thin cotton padding over the crossed ropes. By the time she got back her father had the man under the armpits and was dragging him in, still face-down.

An unpleasant possibility struck her. ‘Are there swellings?’

‘What?’ Her father let the limp figure fall back with a thud.

Cleo winced. Now she’d have a bleeding, broken nose to deal with. ‘In his armpits. If he has the plague, there will be swellings.’

‘No. No fever either, he’s as dry as a bone.’ He went back to dragging the man inside. Cleo lifted the long legs when he reached the bed and they hefted the stranger up and on to his back. By some miracle the assertive nose was unbent.

‘Heatstroke, then,’ Cleo diagnosed. There was a dark dried mess on his left sleeve. ‘And a wound.’ Her father was already turning away. ‘I need to get these clothes off him.’

‘You were a married woman, you can manage.’ His voice floated back from behind the hangings. He would be lost in his correspondence again until she pushed food under his nose.

‘I might have been married,’ Cleo muttered, laying the back of her hand on the wide, hot forehead, ‘but I was not married to this one.’ She took off the man’s sandals, the easy part, then rolled and pushed the limp, heavy body and dragged at the cotton robe until it was over his head. The cord keeping up the thin cotton drawers snapped in the process, so she pulled those off too. There was a belt around his waist with a leather bag, heavy with coin. She set it aside, then stood back to survey the extent of the problem.

And it was extensive. Six foot, broad-shouldered, blond and lean with the look of a man who had recently lost whatever slight reserves of fat he might have had, leaving the muscles across his abdomen sculpted as though by the hands of a master carver. And he was very definitely male. The carver might have had the decency to provide a large fig leaf while he was at it...

Widow she might be, but she was certainly not sophisticated enough to gaze unmoved on a naked stranger. Not one who looked like this. Cleo fixed her gaze on his arm where a ragged wound was cut like a groove from shoulder to elbow, gave herself a little shake and concentrated on priorities.

Gunshot, not a blade, she concluded, eyeing the inflamed edges of the red, weeping mess. Removing the outer robe had torn it open, although it had obviously not been healing healthily. The first thing was to get some water into him, then reduce his temperature and then she would see what she could do with his arm. There was no doctor or surgeon with the small detachment of French troops camped on the far side of the next village, so she could expect no help there.

The man sucked greedily at the cup when she lifted his head to drink. The smell of water seemed to revive him a little.

‘Slowly, you cannot have too much at once,’ she began, then recalled that he had spoken in French before he collapsed. ‘Lentement.’

He moved his head restlessly when she took the water away, but he did not open his eyes. Now to get him cooler and covered up. She could start work on his arm once she had put some food under Father’s nose.

‘You, monsieur,’ Cleo said in French as she shook out a sheet and dropped it into a bucket of water, ‘are a thorough nuisance. Believe me, if my fairy godmother flew down and offered me whatever I wanted, another man to look after would be the lowest on my list of desirable objects.’ She pulled the linen out and draped it dripping over the distractingly naked body. ‘There. That’s better.’ For me, at least.

* * *

It was his favourite fantasy, the one that came when he was half-asleep, the comfortable, yet arousing, one about being married to his perfect woman. There was the rustle of skirts, the soft pad of feet, the occasional faint waft of some feminine perfume as she moved about the room close by. Soon he would wake up and she would come to his bed and smile at him, her blue eyes warm and loving, her face—he could picture it very clearly—sweet, with neat little features and a soft, pink mouth.

‘Caroline.’ He would hold out his arms and she would unpin her long blonde curls and begin to undress with an innocent coquettishness that made him hard and aching before they even touched.

When she came to him, her curvaceous body would fit against his big frame as though she had been made for him. ‘Oh, Quin,’ she would murmur and run her hands over his chest, lower, lower...

The smell of roasting meat distracted him. What were the staff doing to allow kitchen odours to penetrate to his bedchamber? He was the ambassador, damn it. His dream wife’s fingers stroked down, exploring. Her blonde ringlets, unaccountably wet, fell on to his chest as she pulled him back from that distraction with impetuous little kisses that dotted his face. His body reacted predictably, hardening, his balls tightened, lifted. Soon he would enter her, love her, caress her into ecstasy. And afterwards they would talk, rationally and intelligently. They would be interested in each other’s thoughts, respectful of the other’s opinions. It would be peaceful, harmonious...

‘Hell and damnation!’ It was a woman all right, but that was all that meshed with his dream. A string of idiomatic expressions in Arabic confirmed that the speaker was no lady.

Quin realised he was conscious, in pain, devilishly thirsty and decidedly confused. ‘Wha...?’ he croaked. His blasted eyes would hardly open but, mercifully, a cup was pressed to his lips.

‘Slowly,’ a voice chided in French. The same woman’s voice, clear, crisp, definitely unseductive. Definitely unsympathetic. The water was removed.

‘Merci,’ Quin managed to say and squinted up through sore lids. And definitely not my fantasy woman, he thought, some shred of humour emerging amidst the general misery. Tall, slender, brown haired, she regarded him down a long, straight, imperious nose with an air of tightly controlled impatience. Intelligent, certainly. Cuddly, sweet and pliant...no. ‘More?’ he added, hopefully. ‘Er...encore?’ He needed to keep his mouth shut except for drinking until his brain stopped boiling.

‘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 hit 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 Mr 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.’

‘I doubt it was a conversation. A new audience always opens the floodgates. Here, sit down.’ She poured liquid into two beakers, pushed one across the table to him and sat carefully, as though her bones ached.

They probably do. How old is she? Quin wondered as he took the drink with a word of thanks and sat opposite her, trying to recall his briefing. Only twenty-three. He sipped. ‘This is good.’

‘Pomegranate juice.’ She sat for a while, her fingers laced around her beaker as though she had forgotten what it was there for. Then she took a long swallow and called, ‘Father! Supper.’ She lowered her voice. ‘It will take several reminders before he comes, you may have your peace until then.’ That faint dimple ghosted across the smooth, sun-browned cheek and her tired eyes narrowed. He had not seen a real smile from her yet.

‘How do you bear it?’ Quin asked abruptly and watched all trace of amusement fade from her face. The sooner he got her out of here and back to the sort of life she should be living, the better.

‘The heat?’ She was quick, for he could have sworn she knew exactly what he meant. How do you stand this life, that man, the loneliness, the constant labour? ‘I am used to it, we have been in Egypt for five years now and one learns to live with it when there is no alternative.’

Was she answering his real question after all? ‘What is your given name?’

The arched brows lifted in silent reproof at his ill manners, but this time she did not evade the question. ‘Augusta Cleopatra Agrippina,’ she said evenly and waited for his response.

Quin did not disappoint her. ‘Good God! What were your parents thinking of?’

‘We were in Greece at the time apparently, but Father was still in his Roman phase. I doubt Mama had any say in the matter. Look at it this way, I am fortunate that he had not become interested in Egypt then or I would probably be called Bastet or Nut.’

He had heard of Bastet, the goddess with the head of a cat, but, ‘Nut?’

