Beguiled by Her Betrayer

by Louise Allen

  Cleo stared at the defined muscle and sinew under the tanned skin, the dusting of dark hair. She had tried so hard not to look at him when she was nursing him. Now it was as though she held a magnifying glass up to his skin. She shrugged, the movement repressing her instinct to lean forward and touch his arm. ‘That was different.’

  ‘True,’ Quin agreed. ‘Certainly I was not enjoying myself on those occasions.’

  ‘Enjoying?’ She looked at his face and saw he was smiling. ‘I don’t understand.’ This was not good. She had thought she was beginning to be able to read Quin, to understand him. Now... ‘I am confused.’

  ‘I was walking down the hill away from my meeting feeling as if I’d been stuffed into my clothes. My shoulders were stiff, my head was full of facts and hints and I just wanted to do something irresponsible and free and physical. Starting a brawl in a foreign city minutes after leaving a diplomatic meeting counts as all of those, I suspect.’ The smile had become a grin.

  ‘We might all have been killed!’

  ‘I very much doubt that, not with your skill with a knife and Maggie’s lethal tricks with a dead rat.’

  There was a light in his eyes that she remembered from the moment when he had sent the felucca weaving its dangerous course through the barges full of soldiers, from the tense minutes after he had hoisted the makeshift flag and brought them safely into the British camp. She had glimpsed it in that fight as well.

  ‘You enjoy the danger. Why are you not a soldier if you like to fight?’ And he had made her think he was angry with her, displeased over her trip ashore when all the time he had been enjoying himself, the wretch. More deception.

  ‘I prefer not to kill people.’ He unfolded his arms and leant back in the chair. ‘I enjoy the challenge of problems. I like the moment when the solution comes clear. When that sometimes resolves itself into physical action I relish it, too.’

  ‘You understand yourself very well, it seems.’ She wished she had the same clear self-knowledge. Freedom, yes, she knew she wanted that. But what then?

  Quin’s smile became wry. ‘Too well sometimes.’

  ‘You know what you want.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I know that.’ The smile faded altogether.

  Cleo thought back to the night on the felucca when he had woken her, talked in his sleep. He had sounded bitter and driven. He might know what he wanted, but it did not seem to give him peace. ‘Quin...’ She put out one hand as if to reach him.

  Quin’s smile came back, bright and teasing. And false. ‘I want those apricot pastries.’

  ‘I don’t think you deserve them,’ Cleo retorted. If he was going to pretend everything was all right, then she was going to let her resentment of his teasing out. ‘I only brought them because I was sorry for dragging you into a fight and now I discover you enjoyed yourself and tried to make me feel guilty.’

  Quin leaned to the side and stretched out his arm, snagging the box off the bed before she could snatch it away. ‘Hmm. Two. I’m prepared to share.’

  He offered her the box and then took the remaining piece. For a few minutes they ate in silence. Quin seemed focused on the pastry, catching crumbs, using his tongue to find the escaping fruit in the corner of his lips, his eyes half-closed like a cat enjoying its dinner. Sensual.

  I’ve never seen that side of him. Perhaps there were not so much many sides to him as layers, like this flaky pastry. And somewhere there was the real Quin, the one that perhaps she had never glimpsed yet. He was a master at hiding his feelings. He was honest when he told me about his father, she argued with herself. Or was he? another part of her wondered. She had felt sympathy, liking, but those could be manipulated as easily as hate or love. Or desire. Somewhere was the real man and she had to find him because he was the one she needed to trust.

  The silence when they finished eating felt heavy, loaded with unsaid words. Cleo shifted on the bunk, restless.

  ‘You’ve a crumb.’ Quin reached towards her face. ‘Just here.’ His fingertips brushed at her cheek and then stopped. He leaned closer as his palm cupped her cheek.

  Cleo made herself meet his gaze and saw that the light was back in his eyes. It was as if embers had leapt into flame. His whole focus was on her and she swayed, leaning into the warmth of his hand. ‘What is it?’ It was a whisper, all she had breath for.

  ‘I fear I am not going to be able to give you what you want when we reach England.’ The brief blue fire had flickered and gone now. His gaze met hers, heavy and dark. ‘I fear you will be disappointed.’

