by Louise Allen
She was alone now, with only Quin between her and her gilded prison.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘In here.’ Quin opened the door to a sitting room. ‘Off with your bonnet and pelisse and make yourself comfortable. We have planning to do.’ He tugged the bell pull as she obeyed, still too tired and shocked to protest. Everything was happening too fast and none of it was good, not even being with Quin. That just hurt.
‘My lord?’ A dapper little man, a valet, Cleo supposed, came in. ‘Ma’am.’
‘Miss Woodward, this is Godley. Godley, you have become exceedingly unobservant, I trust? Excellent. Please make up the bedchamber Mr Baldwin uses when he stays over. Hot water, of course, but first tea, I think.’
‘You want me to stay? To hide here?’ Cleo looked around at the very masculine room with its leather chairs, desk, bookshelves and tray of decanters. There was a small table with packs of cards in the window and a gun rack on the wall. A riding whip and several canes were stuck in a stand. It suited Quin. Its smell of leather and wood smoke and a faint hint of citrus made her think of his skin...
‘I suspect that keeping you here in bachelor apartments will be noticed soon enough. But one night will let you rest, I think. Ah, tea and crumpets. And cake, wonderful. Thank you, Godley.’ He sat back and studied Cleo.
She stared back. I must look a sight. I’m tired, and wearing my plainest clothes and I haven’t been able to wash in more than a basin of warm water for two days and I’m at my wits’ end.
‘Eat.’ Quin poured her tea when it became obvious that she was not going to do the ladylike thing and take control of the tea tray. He slathered butter on to two crumpets and passed her the plate. ‘Don’t let them get cold. You need food and a hot bath and a good night’s sleep, Cleo.’
The crumpets were delicious, hot and light and buttery. She drained her cup and Quin refilled it. Finally she found her voice. ‘Eating and bathing I am capable of. I doubt I could sleep.’
‘You expect me to send a note to the duke the moment your eyes are closed?’ Quin studied the cake plate as though it was of absorbing interest. When he lifted his gaze to her she was shocked at the sharp intent in his eyes. ‘I suppose I cannot blame you.’ He put down his cup and saucer. ‘Shall we discuss what is to be done now, then?’
‘You have a plan?’ Cleo asked. How ridiculous that she still clung to the hope that he could save her, set her free, show that she mattered more than his career, his good name. How selfish you are, Cleo Woodward, she chided herself. And how foolish.
‘Yes, I have a plan. You tell me what you want to do and I will help you do it.’
* * *
‘But I was doing what I wanted...’ Cleo looked as though she was holding on to her temper by her fingernails, but Quin suspected she was simply holding herself together by sheer will-power. She must be exhausted and frightened, he thought. And being Cleo she would not want fussing over.
‘You were doing the only respectable thing you could think of under the circumstances. Tell me what you would do if you had control of that money your father gave you.’
‘If! Oh, very well, if we must play foolish games. I would find a small house in some respectable town. One with a theatre, perhaps, good shops, a library, pleasant company. I would be a widow again. My husband would have died in Egypt. Perhaps I would give language lessons to young ladies... What is the point of this?’
She wants so little and I could provide it so easily. Quin spoke rapidly, working it out as he went. ‘I will give you the money to do that. I will put it all in George’s hands so I can tell your grandfather with a clear conscience that I do not know where you are. George will find you a house, manage the funds for you.’
‘But what funds?’
‘I will provide you with sufficient.’
‘I cannot take money from you! What does that make me?’ He expected anger, he had not foreseen the tears that sparked in her eyes or the look of hurt.
‘It makes you the lady to whom I am in debt for my life twice over. The lady whose life I have interfered in and to whom I now wish to make some small recompense.’
‘I should say no.’ Cleo stared into her teacup as though seeking to read wisdom in the dregs. She got to her feet and walked away from him to stare, apparently entranced, at a set of atlases on the bookshelf. He could almost hear her thinking. Quin willed himself into stillness and watched the tall, slender figure. She was tired, he could tell by the infinitesimal droop of her shoulders, the less-than-perfect balance of her spine. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, undress her and wash her in the warm bath water, then towel her dry and tuck her up in bed to sleep while he paced through a sleepless night of frustration.
