by Louise Allen
‘You need nothing, there is the entire deck to walk on in the fresh air and the sights of Syracuse are infested with sailors, beggars, pickpockets and the riff-raff of a dozen nations.’ He glanced at her with scarcely concealed impatience. ‘I do not have the time to escort you and I do not know the crew well enough to trust any of them either.’
‘It cannot be worse than Cairo.’
‘True. No one is shelling it, there does not appear to be hand-to-hand fighting in the streets and I believe it is free of the plague, but then one can say that of many cities around the Mediterranean and I would not want you wandering about in any of them.’
Quin looked quite disgustingly fit, healthy and well groomed. The wind-blown man who had strolled around on deck, and occasionally even climbed the rigging, was suavely formal now. Not that she was going to show him that she thought so.
‘Why are you dressed like that?’ The wave of her hand took in pristine white linen, knee breeches, black stockings, buckled shoes and a strange flat hat under his arm. The embroidered baldric supporting a dress sword was visible between the edges of his coat as it crossed his chest, a flamboyant dash of colour beneath the midnight blue of his tail coat.
‘I am off to see the representative of the King of Naples and this is the correct outfit for a formal call.’ He interpreted the lift of her eyebrows correctly. ‘It is always good diplomacy to make oneself known where possible and not attempt to slink in and out of port. That only raises suspicions.’
Cleo glanced down at her limp skirts, made by bemused Cairo seamstresses in approximation of the newly fashionable high-waisted gowns of France and England, as described by madam. This city with its Bourbon king and flourishing trade would be certain to have fashions that were up to the minute. There was no time to have anything made up, but she might be able to buy fabrics and make sketches and sew something herself.
Quin must have heard her sigh. ‘I am going to be busy all day. I do not have time to escort you, Cleo, so you will just have to make up your mind to amuse yourself on board.’
She would not put it past him to tell the captain not to allow her on shore, Cleo thought, watching Quin talking to the man as he waited for a rowing boat to be brought alongside.
Infuriating, but not impossible, she decided, as she made her way down to her cabin. ‘Maggie!’
‘Yes, miss?’ Maggie emerged from the cabin she shared with madam’s maid. ‘Madam’s lying down, she’s got a headache.’
‘Maggie, are you still friendly with that sailor you were flirting with?’
‘What, the first mate? Yes, you could say we were friendly-like.’
‘Friendly enough for him to have us rowed ashore without, shall we say, advertising the fact to the captain?’
‘His lordship not co-operating? I’ll see what I can do.’
* * *
Half an hour later the rowing boat bumped against the quayside and Cleo scrambled ashore, her hand held out to steady Maggie. ‘Straight up there,’ she pointed. ‘That’s where Lord Quintus went. If the king’s representative lives in that area then that is where the fashionable quarter will be, I have no doubt.’ She unfurled her parasol. ‘And there should be pastry shops where we can have coffee before we start.’
The street curved uphill, filled with a crowd of local people. Cleo dug into her memory for her rusty Italian and tried to understand the accent. There were intriguing little shops and stalls, people seemed cheerful and busy and there was nothing alarming as Quin had suggested. He was just trying to keep me on board, Cleo thought as they came into a long, rectangular open space with towering stone buildings on their right.
‘There,’ Cleo said, nodding towards a small group of elegant ladies entering a shop. ‘Can you smell the coffee? We will start there. I might even buy some cakes for his lordship to show him I bear him no ill will for making such a fuss about nothing.’
* * *
Quin strolled out of the palazzo into the cathedral square and started to write a dispatch in his head while he eased his stiff shoulders. Stifling Bourbon court etiquette, the need to think about what he was hearing through layers of subtlety and misdirection, and the heat of an Italian afternoon, all served to put a dull ache behind his eyes and a stiffness in his neck. The square, surrounded by its golden stone buildings, and paved with the same material, threw back light and heat in a burning dazzle.
He felt restless and dissatisfied, even though the meeting had gone well. Trapped, that was the word. Ridiculous, because he enjoyed the diplomatic cut and thrust, the subtleties and the deception and knew he was good at it. He even enjoyed the formality and ritual when it was done well.