  ‘In what I find there, or in you?’ His hand was still touching her face, the fingers caressing her cheek.

  ‘Both. I think you will be confused because I do not think you know what you truly want. This world I am taking you to is so very different to what you are used to.’

  ‘I know what I want.’ It was hard to form the words with the mesmeric movement of his fingertips sending her nerve endings into tingling confusion. ‘Why will I be disappointed in you? Should I not trust you?’

  ‘You never have, have you?’ His fingers stilled.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head and his hand dropped to rest on her shoulder. ‘And I was right, was I not? You hid the reason you came to Egypt, you were selective with the truth about who you were. There is still something that you are not telling me, I can sense it. And you even deny this.’ She reached for his hand and brought it to her lips, savouring the texture of his skin.

  ‘Cleo—’

  ‘You want me and I want you and yet you will not admit it.’

  ‘I admit it.’ Quin made no move to free his hand. She could feel the pulse, strong, steady. Perhaps a little fast for a fit man.

  ‘Then why do you not do anything about it? I am not some sheltered virgin. I am a widow, I am of age and I am travelling to London to start my own life on my own terms. Why cannot that include a lover?’

  ‘I would be taking advantage of you,’ Quin said. Behind the words she sensed his mind working furiously. Seeking for excuses.

  ‘You are not trying to seduce me, you do not coerce me, so how would you be taking advantage?’

  ‘I am virtually the only man you have been on familiar terms with since your husband died, other than your father and Laurent. It is only natural that there is a certain...awareness between us.’

  ‘Such sweet reason. Shall I then wait until I arrive in London and find a variety of men to choose from? You will secure me invitations to all the best parties so I may view the cream of the available gentlemen, perhaps.’

  ‘Only if you wish to set up as a high-class courtesan!’ Quin tugged his hand free and stood, stooping under the low deck. He shifted the chair further away and sat down again. ‘How do you expect to make a suitable marriage with that attitude?’

  ‘You think I want a marriage? You sound like Madame da Sota. You and she might think that is what all this is about—keeping me respectable so I can catch a second husband—but I do not.’

  ‘Of course that is what should happen.’ The colour was high on Quin’s cheeks, as though she had somehow embarrassed him or caught him out in some way. ‘You are of good family, you are still a young woman. A beautiful young woman. Of course you will marry, and marry well, once you have settled into London society.’

  ‘I will not marry again.’ This time it was she who stood, waving Quin impatiently back to his seat when, with automatic courtesy, he began to stand too. ‘I will never marry again. Never.’

  ‘You loved your husband so much?’

  ‘I hated him.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cleo stood at the porthole, her back to Quin, and stared out at the busy harbour. ‘Oh, I thought I loved him at first, but then, I knew nothing about men. The only model of marriage I had was my parents, but I knew no one could be as eccentric and selfish as my father. I believed I would have a companion, a lover, a friend. Of course, life in an army camp would be hard, but I was used to that, I was prepared to work. But nothing was what I expect
ed.’

  ‘He did not love you?’

  ‘Of course not. Now I realise Thierry had been ordered to marry me, and why. It was simply to make sure that there was nothing to stop my father co-operating fully with the French authorities. Thierry didn’t want a lovestruck virgin who hung on his arm asking for affection and attention. He wanted the experienced camp whores, or the women of the town who knew how to please a man and demanded nothing more than a coin.’

  ‘Are you saying that you are still a virgin?’ Quin asked.

  ‘Oh, no. Why spend good money on sex when you can have it for free at home? He taught me how to make love, he showed me, for a few wonderful nights, what pleasure a man and a woman could have together.’ Someone was sailing a small skiff right past the ship, his wife or girlfriend cuddled up close to him as he sat at the tiller. The woman turned up her face and Cleo heard her laughter, clear across the blue water. Happy lovers.

  ‘Then he stopped bothering about my pleasure and after a few days, stopped caring whether I was tired or sore or unwilling. I was there to cook his food and wash his clothes and...everything else.’