‘The goddess of the sky who swallows the sun every evening and gives birth to it each morning. Father!’

Quin decided he did not want to contemplate the mechanics of that. ‘So which of your imposing names are you known by? What does your father call you?’

‘Daughter! Where are my towels?’

‘On the end of your bed,’ she called back. ‘He does not remember it most of the time, as you hear,’ she said to Quin. ‘He is in his head, in his own world. I doubt he recalls that Mama is dead, or my husband, most of the time. My husband called me Cleopatra, it appeared to amuse him.’

‘Queen of the Nile,’ Quin murmured.

‘Exactly. So appropriate, don’t you think?’

Chapter Three

Queen of the Nile? Yes, very appropriate, Quin wanted to say, throwing her bitter jest back at her. You look like a queen with that patrician nose and those high cheekbones, that air of aloofness. A queen in exile, in disguise, in servitude. He was saved from answering by Sir Philip emerging from the tent, fastening a clean shirt with one hand and running his hand through his wet hair with the other.

He sat without a word and reached for the platter of what appeared to be cubes of meat. Madame... No, Cleo, Quin decided, slid a plate in front of her father and passed one to Quin, then gestured to him to help himself. He realised his mouth was watering.

‘You should try to eat. It has been a while since you did, I imagine.’

‘Yes. I was hungry at first and then that vanished.’ He had been on foot and without anything but a small flask of water for two days after his camels were taken. Before that he had been eating sparingly, moving too fast to settle down in one spot and cook himself a proper meal.

‘It seems to with heat prostration. You must rest tomorrow.’

‘I will rest tonight. Tomorrow I will acquaint myself with your military neighbours.’

‘That is foolish. I can ask them what is the best thing to be done with you.’

They would shoot me as a spy, if they knew who I was. ‘If I am to be disposed of, Madame Valsac, I prefer to organise it myself.’

‘Very well. I will not go and you will not be able to find them by yourself.’ She bit down sharply on a piece of flatbread as though to cut off all discussion.

Confound the woman. Is she trying to keep me away from the military because of her own compromised situation or is she merely being inconveniently protective of an injured man?

‘No, I want you to go, Daughter,’ Sir Philip pronounced, reversing his earlier opinion without a blink. ‘I need you to take my correspondence for them to send north. I have finished my letter to Professor Heinnemann.’

Correspondence? ‘The French are obliging enough to act as postmen for you, Sir Philip?’ Quin asked casually as he spread goat’s cheese on his bread.

‘Indeed they are.’ The older man put down his fork. ‘A fine example of the co-operation amongst scholars. As soon as Général Menou realised I was having problems receiving my letters he arranged for them to be handled through Alexandria.’

And how did the general know? Quin shelved that question for the moment. He thought he had hold of the tail of the matter now and he had no intention of letting it wriggle out of his grasp. ‘You have an international correspondence?’ he asked, injecting as much admiration into his tone as he thought was plausible.

He need not have worried about arousing suspicions. Sir Philip was smugly confident of his own importance. ‘Of course. England, France, Greece, Italy, Germany, India, Russia. Spain and Portugal...’ He droned on, complaining about the paucity of news from the Scandinavian countries.

England, the Mediterranean, continental Europe—news from dozens of pens flowing into Alexandria, into the hands of the French. Traitors, agents and innocent scholars all writing to this man who was either so blinded by his obsessions that he had no idea how he was being used or was a willing participant in his French masters’ games. Every scrap of intelligence was like gold to skilled spymasters who could fit it all together from dozens of sources.

‘India,’ Quin said out loud. India, the real reason the French wanted Egypt. If they controlled the Red Sea and the overland route to the Mediterranean, then Britain’s vital link to its most important trading area was lost. And troops were on their way now from India to land on the Red Sea coast and march across the desert to the Nile, then downstream to join the British and Turks in the delta.

Had letters from French agents in India already reached Menou in Cairo on their way to this man? A cold finger trailed down his spine, chilling the perspiration. If the French marched out to cut off General Baird’s long, desperate march through the desert, then the entire tide of the war in Egypt could turn.

‘Yes, India. I think I may well move on there next,’ Woodward said. ‘Fascinating country by the sound of it.’

Quin was aware of the tension in Cleo’s still form. Yet another move where she was taken along like a piece of furniture with no choice and no opinion? She would be much better off back in England where she belonged than dragged around at her father’s heels like so much luggage.

‘I will go with you to the army camp tomorrow, madam,’ Quin said and turned to look her in the face. ‘I want to find out if they have news from any other engineers.’ And I want to get my hands on your damned correspondence, Sir Philip. I may yet be finding a hungry crocodile for you.

‘As you wish.’ If Cleo Valsac had any worries about letting him observe the exchange of letters, she hid it perfectly. ‘I will be taking the donkey so if you collapse we can load you on him,’ she added with a sweet smile that did not deceive Quin for one moment. She thought him a nuisance and she rated his strength, endurance and, probably, his brains very low indeed.

We will see who is right, Cleo my lovely, he thought, meeting her cynical grey-green eyes. To his amazement she blushed.

* * *

And do not pretend you don’t know what is the matter with you, my girl, Cleo chided herself and bit so hard on a date that she almost broke a tooth. Lust. An intelligent man with a magnificent body ends up naked in your bed space, at your mercy. And then when he regains his wits he looks at you with those blue eyes and you don’t know whether he is pitying you or mocking you or desiring you.

Or all three, perhaps. Two of those were unwelcome and one was improbable, unless the American had a fancy for skinny, sun-browned widows with calluses on their fingers and not a social grace to their name.

But the widow... Ah, yes, the widow could have a fancy to discover whether those eyes became a darker blue with passion and how those long fingers he was so careful to keep still and inexpressive felt on her body. Quin. She indulged herself by trying out his name in her head. Quintus.

He was looking at her father now, listening politely to another lecture on hieroglyphs and the importance of measuring the monuments. His face in repose, or when he was guarding it, was all straight lines. Level brows, narrowed eyes, that nose with its arrogant jut in silhouette. His lips were straight until he spoke and the lines of cheekbone and jaw showed strong and regular under the growth of beard, a shade darker than his hair. He looked severe and impenetrable—and then he spoke or smiled and the lines shifted, the angles changed and his face was alive and charming. And still just as unreadable, she realised.

But then I am not a very good judge of men. Look at Thierry.

Cleo rose and began to gather up platters. Mr Bredon...Quin...immediately began to clear the table, ignoring her shake of the head. He followed her and dumped the scraped dishes into the pot of water that was sitting in the hot ashes and looked round, for a dishcloth, she supposed.

‘Leave it,’ Cleo said, more sharply than she intended.

‘You are tired. Bone weary.’ He stood there, arm still in the sling, an improbable kitchen lad.

‘I know what I am doing, you will only be in the way.’ Ungracious but true. He made her feel clumsy, off balance.

‘Then promise me you will come to bed as soon as it is done,’ he said softly.