The wave of tenderness, the acceptance of restraint. It began to puzzle him that he cared so much. Perhaps the way he felt was the weight on his conscience lifting, the realisation that he could help Cleo.
‘Do you give me your word that this isn’t simply a ruse?’ She turned as she spoke and he saw the mistrust and, beneath it, something utterly naked and vulnerable.
She expects to be hurt, used, betrayed, he realised. Her father, her husband, the French officials, her grandfather—and me. We have all deceived her for our own purposes. No wonder she cannot trust. ‘I give you my word,’ Quin said and saw the flicker in her eyes as she noticed his hesitation. He saw, too, the moment when she decide to risk it as she had before. Surely it meant something, that she was prepared to try again when he had betrayed her before?
‘I think I would like one of your hugs,’ Cleo said, and ran into his arms.
Quin held her tightly to him, buried his face in her hair and breathed in warm woman, plain soap, the faintly spicy scent of her skin, the indefinable something that was Cleo. He wanted to kiss her, but that was not what she needed now, so he contented himself with stroking her back and murmuring nonsense until she relaxed with a sigh and pulled back a little.
‘Does this mean I am forgiven?’ Quin asked.
‘Forgiven? Yes,’ she agreed.
‘But you haven’t forgotten and you still are not certain of me, are you?’ He was a fool to keep pressing when he knew he was not going to like the answer.
‘No,’ she said slowly, her eyes still locked with his. ‘I have learned that you are very clever with words and with the finer points of truth and honour.’
Well, you asked for that, don’t dig any deeper. ‘Come, the water will have heated. I will call for your bath. The room is this way.’
She followed him into the second bedchamber. Godley had made up the bed and turned down the covers. There was the tub before the fire and a pile of towels, soap and his big sponge. ‘Go behind the screen and start undressing and I’ll help with the water,’ Quin said.
Cleo looked around the small, very masculine room, smiled at him and slipped behind the Cordoba leather screen.
Quin and Godley carried in the buckets until the tub was three-quarters full, placed two jugs of rinsing water by the side and then the valet took himself off.
‘Cleo, the bath is ready.’ It was very quiet behind the screen.
‘I need help.’
He should have thought. Without her maid Cleo was at the mercy of buttons and pins she could not reach, stay laces she could not untie. Quin stamped on the rush of arousal that the thought of undressing Cleo provoked. ‘Right. I’ll shut my eyes.’
‘There is no need.’ She came out from behind the screen, barefoot, her hair down and braided into one long plait. She was a trifle pink in the cheeks, but remarkably composed.
But of course, she had been married and they had been intimate... ‘Turn around then.’ He began on the buttons at the back of her gown. Tiny, infuriating things.
‘I almost saw you bathing once before, when we first met.’ Was he talking to help her nerves or to keep his need to take her in his arms under control? ‘I lay on top of that dune, burning up with fever, trying to think rationally about whether I should watch any longer or make my mo
ve. I was so far from my right mind that it took me several minutes to realise what you were about and that I was within an inch of making a Peeping Tom of myself.’
Cleo laughed, the first happy sound he had heard her make since he had found her that day. She stood there in her shift and petticoat, twisting her long plait into a coronet on top of her head and skewering it with a pin. Quin thought he had never seen anything more feminine, more sensual or more tempting.
‘Stay now.’ She wriggled out of the gown and laid it over a stool, then came back so he could tackle her laces.
It was his fantasy become real. ‘No!’
‘But you will,’ she stated, looking back over her shoulder as the corset came loose. ‘Quin, we want each other, we both know it. I am not some innocent little virgin. I have been married, I understand what physical desire is—and I feel it now. So do you.’
‘How can you mistrust me so much and yet want this?’
