by Louise Allen
‘Cleo, it is not like that.’ Hell, is that what I was doing? Surely not. His conscience stirred, uneasy. I gave her pleasure, I showed her I return her feelings of attraction. No, that is not enough to justify it.
‘Is it not?’ She was flinging on clothing as if a fire alarm had been raised. Quin winced at the sound of tearing cotton as her nails caught in a stocking, but she dragged it on regardless and knotted her garters with a jerk. ‘Whenever I tell myself I was wrong about you, that I was foolishly suspicious, you have the perfect knack for destroying my trust in you.’ Cleo cast around, one shoe in her hand. ‘Oh, where is my other shoe?’
‘Here.’ Quin handed it to her and bit back the words that were forming. It would be hopeless to explain what he did not understand himself, pointless to apologise when he could not decide whether she was being utterly unreasonable or not. He had never met another woman like her.
Cleo cast a distracted look at the mirror hanging on the bulkhead, pushed her fingers through her hair and whirled round to confront him. ‘Will you kindly let me out?’
For a long moment Quin stood there, his hand on the bolt, and thought about letting common sense go to the devil. Something far more powerful than lust was urging him to take her in his arms, kiss her, undress them both and to hell with the consequences.
The moment of recklessness lasted only seconds. Quin unbolted the door and stood back as Cleo swept out without looking at him, then closed it behind her with meticulous care. He was closer to completely losing his temper than he could ever recall and he was not too sure who he was most angry with: himself for being a bloody fool or Cleo for asking far more than he was prepared to give her, or any woman. Or perhaps it was the nagging instinct that he had just lost something important.
Quin scrubbed his hand across his aching head, then flung open his trunk and rummaged until he found the thin cotton trousers and galabeeyah he had worn in the desert. He changed and went barefoot up on to deck.
‘How long before we sail?’ he asked the captain, ignoring the man’s raised eyebrows.
‘Four hours at least, my lord. Several of the water casks need replacing.’
‘Can you lend me the small skiff and someone to sail it? I want to go along the coast to swim.’
‘Certainly, my lord.’ The idiosyncrasies of aristocratic passengers were obviously to be tolerated, given the price the man had extracted for their passage.
It took only minutes to find a sailor and for the skiff to be sailing out from the harbour and along the coast to a shallow bay. The man, who obviously thought he was mildly deranged, threw the anchor over and dropped the sail while Quin stripped off his clothes. He took a shallow dive into water that was clear, calm and cool to the skin, warmed only by the spring sunshine, not the heat of summer.
Quin surfaced and began to swim, hard and fast, parallel to the beach. He was grateful for the salty freshness, even as it stung the grazes from his collision with a wall that morning.
He pushed himself hard, working on speed and the accuracy of his strokes, focused on nothing but the physical sensation, the burn and stretch of the newly healed scar on his arm, the slide of the water, silky over his naked skin.
When he finally stopped and hung there, treading water, blinking against the salt in his eyes, the skiff was a child’s toy in the distance. Quin turned on to his back and began to swim towards it, eyes open and staring up into the perfect blue of the sky, marred only by the occasional white dot of a wheeling gull.
He let his thoughts free again to run over what had happened, as he might have probed an aching tooth with his tongue, braced for the stab of pain. He was the wrong man for that mission into the desert. Or, perhaps, simply the wrong man for Cleo. She would have been better with some swashbuckling romantic who would have carried her off without a thought for her father’s fate, fallen head over heels for her and brought her to her grandfather with some impassioned declaration of love.
What she had got was a man determined to catch a spy, if he existed—cross off item number one in notebook—and to deliver Miss Woodward as a neatly wrapped parcel to the duke—item number two on the list—before proceeding with the next well-planned phase of his life: marriage—item three.
The neatly wrapped parcel had come badly unwrapped. The memory of undressing Cleo disturbed the even rhythm of his stroke to the extent that he swallowed sea and stopped to tread water and recover. She was too intelligent, too unconventional and too...Cleo. He liked her when she wasn’t driving him to thoughts of drink or murder. He was certainly in lust with her.