It sounded like an invitation. Oh, my foolish imagination. She bent over the water and felt the brush of his fingertips as he lifted her heavy braid over her shoulder and clear of the surface. His hand lingered a moment at her nape, then was gone, leaving her shivering as though a warm cover had been removed in the chill of the night.

‘You work too hard, Cleo.’

When she turned, he was gone and there was only her father, a book open on the table in front of him amidst the crumbs, taking advantage of the waning light.

* * *

Quin Bredon came out of the tent as soon as Cleo had finished bathing the next day. ‘Good morning!’ He looked well rested, the haggard hollows had gone from beneath his eyes and his arm was not in the sling.

Cleo returned his greeting with less enthusiasm. She had not had a good night, waking every few minutes, it had seemed, listening for Quin’s breathing in the stillness, then cursing herself for a fool and trying to fall asleep again. It was unsettling the way in which he had just appeared, the moment she was dry and dressed and had combed out her hair. He could not have seen her, but it felt uncomfortably as though he had been listening, alert for what she was doing.

‘There is water warming by the fire and a linen towel in there. And my father’s spare razors.’ She gestured towards the makeshift bathing area and went on with preparing a breakfast of coffee, dates, honey and the toasted remains of the flatbread. There would be bread to buy in the village today, and dates and oranges, and the officers might have coffee to spare. With luck she would be able to buy a scrawny chicken to stew into soup with beans and lentils. Another mouth to feed put a strain on supplies.

Her father, dressed in an abeyah tied with a sash, his nightcap still incongruously perched on his head, wandered out of the tent with a book in his hand. ‘Where’s my shaving water?’

‘Mr Bredon is bathing and shaving, Father. I have put on more water to warm for you.’

‘Humph.’ He sat down and reached for a date without taking his eyes from the book. ‘This man is an idiot.’

‘Who, Father?’ The question was automatic. He could reply King George or the Great Chan of China for all she cared, but Cleo had an instinct that, if she stopped responding to every remark, her father would simply cease to communicate altogether. It had been a relief, she realised, to have Quin there to talk to him last night.

‘James Bruce. He let himself be ordered around by his guides, listened to fairy stories and was frightened away by rumours of bandits. This is all nonsense.’ He jabbed a finger at a densely written page of text.

‘But he was writing over forty years ago, Father,’ Cleo said reasonably. ‘And there are bandits, as Mr Bredon discovered to his cost.’

‘What have I discovered to my cost?’ Quin strolled round the corner, his hair on end from a vigorous towelling, his face shaved clean of the dark week-old beard. His jaw line was as sharp and firm as she had thought it would be.

Cleo tried to read his face. There had been an edge to that question she did not understand. ‘That there really are bandits out there,’ she replied and saw an infinitesimal relaxation around his mouth. ‘How is your arm?’

‘I took the dressing off. It seems to be healing.’

She put down the honey jar and followed him into the tent. ‘Let me look at it. It will need redressing, you cannot take any risks with wounds in this climate.’

He had made his bed. Army-neat, she thought, recalling Thierry’s habits of order, as Quin rolled up the loose sleeve of his galabeeyah to the shoulder.

‘It will not be a tidy scar,’ Cleo observed, more to distract herself as she wrapped a fresh strip of cotton over the wound than to make conversation. It was healing well, she saw.

‘That amuses you?’ Bredon asked and she realised she must have smiled.

‘That you will be scarred? No. But it was an unpleasant task, cleaning that, and I have no liking for causing pain, so I am glad it is healing.’ She secured the knot and began to roll down his sleeve again. ‘I could wish I had made a neater job of it. It is not as though you have a soldier’s collection of scars already.’ And that is what happens when you let your tongue run away with you. He knows you are thinking about his naked body. You know he knows. She took refuge in setting her medicine box in order.

‘I compare badly to your warrior husband, no doubt.’ He picked up the cotton strip and worked it deftly into a turban.

‘Are you fishing for compliments, Mr Bredon?’ Cleo said over her shoulder as she picked up the box and ducked under the flap. ‘There is nothing amiss with your physique, as you are perfectly well aware, and it gives me no pleasure to see the damage one fool man can inflict on another.’

She bundled her father’s letters together and tied them securely into a neat package almost as large as one of the local mud bricks. She dropped it into one of the panniers, added two large goatskins of water, her sharpest kitchen knife, a money pouch and a small sickle for cutting greens. When she bent to lift the two baskets on to the donkey’s saddle Quin Bredon slipped in front of her, hefted them into place one-handed and tightened the straps.

‘Are you certain you do not wish to ride?’ she asked him. ‘It is three miles at least in each direction and we can attach the various objects some other way.’

Quin looked down at the long skirts of his galabeeyah. ‘Side saddle?’ he enquired. ‘Or do I hitch up my petticoats and expose my hairy legs to the alarm of the populace?’

‘I could find you a spare pair of my father’s breeches,’ Cleo offered and bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself laughing. There was something not quite right about Mr Bredon, something that made her uneasy, and she was not going to allow him to charm her into letting her guard down. It would be interesting to see what Capitaine Laurent made of him.

‘I think not. The poor beast is so small that my feet would trail along the ground.’

Cleo shrugged one shoulder and started walking. It was up to him and he would look considerably less dignified if he had to return stuffed in a pannier. ‘We are going now, Father,’ she called as she passed the shaded writing area. He grunted and waved his hand without looking up. ‘There is food under a cloth near the water jars. Please don’t let the fire go out.’ There, that was as much as she could hope he’d take notice of.

‘You do not have to dawdle on my behalf,’ Quin said.

‘Hmm? No, I wasn’t.’ She took a firmer hold on the leading rein and lengthened her stride. ‘We will take the path along the water’s edge, it is easier going than through the sand and there is some shade.’

‘Your father has a wide circle of correspondents, he must be greatly respected,’ Quin said after five minutes of silent walking.

‘His interests are wide-ranging, Mr Bredon. It stimulates him to exchange views with scholars from many countries.’

‘Quin,’ he said. ‘It seems ridiculous to observe drawing-room manners in the middle of the desert.’ Cleo opened her mouth to demur, but he kept talking. ‘And he writes to scholars from both sides in the present conflict and neutral countries, too. I’m amazed that the French authorities are so complacent about assisting him.’

It had puzzled Cleo, too, but she was not going to admit it. ‘They are intent on assisting all of les savants. They appear to consider my father as one of their own. After all, he had a French son-in-law.’

‘Positively Romeo and Juliet,’ Quin observed. She glanced at him sharply, but he was studying the temple now they were close. ‘And this is currently the subject of your father’s study?’

‘He copies the inscriptions and measures it.’ Father measured everything obsessively, as though the figures could unlock some key to the mysteries of the past.

‘And that is helpful?’ Quin stopped and studied the great golden columns rising from the piled sand.

‘Apparently. I like to look at the wonderful pictures on the walls—you can just see the top of some of them if you climb right up. The soldiers have carved their names along the topmost frieze. I wish they would not.’ She shivered. These things had stood here for millennia, so some scholars said.