It was probably lack of hard exercise, Quin told himself as he took a side turning into a shadowed alleyway. A swim would be good, but the water in the harbour was not enticing. Perhaps there time to take a rowing boat, go along the coast a little, find a cove with clear water over sand...
The cry was faint. It might have been the call of a child or a seagull and yet there was something about it that jerked him out of his reverie of cool water. It came again, louder this time. ‘Aiuto!’
Help! It was a woman. He would have responded anyway, but there was a familiarity about the voice, even raised, even in Italian, that brought the hairs up on the back of his neck. Cleo. Quin began to run, cursing his stiff formal shoes as they slid on the cobbles and in the rubbish of the gutters. He cannoned off corners, ignoring the pain of bruised shoulder and skinned palm. The voice came again, closer, unmistakably Cleo, informing someone in vehement, confident Italian that their ancestry involved a donkey and a camel and they would regret ever crossing her path as their doubtless pathetically small balls would not survive the experience.
Quin was grinning as he rounded the final corner and found himself in a square so small it was almost a large courtyard. It was deserted except for four men who looked like fishermen and, facing them, Cleo, a knife in her hand. At her feet Maggie was crouched, her teeth bared at the men. Above his head a shutter banged closed. There was going to be no help from the locals.
The group shifted and spread apart when they saw him, moving with the ease of men accustomed to brawling and quite happy with the prospect of a fight.
‘Quin!’ Cleo flicked him a glance, then fixed her eyes on the men again. ‘They are after our purses and everything else you may imagine. Maggie’s hurt her ankle. The shorter one with the blue neckerchief is the leader. They don’t seem to speak English.’
She reported with the economy of a soldier back from reconnaissance, all useful information and no hysterics. Quin drew the dress sword from its scabbard, a slim, fragile-seeming needle of steel.
‘Lo chiami una spada?’ Blue Neckerchief pulled a blade from his belt, a heavy knife that looked capable of gutting a big tuna with a stroke.
‘Yes, I call it a sword,’ Quin said mildly in Italian as the other three drew their own weapons, equally large, equally unsubtle. ‘Can you make a distraction?’ he added in English.
Without a word Cleo stooped, picked up a handful of dusty grit and threw it at the nearest man, a fat, deceptively jolly-looking type. He batted it away, laughing at her, and then staggered back as she followed it up with a cobblestone. The second man made a dive at her and she slashed with her knife, catching him across the back of his hand. He fell back cursing.
‘I said make a distraction, not start a war,’ Quin said on a huff of laughter as he lunged at the fourth man who had swung round to look at what Cleo was doing, presenting an undefended left side.
His sword was a rapier. It was light, thin, vulnerable to a blow from something heavy, but as a stabbing weapon it was unsurpassed. The point sank into the bulk of the man’s bicep so smoothly that he did not start yelling until Quin pulled it back in a flowing fencer’s move and then slashed at his face when the man spun round to face him. The cut was just where he had intended, across the forehead so blood flowed down into the man’s eyes, blinding him.
One down,
no, two. Cleo was fending off one man while the one she had hit with the cobble was on his knees, arms over his head, as Maggie pelted him with everything she could reach, from stones to what looked like a dead rat.
Cleo had been right, Blue Neckerchief was the leader. He stepped back, eyes flickering from side to side and let the one Quin thought of as Bloody Hand pick up the fight.
‘Run while you can, my friends,’ Quin advised and shifted position so he could keep both men in view at once, rapier raised in a textbook pose. He wanted them to think he was an academic fencer. Bloody Hand spat on the cobbles, then shifted his knife and came in fast. Quin lifted his weapon out of the way, spun round and kicked, hard and accurately, and the man collapsed on the cobbles, clutching his groin and retching. His knife clattered away, skidding on the stones, and Cleo lunged for it, grabbed it and tossed it back to Quin, who caught it left-handed.
No point in pretending now that he didn’t know how to fight dirty. Blue Neckerchief pulled a short cosh from his pocket and edged forward, grinning a gap-toothed smile of pure malice. He was clearly not happy about losing his prey, still less having three of his men injured, but he was plainly looking forward to gutting Quin.