‘I trust you to make love to me, to make me feel better tonight, to show me that you care for me. It...hurt when you would not lie with me.’
What was right? Quin shut his eyes on the sight of her and found her scent made his head spin. Yes, he wanted her, had wanted her since he set eyes on her. She was a grown woman who knew her own mind and she wanted this, now and with him.
‘It hurt me, too,’ Quin said and opened his eyes. ‘I would be honoured to lie with you.’
Cleo smiled, shy and suddenly vulnerable as she shed her few remaining garments and stepped naked into the water. It was painful, the beauty, the desire, the need for her.
‘Quin?’ She looked back over her shoulder again, unconsciously seductive, an uncertain water nymph.
Quin pulled himself together, determined never to make her feel unsure ever again. ‘Why do I see you in terms of classical mythology?’ he said as he took off his coat and cufflinks and began to roll up his sleeves. ‘First a maenad, now a water nymph.’
‘Because you are overeducated?’ Cleo suggested, laughing up at him, and he fell to his knees and laughed with her.
‘No,’ Quin retorted, working up a lather. ‘Because you are beautiful and timeless and...ancient.’ He began to soap her back, loving the slide of his palm over the elegant curves, running his thumb down the bumps of her spine. She was still too thin.
‘Ancient?’ she protested.
‘Eternal, like one of those wonderful Greek statues. So alive, so old and yet so young, looking as though they knew the wisdom of the ages.’
‘Quin, that is lovely.’ She dropped her head back so she was looking up into his face. Quin abandoned the soap, rational thought and self-control, slid his arms around her and kissed the soft mouth offered to him so freely.
Oh, yes, I want you, Quin thought as Cleo’s lips opened to him and he explored her with his tongue and lips and breath. There was desire, a white-hot wire through his veins, heating his blood, hardening his aching body into readiness, but there was also tenderness, caring, the overwhelming feeling that he had come home at last.
She arched against his hand and he realised he was cupping her left breast, small and prefect, the nipple hardening against his palm, the skin as soft and smooth as a fresh fig with the bloom still on it.
‘Cleo.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she murmured as though her name had been a question, and curled her arms around his neck so it was easy to lift her from the water and hold her against him. ‘I’m soaking you,’ she protested, but she did not try to free herself.
Quin stood, snagged a towel from the pile and dropped it on to the bed before laying her down. He brought more towels and began to dry her, arms and legs and face first, then her breast and waist, catching her up against him so he could stroke the towel down her back. When he laid her back down she moved her legs apart a little, watching him from beneath the sweep of her lashes, sensual and relaxed.
‘You are like the cat goddess Bastet, again,’ he murmured, patting the dark curls dry, the breath thick in his throat.
‘Again?’
‘There have been moments when I have thought of you like that.’
Something passed across her face, an expression too fleeting for him to catch. ‘You mean you have thought of me with...desire before now?’ she asked. There was that look again—uncertainty and past hurt.
‘You think I did not, from the beginning? What about Cairo and on board ship? That first kiss at Koum Ombo?’
‘You stopped at Cairo and on the ship, you did not want me, you were only being kind.’ Cleo sat up and curled against the pillow, pulling the towel around her.
‘Kind!’ Quin tossed the rest of the damp towels into a corner. ‘I was being frustrated and attempting, Heaven help me, to do the honourable thing. Do you really think I didn’t want you?’
‘Not me,’ she said, her gaze on her clasped hands. ‘I realise you wanted sex, men always do, but I thought it was easy for you to stop because it was just me.’
‘Hell, Cleo.’ Quin was not sure whether to laugh or drop his head in his hands. ‘There I was, nobly suffering agonising balls’ ache and sleepless nights and you were insulted by my restraint?’
‘You were frustrated?’ She sat bolt upright, curled her arms around her knees and smiled at him, her eyes sparkling with very feminine pleasure.
‘And aching. Cleo, I want you. I have always wanted you, even when you were torturing me with wet sheets and sharp implements and icy looks.’
‘Then come to bed with me now.’