‘Sacrilege,’ Quin murmured and touched her arm. ‘I think you have a greater sympathy for these monuments than your father has, for all his scholarship.’

‘For the people that created them, perhaps.’ She made no move to shake off his hand. Men and women had stood and looked at these buildings since time immemorial, perhaps touching as she and Quin were, supporting each other, perhaps in fear, perhaps in awe. It seemed a small miracle that she had found someone who understood that.

The donkey moved, tugging the rein and with it, her arm. The moment was gone into the hot air, just like every moment evaporating in the heat and dust of this place.

‘Come, we need to get to the camp before the sun gets too high.’ She began to walk without looking back, listening to the familiar soft footfall of the little donkey and the faint slap of the leather sandals worn by the man who walked with her. It had been a long time since anyone had kept her company. It was strange that it should make her feel lonelier than ever.

Chapter Four

‘Do you want to stop and rest?’ Cleo glanced back at Quin. ‘There is shade just ahead and another mile to go.’

To her surprise, he nodded. ‘Yes, that would be welcome.’ Then, when she continued to stare he added, ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Nothing beyond the fact that an adult male is prepared to admit to a woman that he would like to rest.’

‘You think I am betraying weakness?’

‘No, I think you are showing common sense,’ she retorted and led the donkey down to the river’s edge. ‘There is a fallen column from some monument in the shade of those palms. A good place to rest.’ She leaned on the donkey’s rump while it drank and watched Quin covertly as he sat. His pace had not flagged, although he was pale under his eyes and around his mouth. Considering that he had been prostrate with heat-stroke, and was still carrying a wound that had been seriously infected, it would seem that Quin Bredon was both fit and hardy.

‘Men do sometimes demonstrate common sense,’ he said mildly when she rejoined him. ‘Thank you,’ he added as he took the proffered water skin and tipped it expertly so the water arced into his mouth without the neck touching his lips. ‘How long does it take to get used to the taste of goat-flavoured water?’

‘You never do.’ She drank and pushed the stopper into the flask. There were boys herding cattle on the opposite bank and a flock of egrets flew upstream, their white plumage brilliant in the sunlight. A large pied kingfisher landed on a branch nearby and squawked loudly, claiming its stretch of riverbank before diving into the brown water and emerging with a fish. A few hundred yards beyond the ribbon of green on the opposite bank the sand dunes formed a glittering golden ridge.

‘This is very beautiful. Timeless. One half-expects to see the pharaoh’s daughter find Moses in the bulrushes or for a great barge to float downstream with banners flying and trumpets sounding,’ Quin said. He leaned back on a palm trunk, eyes slitted against the sun dazzle on the water.

‘It has always been beautiful. And hot, dry, poor and dangerous,’ Cleo said. Egypt was somewhere to be endured, battled, overcome. It was a place where men fought to extract something, as miners struggled beneath the earth in heat and danger. Only here there was an ancient civilisation, not diamonds, political advantage, not coal. ‘You relax and enjoy it and it will kill you.’ She pointed to a small snake slithering into cover.

‘I hope your army friends will have more information about the movements of the Mamelukes,’ Quin said. ‘I have no wish to encounter Murad Bey. He is rather more lethal than that snake, I think.’

Cleo shivered. Thierry had spoken about the Mamelukes, their bravery and savagery, and his hand had tightened on his sword hilt as if to still a tremor of fear. She had no wish to encounter them either. ‘What will you do?’

‘I am hoping the soldiers will have been recalled towards Cairo. I imagine they will go by river, will they not? It seems perverse to march in this heat.’ Quin stood and stretched, six feet of lean muscle unselfconsciously displayed.

‘I cannot imagine how I would persuade Father to go.’ She got to her feet and made rather a business of straightening the panniers. ‘He is very stubborn.’

‘Nothing a sharp blow to the head would not cure,’ Quin said. He took the leading rein and walked off down the path leaving her blinking at his retreating back.

Did he mean that? How wonderful if he did. She was certain he would accomplish it very neatly, with no more damage to Father than a sore head when he awoke. No, it had to be a joke. Respectable engineers did not go around hitting scholars over the head and loading them on to river boats. She took a grip on her imaginings and ran to catch Quin up.

* * *

The camp was small and orderly in the bleak, soulless way of soldiers without women. Capitaine Laurent was sitting on a folding chair outside his tent, his two lieutenants standing listening to him. When he saw them approaching he stood up, watching the stranger from under heavy black brows.

‘Madam.’ He sketched a bow and the other two men did likewise. ‘Qui est-ce?’

‘Quintus Bredon, American engineer, Captain,’ Quin responded in French before Cleo could speak. ‘I have been rescued by Madame Valsac and her father. Bedouin raiders took my camels.’ He pushed back his sleeve as he spoke, revealing the edge of the bandage.

‘American?’ Laurent still made no gesture of hospitality.

‘The United States is the ally of France, is she not?’ Quin said easily. But he could see that Laurent’s stance was alert, subtly more aggressive. The two men were facing up to each other like dogs meeting on the edge of their territories, not convinced yet that a fight was required, but quite willing to scrap if necessary.

‘Oui. But what are you doing here?’

‘Indulging my curiosity. I was in the Balkans, I heard about your emperor’s savants and I decided to see for myself. There is a brotherhood amongst scientists, I find. I had hoped to reach the Cataracts—an intriguing problem in navigation—but I hear that would be suicide now.’

‘Ha!’ Laurent gestured to one of the soldiers and the man ran forward with two more folding chairs. ‘Sit, have coffee. Murad Bey is on his way north with a force of fifteen thousand, the latest intelligence confirms it.’

‘And you have what...fifty men?’ Quin glanced around the encampment. ‘I imagine your orders do not involve suicide either.’

‘Correct. We will strike camp and load up the barges.’ He gestured towards the river bank and the moored vessels. ‘I was about to send to your father, madam, to tell him to prepare to move by dawn tomorrow. We have room for the two...the three...of you and one small piece of baggage each.’

‘But my father’s books, his papers...’

‘His life?’ the captain enquired, one brow lifted. ‘Yours?’

‘It seems I may have to take you up on your offer to knock Father out after all, Mr Bredon.’ Escape, at last. A way to get across those hundreds of miles to the coast and there... And there, what? she asked herself. She was a woman with no money of her own and no protection once she left her father’s side in this dangerous country. But if she could get to France or England, surely she could find work of some kind?

Quin sat back in the chair, his relaxed stance steadying her circling, futile thoughts. ‘We might not have to resort to anything so drastic,’ he observed. ‘Would he come if he could take everything with him? He is not so blinded by his work as to think he could sit making notes on Egyptian antiquities whilst the most dangerous fighting force in Egypt sweeps over your camp, surely?’

‘No, I hope even Father would bow to the inevitable under those circumstances. The problem is to prevent the days of argument beforehand while we convince him the danger is real.’

‘The village we passed on our way here had several feluccas moored. We could buy or hire two—surely that would be enough room for the three of us and all your possessions.’