Quin floated on his back and contemplated where that left him. At arm’s length from Cleo, that’s where, contemplating the nightmare she’s going to be for her grandfather and thanking my lucky stars she will cease to be my problem the moment I hand her over.
He turned over and struck out hard for the skiff. Time to get back to the boat and back to normal. When he hauled himself back on board he scrubbed himself dry with the cotton trousers, pulled on the galabeeyah and settled back to enjoy the journey back to the harbour.
The sun shone, the sea was calm, he had a plan. Why, then, was he feeling so damnably blue-devilled? Because I have justified deceiving her, of course. Because I have chosen duty and ambition over desire and friendship and romantic wrong-headedness.
Chapter Seventeen
‘What is wrong?’ Maggie asked from her perch on the bottom of her bed where she was rolling pairs of stockings together.
‘Quin.’ The mixture of anger and passion on top of too many apricot pastries and the tension of the fight in the town had left Cleo’s stomach churning.
‘He seduced you? What was it like? I should imagine he is magnificent in bed.’
‘No, he did not seduce me. I told him I wanted to make love.’
Maggie peered at her. ‘Surely it wasn’t a disappointment?’
‘He made love to me and it was wonderful. But he would not allow me to make love to him.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘He didn’t really want me, I suppose. Or his wretched sense of honour is more important. Or perhaps simply his common sense. But if course, being a gentleman, he obliges a lady,’ Cleo said with an exaggerated drawl. ‘And it stops him having to listen to me talking about what I want to do when we get to England, having to hear about all the unsuitable, unladylike things that are important to me.’ She shifted so she could curl her arms around her legs and rest her chin on her knees. ‘When I realised, we had a row. Or I tried to have a row, he just looked down that aristocratic nose of his and maintained a dignified silence while I ranted at him.’
‘Where is he now?’
Cleo shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’
‘Do you think he knows how you feel about him?’ Maggie stuffed the stockings in a bag and hung it on a nail on the bulkhead.
‘I made no secret of it. He would have to be very dense indeed to miss it. And whatever else he is, his lordship is not stupid.’
‘No, I don’t mean that you are angry with him,’ Maggie said in a tone of exaggerated patience. ‘Does he know you are in love with him?’
Cleo found her mouth was open and she closed it with a snap, then tried to laugh. ‘Of all the ridiculous...’ She stopped and thought. ‘Oh, no. I am, I love him. I hadn’t realised. How awful.’ And that is why I ache inside. I love him.
‘Why? He’s handsome, a gentleman, intelligent... He would make a fine husband.’
‘Husband! As if I wanted one of those.’ Brave words, Cleo, she mocked herself. If he asked you, you would say Yes without a moment’s thought even though it is completely impossible. ‘And besides, he has his eye on some titled lady who will be the perfect wife for a diplomat and she has a papa with money and influence. Why would he want me?’ Why, indeed? He has just made it very clear he doesn’t even want to make love with me.
‘What are you going to do about it then?’
‘Avoid him,’ Cleo said grimly. How appalling if Quin guessed. She wou
ld sink with mortification. She had her pride and sometimes that had been all that had kept her going.
‘But you’re a lady,’ Maggie protested. ‘I know you’ve been living a bit...rough, but you aren’t—what’s the word?—ineligible.’
‘He needs a hostess, someone who knows all about society. I have no idea who is who and I didn’t even know which piece of cutlery was for what when I had dinner back in the camp. My parents eloped and made a scandal and my English relatives do not want to know me. And I do not have any money and certainly no influence and Quin needs both in his career. He’s a younger son.’
Somehow it was important to convince Maggie that it was absolutely impossible, because if she could convince her, then perhaps she could also extinguish the small glimmer of hope that persisted despite all the cold water she poured on it.
‘If he loved you, none of that would matter. Grab what happiness you can, I always say, life’s short enough.’