I could drown in those eyes, he thought. Quin stood up and began to strip off his clothes.
* * *
At last. His naked body was surprisingly unfamiliar, despite the fact that she had handled it while he was unconscious. A conscious, active man was something else entirely, Cleo mused as she allowed herself the indulgence of openly watching the play of his muscles as Quin lifted the wet shirt over his head, bent to his shoes, tugged off his breeches. He was not lying about wanting me. She felt her own body soften and grow moist.
‘Hurry,’ she whispered.
‘Stop it,’ Quin said as he lay down beside her. ‘You are doing nothing at all for my self-control.’
‘I don’t want your self-control.’ She shifted down the bed, opened her arms to him, and, wantonly, her legs.
Quin’s weight over her was bliss. His heat and the texture of his skin, the pressure against her belly, the teasing friction of hair against her nipples turned longing into desperation. Her body was tightening painfully, as close to the edge as if they had been making love for an hour.
She arched up, inciting him, needing him inside her, needing to surround him with love and passion and urgency. Quin shifted and she felt him slide between the wet, swollen folds, pressing, caressing, but not penetrating. He gave a deep sigh and rested his forehead against hers.
‘You are so beautiful, Cleo,’ he murmured and took her mouth in a deep, demanding kiss even as he began to move against her, tightening the coiling desire in her to desperation point. She wanted him inside her and yet she wanted him to keep on doing exactly what he was doing; she wanted his mouth on hers, possessive, demanding, and she wanted to scream his name, bite the muscled arms that caged her.
And then Quin tilted his hips, changed the angle of the pressure until there was nothing in her consciousness except that one pulsating focus of need. Lights flashed behind her closed lids, the spiral knotted, broke, unravelled and she screamed his name against his lips and lost herself utterly.
Cleo came to herself to find that Quin had not moved except to raise his head. She looked up into his eyes, dark with desire, and freed one hand from the sheets she had twisted it into to touch his cheek, wondering if this was not a dream.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said softly.
‘I’m not.’ It seemed she could speak.
‘Must be rain then.’ He kissed the corners of her eyes and then brushed his mouth to hers so she could taste the salt. Then, lips still brushing hers, he eased himself into her in one lon
g, slow, perfect thrust.
It had been a long time since Thierry and Quin was not, she thought with fleeting apprehension, a small man, but he was perfect for her body. She focused on relaxing, accepting, and then she found those almost forgotten inner muscles and began to use them to caress Quin, even as her hands slid over his shoulders and her tongue thrust against his.
He groaned, deep in his chest, and began to move in long, hard, slow strokes. Cleo gasped, tried to hang on to some kind of control and failed, convulsing around him as he arched over her, thrust one more time and came with her, his shout muffled in her hair, his body wrapping hers within his powerful embrace.
I love you, she whispered silently as she cradled his head against her breast and let her trembling body grow still and calm in the shelter of his.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cleo woke in the dawn light and lay watching Quin as he slept beside her. They had woken and made love twice in the night, once gently, once with an explosive passion that shook her to the core.
Now the morning stubble darkened his jaw, his lips were slightly parted and his hair was tousled in a way that would have been endearing if it was not so erotic. Oh, my love, how am I going to manage without you?
As if she had said the words aloud Quin’s eyes opened. He lay without speaking, looking at her. The light waxed and suddenly spilled through the gap in the curtains, across her face. Cleo blinked and Quin came back into focus. He was looking at her as though he had never seen her before, as though she was something strange and wonderful and yet...frightening. But that was absurd, she had never seen Quin frightened.
‘Quin?’ She touched his face and he pulled her to him, rolled on top of her and sank, without hesitation, into her body. Then he lay there, caging her with his body, looking down into her eyes.
‘Oh, Cleo,’ he murmured. ‘What a fool I have been.’ He kissed her before she could speak and kept kissing her as he made slow, achingly tender love to her.
Goodbye, she thought. He is saying goodbye. And then what he was doing with his body, with his hands and his mouth, made all thought impossible.