‘But I cannot sail and Father...’

‘I can sail a small boat. The rig is different, but the principles are the same. Besides, we can hire some men.’

Laurent was watching them intently, his head moving from side to side, eyes narrowed in calculation. ‘How will you pay for this, monsieur? I have no funds to buy boats for civilians.’

And that was all too true, Cleo knew. The emperor had left his troops short of everything from coin to boots, while promising to send them a shipload of clowns and entertainers from Paris to keep up morale. Thierry had once bitterly observed that he would be quite prepared to eat a comedian, provided he was roasted well enough.

‘I have money,’ Quin said and stood, his hand held out to help her to her feet. Quite how he managed to stand there, clad in a galabeeyah like any local peasant, and look as though he was in a drawing room, Cleo had no idea. Not that she had ever been in a drawing room in her life. ‘Capitaine, we will join you here tomorrow before noon.’

Laurent looked as though he was searching for reasons to argue and could find none. ‘Your father’s correspondence, madam?’

‘No need to trouble you with that, I am sure you have a great deal to do, without having extra paperwork cluttering things up,’ Quin said before Cleo could respond. ‘He will be able to deal with it himself when we arrive in Cairo and probably he will want to add to it as we sail down river.’

Cleo opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. What Quin said was perfectly true, her only objection was with his casual assumption of complete control.

‘Shall we go, madame? The sooner we reach the village and open negotiations, the better.’

‘One moment, Monsieur Bredon. I wish to have a word with the capitaine.’ She held his gaze. ‘In private.’

‘But of course.’ He bowed to the officers and strolled off to where the donkey was grazing.

‘He is insolent, this American, but then I hear they all are,’ one of the lieutenants observed as the junior officers walked away to leave her alone with the captain.

‘What do you know of him?’ Laurent demanded, as she knew he would. She had no answers for him, but she wanted to discover what he thought of Quin.

‘Nothing.’ Cleo shrugged. ‘He had an infected wound and was burning up with heat-stroke. He carried money, but nothing else. I have no reason to suspect he is anything but what he says.’

‘But it is strange to find an American here.’

‘The frontiers are easy enough to penetrate for a single traveller, are they not? Many people beside the emperor are intrigued by Egypt.’

‘The English certainly are,’ Laurent remarked, his eyes on Quin’s elegant back as he leaned one hip against the panniers and waited, apparently incurious about their conversation or the camp around him. His head was bowed and Cleo wondered fleetingly if he was very tired. ‘And not for the antiquities either.’

‘You think he might be a spy?’ That had not occurred to her before, but then it would be madness to send an agent deep into the desert when there could be nothing of interest to the British here. ‘He is not a soldier, I saw his body when I nursed him, he has no scars beyond old ones that must belong to his boyhood.’ She shrugged and answered her own question. ‘But what would a spy be doing here? In Cairo or Alexandria, I could understand it. No, he must be what he says.’

She was never quite easy with Laurent, who had been her husband’s friend. Sometimes she wondered if she could ask him why Thierry had married her. Her father’s enthusiasm for allying his daughter with an officer in the army of his country’s enemy she understood quite clearly—it protected their position. But why had Thierry courted her with every appearance of passionate attachment and then proved such a distant and uncaring husband?

In the low times, in the hour before dawn when she lay restless and aching with unhappiness, she wondered if the mess her marriage had become was her fault or... Or what? He knew who he was marrying. Anyone would think he was a fortune hunter, but I have no fortune.

‘Madam?’

‘I am sorry.’ He must have been talking to her and she had been far away in her head. ‘I must go and see if we can secure those boats. If not, we will be here tomorrow with our bare necessities.’

‘Of course. You are certain you do not wish to give me your father’s correspondence?’

‘Perfectly, thank you.’ Surely he had more pressing matters to concern himself about just at the moment? ‘Au’voir, Capitaine Laurent.’

* * *

Quin pushed the twine back into place and dropped the package of letters into the pannier as he heard the tone of Cleo’s voice change into an unmistakable au’voir. If he had no further opportunity to get his hands on them, at least he had memorised the names of the eight men addressed, including the Englishman, a Professor Smith of Portsmouth. Was it coincidence that the professor happened to live in the country’s foremost naval town?

‘And pigs might fly,’ Quin muttered to himself.

‘Are you well?’ Cleo asked, right behind him.

‘Well enough and better for the prospect of heading north.’

She nodded agreement as she took the leading rein and started down the path towards the village with the boats. ‘It will be a relief to be back in civilisation.’

Then you are going to be sorely disappointed, Quin thought, fanning away the flies with a leafy twig. We are heading into a plague-ridden battlefield and the best you can hope for is that your father is exposed as a gullible idiot. At worst, perhaps that crocodile might be the kindest option after all.

Men were lounging around the ramshackle jetty where the boats were moored, but Quin made for the largest house. ‘This will be the village sheikh, I imagine. Are you going to sit meekly outside with the donkey while I negotiate?’

He expected an argument, but Cleo simply slipped the tail of her headscarf across her lower face and went to sit under the shade of the wall. ‘I know my place,’ she said. It was said without inflection or complaint, but there was something in the way she spoke that made Quin look back. ‘Yes?’ She raised one brow. ‘I assume your Arabic is up to it, or do you need help?’

‘No, thank you.’ But you do, Quin thought as he tapped on the door, clearing his mind of French and English. ‘Salaam alaikum,’ he said to the elderly man who opened it and ducked through the opening as the sheikh gestured him inside.

* * *

Quin knew that bargaining required patience and persistence—he’d had plenty of practice when buying his camels—but the negotiations took more than two hours. No, they could not sell the boats. Yes, possibly they could be hired and the men to crew them. For how much? The effendi wished to beggar them, like the Feranzawi from the soldiers’ camp who came to buy food?

Patiently Quin pointed out that if the boats and their crew were absent from the village when Murad Bey and his men came through they would be safe. If they hired them to him, they would be out of reach and earning at the same time.

By this time they had moved to the waterside and there was much murmuring and gesticulating at this suggestion. A price was named. Quin reeled back in exaggerated horror. He prodded a battered gunwale, curled his lip at the state of the ropes and named another figure.

When finally they had come to an agreement and he had drunk bitter coffee and handed over half the price, Cleo was still sitting in the same place, motionless. When he turned from the waterside in a flurry of jokes and waving hands from his new acquaintances she rose smoothly to her feet and followed him in silence until they were out of sight.

‘Will it take long to break camp?’ he asked when it seemed she was not going to say anything.

‘No. Not with you to help.’ Her voice was muffled behind the veiling cotton.

‘What is wrong, Cleo?’ Quin stopped and turned. ‘Don’t you want to leave?’ This mission might be, quite literally, a pain, but at least he’d believed he was effecting a rescue. Now it seemed the victim might not want rescuing.

‘Of course I want to leave.’ She wrenched the veil from her face and glared at him. ‘Only a fool would want to stay.’