‘Come on,’ Quin encouraged him. ‘Or are you only capable of attacking girls? And you need your friends to help you with—’ He broke off as the man barrelled forward, stabbing with the knife while he beat at the slender blade of the rapier with the cosh.
The second it touched the sword Quin tossed the weapon away, throwing the man fractionally off balance, then spun out of the way of his thrusting blade. Quin brought his clenched left fist, holding the knife hilt, down on the angle between neck and shoulder and felt the collarbone break. The man fell to his knees and Quin followed through with a right hook to the jaw as he went down.
Chapter Fifteen
Quin looked round at a frozen tableau. Four men on the ground, Maggie, a cobblestone clutched in her fist, and Cleo, his rapier in her hand, poised like an avenging Fury.
‘Thank you,’ he said as he got his breath back and held out his hand for the sword.
She passed it to him, her face white under the golden tan. ‘No, thank you.’ Then she ran to Maggie’s side and helped her to her feet.
‘Bloody hell,’ Maggie said, hopping on one foot. ‘Cracked my ankle bone, the—’ The string of curses she produced were hopefully unintelligible to Cleo. Some of them were new to Quin.
‘I’ll carry you.’ He sheathed the rapier, scooped her up in his arms and looked round for Cleo, who was gathering up scattered belongings. ‘Come on, before the neighbours decide to come out and join in.’
She was uncharacteristically silent as they navigated the twisting alleyways to emerge on to the quayside. Quin realised he was grinning again. Damn it, he was enjoying himself. A thoroughly satisfactory fight, the only injury on his team a sore ankle, his arms full of an appreciative young woman who was batting her eyelashes at him and Cleo safe and sound, the hellcat. It occurred to him that not only had he repaid her a little for saving his life, but that now he had the opportunity to tease her just a trifle as she thoroughly deserved. He tightened his lips, banished the grin for a scowl and strode towards the waiting skiff.
* * *
‘That did not go well,’ Cleo said as she wrapped a soaking cloth around Maggie’s ankle. Madam’s maid scuttled into the cabin with a tisane in one hand, picked up a fan in the other and informed them snappishly that she couldn’t help, madam was having a dreadful migraine and would they have the kindness to be quiet?
‘I thought it went very well,’ Maggie retorted and stuck out her tongue at the maid’s retreating back. ‘We won. Ouch!’
‘I think it is only bruised,’ Cleo said. ‘Quin is livid and I can’t say I blame him. I’ve got some salve somewhere.’
‘Horse liniment. Use it for everything in the army. There, in my brown bag.’ Maggie levered herself up on her elbows and wriggled her toes experimentally. ‘What do you think he will do?’ she asked as Cleo soaked a rag in the evil-smelling liquid and put it on the bruise under the wet cloth.
‘Lock us in the cabin at the next port, I imagine,’ Cleo said. ‘At least our shopping was not damaged—even the apricot pastries survived.’ Which is more than my relationship with Quin will after this. Whatever that relationship was... ‘I’ll take the rest to Quin.’
‘Peace offering?’ Maggie’s smile was knowing.
‘Apology, I suppose.’ Cleo put down the sticky box of pastries and sat on the end of Maggie’s bunk. ‘I thought it would be safer than Cairo and that he was making a fuss about nothing.’
‘He fights well, doesn’t he? Very elegant. And dirty.’ Maggie dug into the box and came out with a pastry. Golden preserve trickled down her fingers. ‘Yum.’
‘You haven’t tasted it yet.’
‘Him, I mean. Good looking, moves like a dream, has a really useful kick...’
‘Controlling, deceitful, untrustworthy...’
‘Intelligent, good in bed.’
‘How would you know!’
‘Isn’t he?’ Maggie asked with unconvincingly round-eyed innocence.
‘He is good to hold and to be held by. Very calm, very strong. He kisses...’ and my bones melt ‘...well. He is also exceedingly strong-minded. I am going to be delivered to England like a packet of sweetmeats and he is only going to allow himself to nibble the corner of one of them.’