  ‘You mean he forced you?’ Quin’s voice had that dangerous calm she had heard before, on the river, in the courtyard.

  ‘Yes.’ The skiff had tacked into the wind and the couple were kissing now. Young, hopeful love.

  ‘He hit you.’

  ‘Eventually he did, after a few days when I recovered from the shock and he discovered that curses and pushes and shoves met with resistance.’

  ‘Dear God.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘How long did this go on for?’

  ‘One night. The next day I started carrying a kitchen knife with me everywhere. He thought I would not use it, but he was wrong. I slashed his arm for him and after that he decided I was too much trouble and went back to his whores.’ She shrugged. ‘He was no more work than my father was from then on.’

  ‘Cleo.’ Quin’s voice was right behind her. She had not heard him move. ‘Cleo, not all men are like that.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she agreed. ‘My father never lifted a finger to my mother. I am certain you would never hit a woman. But all men are as selfish, of that I am certain. Marriage is on their terms, for what money or land it brings, for their comfort and convenience and for the production of their heirs.’

  Is that your skiff? she wondered as the girl in the boat moved with confidence to lower the sail. Was that your dowry?

  ‘And women are protected and provided for. The children are theirs to love.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cleo turned and leaned back against the bulkhead. ‘For as long as the wife does exactly what her husband expects of her. She exists to support the life he wishes to live.’

  Quin was so close she could see the faint shift of muscles beneath his skin as he kept his face calm, his tone reasonable. ‘You tar us all with the same brush?’

  ‘You told me you intend to marry a woman because she is suitable, her father has influence and she will bring you wealth. Do you love her?’ He shook his head. ‘Do you even know her?’

  ‘We are acquainted.’

  ‘Poor woman.’ His eyebrows lifted, but she swept on. ‘Sir James back in the camp outside Cairo—where was his wife? Waiting at home with the children, I suppose. I wonder if she would have liked to travel?’

  ‘Cleo, you are being unreasonable. This is what marriage is, a sharing that might not be exactly equal, but which does have benefits for both parties,’ he said.

  ‘Then I want no part of it.’

  ‘You want to be the selfish one.’

  ‘No!’ She slapped her open hand against his chest to try to shake some sense into him. ‘I want to share, to be equal, to have my own interests and my own life as well as being with a man whose own life I am involved in. I want what Mama thought she was going to have when she eloped with Papa. I wish for the moon, I know that perfectly well.’

  ‘And you discount the benefits of marriage to a woman then?’ Quin frowned. ‘Respectability, protection, financial security...’

  ‘Children, sex?’

  ‘Cleo! A lady does not speak of sex.’

  ‘Exactly my point. Or one of them. I would like to make love with you, but I must not mention it. You, on the other hand, may.’

  ‘Not to an unmarried lady—’

  ‘A widow. Have you never had an affaire with a widow?’ Quin’s lips set in a hard line. ‘Yes, I can see that you have.’

  ‘But not one under my protection, that would not be honourable.’

  ‘So, in fact, this is all about your honour, not about the woman’s thoughts, needs, wants,’ Cleo stated. ‘I think you were accusing me of being selfish just now.’

  ‘Checkmate,’ Quin said. ‘But if I were to be perfectly ungentlemanly and said I did not wish for a liaison, that I did not desire you, then you would be angry with me.’

  Cleo realised that she was enjoying herself. This was like verbal chess and, maddening as Quin was, he was at least prepared to play. ‘It would be hypocritical of me to be angry,’ she told him. ‘Unless I thought you were lying, of course. And you are, aren’t you, my lord?’

  For a moment she wondered if she had pushed him too far. Then the corner of his mouth twitched, producing that almost dimple that she was beginning to find dangerously endearing.

  ‘You are a witch, Augusta Cleopatra Agrippina Woodward. Yes, I desire you. No, I am not going to have an affaire with you because I am simply an old-fashioned gentleman, hypocritical attitudes and all.’

  She found she was smiling back at him, charmed by what, for once, she guessed was the pure, unvarnished truth, not some clever twisting of the words. ‘Oh, Quin.’ They were close enough for her to be able to put her palms flat against his chest as she stood on tiptoes to reach his mouth and that dimple.