‘Then you worry that your father might be stubborn and refuse? I am certain I can—’

‘If he refuses, then we leave him.’ She kept walking, swept past with the donkey trotting obediently behind.

‘Abandon your father?’ he asked her retreating back, the set shoulders and reed-straight spine. This woman was going to be a shark in the ornamental fishpond that was London society.

‘He abandoned Mama. He has abandoned me. She was simply an unpaid maidservant and so am I. I want him safe and looked after, but after that...’

It took Quin several loping strides to catch up with her. ‘Abandoned? But you are with him now.’

‘Abandoned emotionally, abandoned in his head. Family is just a nuisance, a tie, to him. Mama thought he loved her and eloped with him willingly.’ Cleo snapped out the explanation as though she slapped down cards on a gaming table. ‘He loved the dowry he counted on my grandfather handing over when the marriage was a fait accompli. But Mama’s father simply cut her off. By the time she realised that she had tied herself to a profoundly selfish man I was on the way.’

At least her grandfather wanted her, although Quin refused to contemplate whether it was from love, duty or simply family pride. He found he could think of nothing to say so he reached out and laid his arm over her shoulders. A hug might help...

Cleo shrugged off his touch and stalked on. ‘Mama was very good at explaining things as I grew up. Papa was a very busy man. Papa was very important and so was his work. Papa must not be disturbed. Papa loved me really. That worked all through Italy and Greece and Anatolia while I was a child. Then we came to Egypt and Mama died and I realised—’

‘Realised what?’

‘That it was time to stop being a little girl and become a woman. To stop expecting what he cannot give.’

‘Love? Is that why you married Capitaine Valsac?’

‘But of course.’ She turned those mysterious greenish-grey eyes on him and smiled. ‘Why else would I marry, save for love?’

Chapter Five

‘Why marry other than for love?’ Quin Bredon fell into step beside her. ‘I can think of many reasons. For protection, for money, for status.’ She sensed his gaze slide sideways for a second. ‘For lust.’

Cleo winced, then hid the reaction with a slap at a fly. To escape, she added mentally. And for lust, let’s be honest. You desired Thierry, he was big and handsome and active. Alive. He looked at you and saw something beyond a drudge, so you thought.

‘I married my husband loving him,’ she answered honestly. And by the time I was left a widow three months later I hated him. Pride kept her voice light and her lips firm. She had been a fool to marry a man she hardly knew. And she must still be a fool, because she could not work out why he had married her. But she was not going to admit any of that to this man who was also big and handsome and active. And worryingly intelligent and curious.

‘I’m amazed you found a priest to marry you all the way down here,’ Quin remarked. ‘Or did you wed in a Coptic church?’

‘We married in Cairo. Father and I were there when the French took the city in July ninety-eight.’

‘Good God,’ Quin muttered.

‘It was not amusing,’ Cleo agreed, with massive understatement. It took an effort not to let the memories flood back, filling her nostrils with the stench of smoke and blood and disease. She had only to close her eyes and the screams of the sick and dying would drown out the sound of the river and the cries of the hawks overhead. ‘Fortunately there was no prolonged siege. Father made himself known to the new French authorities at once—he had heard about les savants, you see.’

‘And they allowed him, an Englishman, his freedom, even after their defeat at the Battle of the Nile?’

‘They saw he was harmless, I suppose. He talked to the governor and must have convinced them he was exactly what and who he said. They gave him protection and even facilitated his correspondence.’

‘Why are you not still there?’

‘We stayed for a year, then the next July they found the Rosetta Stone and brought it to Cairo, but they wouldn’t let anyone but the French savants look at it. Father was livid. Napoleon left for France to stage his coup and things began to fall apart in Cairo—the generals were arguing, there was very little money or food and the plague got worse. Father said he wanted to go south and they said he could if we went with a party of troops that was going too.’

‘And luckily Valsac was one of the officers? You must have been delighted.’

‘I did not know him before. We were introduced when the plans were being made. Thierry began to court me. Then Father and the general said it was awkward me being the only woman, and unmarried. So he proposed.’

‘How fortunate that a marriage of convenience should turn out so romantically. And how sad it lasted such a short time. How did he die? If you don’t mind talking about it.’

There was no hint of sarcasm in his words and Quin sounded genuinely sympathetic. It must be her own nagging unhappiness about the whole marriage that was colouring her reaction to his words.

‘He was killed in a skirmish when we came up against Murad Bey’s rearguard on his return south. It has been peaceful since, which is why we live apart from the troop now. They have found a better base for themselves and Father wanted to be close to the temple.’

‘And you returned to your father’s tent.’

‘I was always there when Thierry was away from camp.’ Who else was going to look after him? she thought and bit back the words. There was no point in bitterness, she was the only one it hurt. ‘Look, here is our village. I must arrange some help tomorrow to carry our things to the boats.’

There was no problem here, she was known and trusted even though the villagers thought her father was most strange and the women sympathised with her lack of a husband. Cleo negotiated with the sheikh’s senior wife for men and donkeys to carry their baggage to Shek Amer in return for her own little donkey and everything that would not fit on the boats.

Quin did not enter the village with her, perhaps sensing that his presence as a strange man might be an embarrassment. He was quite sensitive, quite unlike what she imagined an engineer to be like. He was more suited to being a diplomat, Cleo decided as she stopped on the river bank to cut some greenery for the donkey’s evening feed. When she looked round for him Quin had climbed the piled sand around the temple and was standing in the shadow of one of the great pillars.

Cleo lifted the packet of letters, the knife and water flasks from the bottom of one of the panniers and heaped in the greenery, then laid the things back on the top, straightening the cord that tied the bundle of correspondence as she did so. When she had fastened it that morning she had wrapped it round once, then twisted it so the cord caught in the other sides of the little bundle like a parcel, before knotting the ends in the middle. Now one corner was creased and the cord not straight. Odd. Perhaps it had been knocked when the water bottles had been dropped in.

She lifted her gaze to the figure almost invisible in the deep shadows of the temple. Or perhaps Quin pushed the cord aside to look at the addresses on the letters. But why should he do that? She recalled her conversation with Laurent. Could Quin be spying? But all there was here was one English scholar and his daughter and a small troop of French soldiers, miles from base.

But we are going back to Cairo and he will come with us... No, that is too convoluted. To come hundreds of miles south, through all those dangers, only to find a small group to give him an entrée into Cairo? Preposterous.

She was being foolish, Cleo told herself as she took the leading rein and made her way across the scrubby grazing area and into the sand. He was just curious and she was lonely, isolated and had no one to talk to. It was a miracle she did not see suspicious characters around every corner or hold imaginary conversations with the donkey.

There was a whole world out there filled with people who had proper families, families who cared for each other and talked and shopped and went to the theatre and entertained friends. A whole world that seemed as remote as the world of the ancient Egyptians with their enigmatic monuments.

The donkey found a bush clinging to life at the foot of the temple and proceeded to eat it. Cleo dropped the rein and trudged up the slope of shifting sand until she reached the top. Here the great horizontal slabs were only a few feet above her head and she slithered down the slope inside to where Quin stood in the shadows, gazing upwards at the ceiling.