‘It would matter to me,’ Cleo discovered. ‘I couldn’t allow him to throw away his career because of me.’
‘That’s all very fine and noble.’ Maggie did not look convinced.
‘No, it isn’t. We’d be miserable, I would feel guilty, everything would go wrong. I am just being selfish.’
‘Well, what I think is—’
Maggie’s thoughts were cut short by madam’s maid bustling in. ‘Madam’s up and feeling a lot better and asking for you. Ma’am.’ She always added the title as if it was an afterthought.
She can see I am not a proper lady, Cleo thought as she stood up and began to unpin her tousled hair. I would never fool anyone in London society for a moment. ‘Please tell her I will join her just as soon as Maggie has done my hair. Such a breeze on deck.’
* * *
It took them three days to reach Gibraltar on smooth seas and with a favourable, light wind. Cleo stayed with the other women and avoided being alone with Quin. He made no move to speak with her apart and his manner at meals was polite yet distant. She fixed a smile on her lips and made a careful point of neither ignoring him nor of seeking him out. Her heart might be aching, but she had her pride.
‘Such elegance of manner, Lord Quintus,’ Madame da Sota pronounced as they sat under an awning on deck one afternoon. ‘Such a gentleman. Typical of the English aristocracy. I have had the most interesting discussion with him about the politics of Greece this morning.’
‘Indeed,’ Cleo agreed in a colourless tone as she finished a seam in the gown she was sewing.
‘Did you see Gibraltar when you sailed to Egypt, Miss Woodward?’ madam enquired with one of her rapid changes of subject.
‘No, madam. I think we must have gone overland to Italy, which I can recall as a child, and then we moved to Greece and into the Balkans later.’
‘So you do not remember England?’
‘I have never been to England, ma’am.’
‘My goodness! And who will be chaperoning you when you arrive, Miss Woodward?’
‘Er...’ She had given it no thought. Presumably there were agencies where one could hire a respectable duenna.
‘Me,’ said Maggie firmly.
‘But there is your son and your parents,’ Cleo protested. She had assumed it would be impossible for Maggie to stay with her.
‘Freddie’s better off where he is. I’ll visit, of course I will, but he’s spent more time with them than with me. I won’t drag him away from where he’s settled, just so I can have him to myself.’
Cleo was beginning to know Maggie now. The bright smile and the determined tilt of her chin were hiding an aching need to see her son and an equally strong-willed determination to do what was best for him.
‘He could come and have a holiday in London,’ she said. ‘He would like that, I imagine. Most big cities have lots of things children enjoy and you could be together.’
‘Forgive me, Miss Woodward. Maggie is an excellent maid, I am sure, but you will need a lady companion.’
‘Yes, of course.’ A lady companion, as far as she could see, would be a complete nuisance, and an expensive one at that. If she had Maggie, then surely all the proprieties would be observed.
‘Shall we try the gown on and then I can pin the bodice to the skirt, Miss Woodward?’ Maggie said, the perfect lady’s maid.
‘Yes, we had better check it. If you will excuse us, madam?’ She hustled Maggie and her armful of fabric into her cabin. ‘Would you really consider coming to live with me? I don’t know what the wages are like in London, but I am sure I can pay you the right amount as well as what I owe you for this voyage.’
‘Don’t worry about that. His lordship gave me five sovereigns and my passage all found, so I’m right and tight until you can sort things out with your bankers.’ Maggie shook out the separate pieces of the walking dress. ‘Will you put it on? This’ll show his lordship that he’s dealing with a lady.’
‘A pigeon in borrowed plumes is still a pigeon and not a peacock,’ Cleo said, holding out her hands. ‘Look at them. Madam keeps tutting over them. They are brown and I have calluses and my nails haven’t all grown to the same length yet. And my hair is in no style at all and my face is tanned and...’
‘Do you care so much what he thinks?’ Maggie was busy unfastening Cleo’s gown.
‘He? You mean Quin? No, of course not. I am above such things.’ Liar, you want him expiring with desire, you want him struck dumb with your beauty and elegance. You want...him.