  He accepted the brush of her lips, which she expected, but his arms came around her and he pulled her close, found her mouth with his own and kissed her, his tongue sliding between her lips, open on a gasp of surprise. The kiss was thorough, confident, and his arms held her very firmly. When Quin freed her mouth she said, ‘You said you were not going to have an affaire with me!’

  ‘I know. I said nothing about not making love to you, though.’ He stooped, swept her up in his arms, ducked his head under the low deck beams and went to the door where he slid the bolt across. ‘Now then, Cleo. You said something about you desiring me and me desiring you, if I recall.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ The words escaped her as he placed her on the bunk.

  ‘You have changed your mind? A lady’s privilege.’

  ‘No! But you play with words—’

  ‘It is my profession. I have to be good with them.’ His fingers were busy with the strings of her shoes and then his hands slid up her calves to her garters. ‘Lie back, Cleo, I am quite good at this as well.’

  ‘Braggart,’ she muttered and collapsed back on to the pillow. ‘Oh, what are you doing?’

  ‘Making love.’ He lifted her and caressed her and somehow—magic, perhaps?—her gown had gone, and her chemise, and he was saying something appreciative about a lack of stays and then his mouth was on her breast and Cleo lost the will to think, only to feel.

  She twisted, whimpering under the onslaught of lips and tongue and teeth, clutching at Quin’s shoulders as she arched up to him. Then in a fleeting moment of sanity as he moved from one nipple to another, she realised that her hands were gripping the cotton of his shirt, not the bare skin of his arms.

  ‘Quin, let me...’ She pulled at his shirt, tried to find the fastening of his breeches.

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Oh, yes! You are wearing altogether too many clothes and I am wearing none at all. Ah.’ He silenced her by the simple expedient of kissing her and stopped her roving hands by catching both wrists together in one strong-fingered hand that trapped her arms above her head. Cleo arched against the restraint, aroused by his strength.

  His free hand slid down, over the curve of her stomach,
over the aching mound, and her legs parted wantonly, even as she tried to free her hands so she could caress him. She was wet and wanting and desperate. In a minute, she told herself. In a minute he will let me make love to him... And then he slid two fingers into the desperate heat and his thumb moved with devastating accuracy and Cleo screamed, the sound caught by his kiss.

  She surfaced—for surely she had been drowned in a hurricane—and found her hands free and Quin’s warmth gone from her side. And then she felt his hands on her thighs and the heat of his mouth where his fingers had been and she reached, desperate, to touch his hair. Anything else was beyond her. ‘I can’t...’ she whispered, but the coiling, tightening pleasure–pain was possessing her, fast, deadly, overwhelming.

  ‘Quin,’ she cried as he took her over the edge and back into the whirlpool. ‘Quin!’

  * * *

  ‘I am here,’ Quin said and moved to gather Cleo’s quivering body into his arms. ‘I’m here.’

  She had been so beautiful in the throes of passion, so intense, so abandoned and primal. And so responsive. He ached, but pushed the need away. It was a nagging reminder that he should not have done this, that it had given him satisfaction when it should all have been for her.

  Cleo’s eyes opened and she smiled at him, a sweet, trusting caress of a look that had him smiling back, frustration and conscience forgotten. ‘Mmm, that was so good.’ She stretched like a cat in his arms and he thought of the goddess Bastet, feline, feminine and powerful. Then her fingers found the waistband of his breeches and she began to tug at his shirt. ‘How can I make love to you if you won’t take your clothes off?’

  ‘You can’t. I do not want you to.’ Quin set her on the bed and stood up. ‘This was not about me.’

  ‘Not about...’ She sat curled up on the rumpled bunk completely naked, still flushed with passion, and stared at him. ‘Why?’ she murmured as though to herself. Then her furrowed brow cleared and her eyes that had been inward-looking with thought became sharp and angry as she focused on his face. ‘Of course. Make love to me and I’ll stop making demands. Befuddle my brain with sex and I’ll curl up like a well-stroked cat and not ask that you engage with my anxieties and my desires. Commit physical intimacies and you will not risk me trying to create mental ones.’