‘Look,’ he said, his voice filled with wonder. ‘The roof is painted with stars.’

‘There is Nut.’ Cleo pointed up to where a woman’s elongated figure spanned the sky. ‘This is all so unimaginably old. I was there when Napoleon made his speech to the troops outside Cairo. “Soldiers! From the top of these pyramids, forty centuries gaze down upon you.” But I know very little about it. Father just measures things. I want to dig all the sand out.’

‘And find treasure? They say there are golden coffins and statues of lapis and gilt.’

‘Is that why you are here?’ she said before she could censor her thoughts. ‘Are you a treasure hunter?’

‘No, certainly not.’ He looked bemused. ‘It is obvious, even to someone as ignorant about this as I am, that one would need teams of workmen to clear these sites.’ As her eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light she saw he was watching her. ‘I told you what I am. Do you not believe me?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course. But an engineer would know how to clear something like this—’

‘I know how to clear it safely and efficiently, I just do not know what I would be looking for or what damage I might be doing,’ he interrupted her. ‘Is it very hard to trust me, Cleo?’ Quin held out his hand. ‘Let’s go out again, those four thousand years are weighing down on me.’

She ignored his hand, but they scrambled up the internal sand slope together and stood just within the sharp edge of shadow that ran along the top. Quin seemed to want to touch, she thought, watching him out of the corner of her eye. That arm around her shoulders that she had shrugged off, his hand just now. But it did not feel sexual, he was not trying to grope her body as some men did before she showed her knife to them.

‘Your colour is not good,’ she observed. ‘You are grey under your tan.’

‘That makes me feel so much better,’ Quin said with a grimace. ‘I’m shattered, if truth be told.’

‘I warned you.’

‘There’s no need to be smug about it.’ He leaned back on a pillar and closed his eyes, his lashes thick and dark on the pale skin beneath his lids.

‘I am not smug, merely right.’ Cleo put her hands on his shoulders and pushed down. ‘Sit. Rest.’

Quin caught her wrist and pulled her with him as he slid down the pillar to end up on the sand, knees raised. ‘Your concern is touching. Sit down too and tend to me in the approved womanly manner.’

Cleo snorted, but settled next to him, her shoulder not quite against his. It was a novelty to simply sit during the day and do nothing. It was completely outside her experience to just sit and talk. He would think her pathetic indeed if he guessed how much this gave her pleasure. ‘My concern is simply to keep you in good enough condition to be of some help packing.’

‘I will be all right in a few minutes.’ His eyes were still closed and he rested his head back against the golden sandstone.

It was interesting to hear a man admit weakness. Thierry would never have dreamt of such a thing, he would have considered it unmanly. Cleo thought that merely foolish. It was sensible to take a rest, that was all, it did not make Quin a weakling. She studied his big hands with their long fingers as they rested on his knees. There was nothing unmanly about those hands. As she thought it he lifted the right one and slung it around her shoulders, apparently gauging her position by instinct.

‘What are you doing?’ Cleo demanded, twisting against him.

‘Hugging,’ Quin said and settled her firmly against his side. ‘Not groping, don’t panic. I’m a great believer in hugging, we all ought to do it a lot more. Human contact is important, don’t you think?’

I wouldn’t know. Cleo shrugged. Her father never hugged her, Thierry had only taken her in his arms for sex. She supposed her mother must have hugged her, but she could not remember. Mama always seemed so busy, or so tired. But, now she let herself relax a little, it was pleasant to be close to another human being, a friendly, talkative human. His arm around her shoulders was heavy, but not unpleasantly so. He made no move to touch her in any other way. She could feel the beat of Quin’s heart beneath his ribs where their sides touched and he smelt of her own familiar soap, and not unpleasantly of fresh male sweat. She probably smelled of dust and donkey.

‘Who hugs you?’ she asked. ‘Your wife?’

‘Not married.’ He sounded half-asleep.

‘Your mistress?’

The side of his mouth kicked up a fraction. ‘Mistresses aren’t for hugging.’

‘Who, then?’

‘My mother used to. My nieces and nephews do. My old nurse when she isn’t telling me off for something. My brothers. Male friends.’

‘You hug men?’

That almost-smile again. ‘Well, you know—that embarrassed half-hug men do, then we slap each other on the shoulder and clear our throats and start talking about horses or women.’

No, she didn’t know. This was obviously part of that unknown world that she understood as little of as any village woman. ‘Your father?’

‘Not my father.’ There was no smile this time and no colour in his voice.

She understood about fathers who wiped the smile from your lips. ‘You have four older brothers, of course. Is there a Sixtus?’

‘No, I’m the only one with a number.’ Again that careful avoidance of emotion. ‘The others are Henry, James, Charles and George.’

It took no great degree of perception to guess that something was very wrong with his family, or, at least with his relationship with his father. What to talk about now? Or perhaps it was best just to let him rest. It was unexpectedly comfortable sitting quietly together, touching. Cleo closed her eyes. What an idiot I was to be suspicious of him. He is a nice, uncomplicated man.

‘Tell me about your little troop of soldiers.’

Her eyes snapped open. ‘What about them?’

‘I just wondered what they would be like as travelling companions. Are they amiable or aggressive? Competent, do you think? Well-armed?’

‘I have no idea about their efficiency or their arms,’ Cleo said cautiously. ‘I know little about such things. Why?’

‘Because I am going to write it all down in a report and send it off to the British by carrier vulture.’ He rolled his eyes at her. ‘For goodness’ sake, Cleo! Because our safety is going to depend to a great extent on that unit, of course. This is hardly going to be a pleasure cruise. I have no weapons. Has your father?’

‘A musket and some pistols. A sword in the big trunk, I think. But they have been in there for years.’

‘We will get them out and check them over this evening. Is your father a good shot?’

‘I imagine he could hit the side of a pyramid if he was close enough, but I have never seen him with a weapon in his hand.’ It was always Mama who had to deal with the chickens for the pot.

‘We’ll stick close to your soldiers then.’ Quin pushed against the pillar and got to his feet with an easy grace that looked effortless and which must, given his state of health, have taken some will-power.

‘They are not my soldiers.’ She looked at the way he was favouring his left arm. ‘Does that hurt?’

‘I’ll live.’ Yes, he hides a great deal under that pleasant face and reasonable manner. ‘You married one of them,’ he added, not to be distracted from his point, it seemed.

Cleo marched off down the slope to the patient donkey.

‘For love.’ Quin’s voice came so close behind her that when she stopped he bumped into the back of her.

‘Of course. I told you so.’ She set off briskly towards the camp so the donkey had to trot to catch up. ‘You are a very curious man, Mr Bredon.’

‘Strange or inquisitive?’ He had lengthened his stride, too, which would probably tire him again, but she was too flustered to care.

‘Both.’

‘I only wondered because it seems a strange thing to do, for an Englishwoman. To marry an enemy. But if it was love, I can understand.’