‘We can study the hair styles of the ladies at Gibraltar and I can try to copy them. You might even be able to find someone to cut your hair. And there are sure to be merchants with all the cosmetics and creams that English ladies use.’
‘The problem is going to be getting ashore to do all this studying and shopping.’ Cleo stood still while Maggie tossed the skirts of the new gown over her head and then helped her into the bodice, taking care with the pins and the basting stitches.
‘I’ll fix him,’ Maggie said as she stepped back to study the set of the bodice. ‘If he says we cannot go, I will take him aside and tell him it is essential for female reasons. He won’t ask what, he’ll be too embarrassed.’ Maggie grinned.
‘You are obviously far more skilled at managing men than I am,’ Cleo said as she put her own gown back on.
‘They are all quite simple really,’ Maggie said as she began to pin the sections of the garment together. ‘It is just discovering how their brain works and then making that a target. His lordship is a gentleman and so he does not want to embarrass a lady. Simple.’
Simple? Quin? I do not think so. Cleo began to measure out braid and ribbon and wondered if she dared risk crossing him again. But what can he do to me? He has promised to take me to London and things can hardly be worse between us than they are at the moment, surely?
May 15th 1801—the Thames, London
‘Home,’ Maggie said. She leaned on the ship’s rail and inhaled deeply.
Cleo huddled into the thick shawl she had bought at Gibraltar and shivered. Inhaling lungfuls of smoky, damp, river-smelling air was a treat she could well do without.
‘Good to be back in a city without heat and dust, isn’t it, Maggie?’ Quin joined them at the rail, looking, to Cleo’s surreptitious glance, exceedingly smart. She had thought that all English gentlemen were incapable of getting themselves dressed without the attentions of a valet, let alone turning themselves out in prime style, but Quin managed it. He had even had his hair cut at Gibraltar.
‘Is this winter?’ Cleo asked, convinced that her nose must be blue. They had avoided each other since the ship had passed through the Straits into the Atlantic, unless mealtimes and accidental meetings made exchanges—carried out with painstaking courtesy—essential.
Quin had agreed without argument to Maggie’s stammered request for an essential shopping expedition and had even arranged for them to go with the Governor’s married niece and one of her footmen as guide and escort.
Cleo had enjoyed Mrs Denver’s comp
any even though she was disconcerted to discover that Quin knew her.
It had been even more disconcerting to have to carry on a conversation with a woman who assumed that Cleo knew just as much about Quin as she did. No, she had never danced with Lord Quintus, but she was certain he was most accomplished. No, she was not familiar with his family, but she was sure his brothers were all that were charming. No, she had no idea what Lord Quintus’s plans were after he arrived in London. Except courting a bride, she could have said, but instead, bit her tongue.
‘Did you not buy a cloak with all that shopping you did?’ Quin asked now. She must have shivered, or perhaps it was simply her question.
‘No. It never occurred to me it would be this cold.’
‘This is summer, but I have to admit it is not as hot as it might be for mid-May. I’ll find you something warmer.’ Quin strode off and came back five minutes later with a black cloak of fine wool with a deep-blue lining the colour of his eyes. He swirled it around her shoulders but left it to her to fasten the clasp under her chin. ‘It is a good twenty inches too long for you, be careful not to trip.’
Cleo told herself she was glad of his impersonal touch. ‘Thank you. I will take care not to trail it in the mud.’
‘You will not need it in the carriage,’ Quin said, his attention apparently on the wharf that was rapidly approaching. ‘Good, they are there.’
‘Who are?’ Cleo scanned the crowded dock that seemed quite as chaotic in its way as the Cairo waterside.
‘I wrote as soon as we arrived in Gibraltar and told my secretary to make certain we were met, even if it meant coming down and waiting every day for a week. We do not want to be hanging around in this area. It is not what your gr— What is suitable for a lady. Excuse me, I will go and make certain all the luggage is on deck and ready to be swung ashore.’