‘Lick the sugar off,’ Maggie said with a snort of laughter. ‘He could nibble my corners at any time.’ She cocked her head to one side and regarded Cleo in the gloomy cabin like a Cairo sparrow watching for a crumb of flatbread. ‘Is he married?’
‘No.’ Cleo twitched the box of pastries away from Maggie’s searching fingers. ‘But he is going to be. There’s some lady he has his eye on and she has all the right qualities and a rich influential papa.’
‘And you—’
‘I have a father who has been unwittingly aiding and abetting the enemy, I have been brought up in the poor quarter of just about every Near Eastern city you can name, I have no social graces at all, no influential relatives who acknowledge me... Anyway, I don’t trust Quin as far as I can throw him if my interests and his collide, as he has already proved. And I don’t want to marry him.’
‘Don’t you?’ Maggie shrugged. ‘You could have fooled me.’
I am blushing. Of course I don’t want to marry him. He tricked me. I don’t like him. Cleo bit her lip. Yes, I do, fool that I am. And I desire him. She took a pastry out of the box and bit into the flaky, yielding sweetness. ‘Pastries are more reliable than men. They make you happier, anyway. And why would I want to get married again? The first time was quite enough, thank you.’
She lifted the lid of the box. Two left. And Quin was not going to become any less annoyed with the passage of time.
‘I’m going to try to sleep.’ Maggie lay down and closed her eyes. Then one opened, just a crack. ‘Good luck.’
‘Don’t use all the liniment,’ Cleo muttered as she went out, clutching the battered box of pastries. ‘I am probably going to need it.’
The captain had given Quin a cabin right in the bows of the ship. Cleo negotiated companionways and wriggled round cargo until she found herself at the door. Goodness knew what she was going to say to him. Probably she would get her ears blistered and then she would lose her temper and throw the pastries at him. She knocked.
‘Come in!’
The cabin was roomier than hers, triangular in shape and lit by two good-sized portholes. Cleo blinked in the light and realised they must be right up in the bows. Quin was sitting writing at a table that let down on straps from the bulkhead. He had taken off coat and waistcoat and rolled up his sleeves to the elbow and beside him the dress sword hung by its intricately embroidered baldric from a peg, swaying to the motion of the ship as though it had a secret life of its own.
When he saw who it was he stood, the chair bumping back against the bunk. ‘Cleo? You should not be
in here.’ The frown was still there, two marked lines between the straight slashes of his eyebrows, his mouth unsmiling.
‘I brought you some apricot pastries.’ She offered the box and when he did not take them she put them on the bunk.
‘And that is what made the risk of robbery and rape worthwhile, is it?’
‘No.’ She took a tight hold of her temper and reminded herself that Quin had rescued her from a situation of her own making. ‘I bought fabric and fashion plates and thread and ribbon.’ And fine lawn underclothes, not that I am going to mention those.
‘That’s all right then. If I had known it was something that important—’
‘There is no need to be so sarcastic. It might not matter to you—you’ve got trunks full of fancy clothes, apparently. You aren’t going to feel like something the cat dragged in when you meet strangers.’ To her horror her voice almost wobbled. She must be more afraid of what was to come than she had realised if she needed the support of fashionable clothes and pretty ribbons to support her.
‘Those clothes aren’t so bad.’ He frowned harder as he contemplated the odd cut and lumpy waistline
‘If I had to wear Egyptian dress, that would not be such a problem, I would merely look foreign and strange. These,’ she said with a sweeping gesture at her skirts, ‘look like laughable imitations of the real thing.’
‘I see. Do you have enough supplies to make something better or shall I escort you ashore again?’
What had come over him? ‘Thank you, but we were on our way back when we missed the main street to the harbour.’
‘When we get to Gibraltar there will be ladies there who can help you fit yourself out more suitably for England. Quite a few have accompanied their husbands to the garrison.’ Quin sounded almost as if he was concerned for her frivolous feminine needs.
Cleo sat down on the edge of the bunk. ‘Why are you being kind to me? I was wrong to go ashore, I admit it. Maggie has a badly bruised ankle as a result and things could have been much worse,’ she added scrupulously.
‘I owe you my life, perhaps twice over,’ Quin said. He spun the chair around and sat down, his arms crossed along the back of it.