‘The French are no enemies of mine. I have never been to England and my grand English relatives do not want me, so why should I care for it? The only good thing I know of it is that it rains a lot there.’ She glanced up at the relentlessly blue, hot sky. ‘And there is no sand. But it rains in France almost as much as in England, Thierry said, and there are no deserts there either. I was looking forward to France,’ she added under her breath.

But not softly enough, it seemed. ‘It rains a lot in America, too,’ Quin remarked. ‘There are deserts, but those are easy to avoid if you want to.’

Cleo reached the tent and turned. ‘Is that a proposal, Mr Bredon?’

She had hoped to disconcert him, embarrass him even. Instead he laughed, a deep, mellow sound. ‘No, and you are teasing me, madam. It was a geographical remark, as you know full well.’

‘Daughter!’ Her father appeared around the side of the tent. ‘There you are at last.’ He picked up the bundle of letters from on top of the wilting greenery in the pannier. ‘Why have you not handed these over? And was there nothing for me?’

‘The soldiers are leaving, Father.’ Cleo led the donkey into its shelter and lifted off the panniers. Quin took them and began to dump the fodder out, tactfully, she supposed, leaving them to their exchange.

‘Leaving? But who will deal with my correspondence?’ Her father was going red in the face as he always did when thwarted.

‘No one. We are going, too, because the Mamelukes are coming. Mr Bredon has secured two feluccas and the villagers are coming to help us move our things early tomorrow morning. We must start to pack now.’

‘Nonsense. There is work to be done here. They will not trouble us, why should they? We are staying.’ He turned back towards the tent.

‘But, Father—’

Quin ducked out from the donkey shelter. ‘I am leaving tomorrow morning and I am taking Madame Valsac and her belongings with me. Whether you come willingly or attempt to stay is entirely up to you, Sir Philip.’

Her father swung round. ‘She will do no such thing, she will do as she is told and remain with me.’

‘Madame Valsac is a widow and of age, Sir Philip. She does as she pleases. And it does not suit my conscience to leave you here, however pig-headed you are, sir. If you refuse to accompany us, then I am afraid I will have to knock you out and sling you over that unfortunate little donkey.’

‘You would assault a man old enough to be your father! After I took you in, saved your life—’

Cleo slipped away into the tent behind them.

‘It was Madame Valsac who took me in and saved my life, Sir Philip. I imagine you would have noticed me when my corpse began to stink, but not before, unless you fell over me,’ Quin said calmly. ‘And I would not leave a man old enough to be my father to the mercies of a war band of belligerent cavalry, armed to the teeth and set on killing. So, what is it to be? Co-operation or force?’

‘Damn you, sir—’

‘Here is the key to the arms chest, Mr Bredon. I have just locked it.’ Cleo handed him the key and stood beside him, facing her father. ‘It is for your own good, you know.’

Sir Philip turned and stormed back into the tent.

‘I’ll take that to be a yes, then,’ Quin said. ‘You are truly a soldier’s wife, Cleo.’ He tossed the key into the air and caught it again. ‘Let us go and inspect our arsenal.’

Chapter Six

Cleo was extraordinarily efficient. Quin wondered if she had learned to be in her few months as a soldier’s wife or whether she was naturally organised. Probably the latter, he decided as he helped a grumbling Sir Philip pack his papers into trunks. From what he could see the man’s books and notes comprised most of the Woodwards’ possessions.

There were a few portmanteaux he had glimpsed in their sleeping spaces, enough for a limited wardrobe, but Cleo seemed to possess no ornaments or trinkets, only tools, kitchen implements and her medical kit.

‘We cannot do more this evening,’ she said at last, coming out to find him feeding the donkey to escape her father’s complaints. ‘What is left are the cooking and eating things and tonight’s bedding and of course the tent, but that comes down very easily.’

‘It does?’ Quin slopped water into the bucket and straightened up to look at the structure.

‘It does when you have done it as often as I have,’ Cleo said. ‘Here, there are some spare clothes of my father’s.’ She thrust a bundle topped with a wide-brimmed straw hat into his arms. ‘You will find it easier to relate to the soldiers if you look more like a European.’ She shrugged when he looked a question. ‘They do not trouble to get to know the local people. As far as they are concerned the villagers are either the lowest form of peasants or brigands—or both.’

Quin shook out a pair of loose cotton trousers, a shirt and a long, sleeveless jerkin. Not exactly the thing to be seen wearing at Almack’s, but ideally suited to the heat. ‘Thank you, I must admit to becoming tired of my skirts.’

‘They will be too big,’ she said as she walked back to the tent, ‘but you can use a cord as a belt. I will find something.’

‘Cleo.’ She stopped, but did not turn. ‘Leave it, I will manage I am sure. You look exhausted. Surely there is nothing more to do tonight?’

‘Just supper and heating the washing water and some laundry.’

‘Cleo.’ That brought her round, a frown between the dark slashes of her brows. ‘Come here. Please.’

She trudged back towards him, her usual grace lost in what must be a fog of tiredness. Quin opened his arms and gathered her to him and after a moment she slipped hers around his waist, leaned in, her face in the angle of his neck and shoulder. She relaxed against him and sighed.

Quin held her and breathed in the scent of hot, tired woman, the herbal rinse she used on her hair, the faint scent of mint tea on her breath, the dust that filmed her skin. He was beginning to care too much for her welfare, he knew that. He had a mission to perform and it was not certain yet that she was an entirely innocent victim to be rescued. This was all too near spying to be comfortable and yet it was his duty. This was no place to strike fine attitudes about being a gentleman. He sneered at himself. So anxious to be a true gentleman and not a bastard? This is the best thing for her, the authorities will bend over backwards to look after her welfare, if only for her grandfather’s sake. Your sensitive conscience can rest easy, Quin.

Cleo stirred in his arms and he forced himself to think clearly about her. She professed no loyalty to England, she had married a Frenchman for love and she carried her father’s suspicious paperwork back and forth to the troops. Had she any idea what was going on? She was an intelligent woman, but curiously sheltered from the real world. An innocent, an obedient daughter or a willing servant of the French?

Having a woman plastered to him was having its natural effect on his body and the thin robe he wore was not exactly designed to hide the fact from someone as close as Cleo was. Quin realised the proximity was having an effect on her, too. He could feel her nipples hard against his chest and her breathing had changed.

He wanted to make love to her, but that was out of the question. Back to his blasted gentlemanly sensibilities, he recognised with resignation. To make love to Cleo while he was uncertain of her smacked of a ruse to gain her confidence and extract information through pillow talk. He would die for his country, he would kill for it if he must, but he was not going to seduce a woman for it and if that made him a hair-splitting hypocrite, then so be it.

Cleo wriggled back a little and he opened his arms to release her, half-thankful, half-regretful. Then he realised she was simply putting enough space between them so he could kiss her. Who is seducing whom? he wondered. Or is this just for comfort? If it is, it must be hers, because it is most certainly not going to help me sleep tonight... To hell with it. He bent his head and took the proffered lips. Just one kiss.