Beguiled by Her Betrayer

‘He does not make a good enemy,’ Cleo murmured, her eyes on Laurent’s rigid back as he stalked back to his men who had begun to pole the heavy barges out into the current.

‘Neither do I,’ Quin responded with that wry half-smile of his. He turned to the man at the stern. ‘Taiyib?’

‘Taiyib,’ the man responded and shouted to the others to cast off the ropes and push off from the shore.

It is well, Cleo translated. And somehow she felt it was, even though Laurent made her deeply uneasy and the journey was filled with perils, expected and unimagined. She believed Quin when he said he would make a bad enemy, although why, she could not say. He was lean and fit, but he did not have the scarred body of a warrior. He had handled the weapons in their chest competently the previous evening, but not with the casual familiarity she had become used to with Thierry who had seemed to be almost part of his sabre and firearms.

Quin had tipped the hat over his eyes and relaxed against the mast as apparently boneless and limp as a sleeping cat. Cleo made herself comfortable and studied what she could see of his face beneath the tilted brim. The strong, stubborn jaw, the straight line of his mouth, the shadow of stubble where his morning shave had been hasty and in poor light.

He was confident and supremely determined, she decided. When he had been ill he had refused to give in to it. Faced with Laurent’s hostility he would not back down. But he was not stubborn. He had stayed in his bed until the worst of the fever had passed, he had been prepared to rest and admit weakness, he accepted Laurent’s aggression by smoothly deflecting it, not rising to it. Intelligent, then, and flexible. A man capable of playing a deep game. Dangerous.

A man she was not going to allow herself to trust. Desire now...that was another matter and one, she suspected, that was beyond her control.

Chapter Eight

Her bed shifted and rocked. Earthquake! Cleo woke with a start, bolt upright, clutching the thin sheet to her chest. Under her clenched fists her heart thudded.

The bed rocked again, there was a splash of water and she remembered where she was, on a felucca, moored against the bank at Asna.

‘Shh. I am here.’ The quiet words from the other side of the woven wall were deep and reassuring and came immediately on her moment of panic.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cleo whispered. ‘I forgot where I was.’ She parted the hanging and found Quin lying full-length along the side of her shelter. He was propped up on one elbow and his face was quite clear in the moonlight.

‘There’s no need to whisper. The men are all asleep on the bank, the sentry passed a few minutes ago and your father is snoring on the other boat. Even Delilah is asleep.’

‘Who—oh, the goat, of course.’

His chuckle told her he was well aware she had been teasing him by inventing a name on the spur of the moment.

‘But you are not asleep,’ Cleo observed. ‘Are you uncomfortable?’

‘No, only restless.’

Quin Bredon was the least restless man she had ever encountered. ‘No you are not, you are keeping guard. But the men are sleeping by the mooring ropes and there are two sentries.’

‘Patrolling a considerable length of bank. No one seems very alert to dangers from the river. If I had designs on robbing these vessels, I would swim and haul myself over the side.’

‘That is reassuring,’ Cleo muttered.

‘That is why I am here.’

‘Across my threshold like a slave in some ancient palace?’

‘Of course. Are you not Queen of the Nile?’

Cleo snorted. ‘And you were awake, you must have been, to know about the sentry and to react so fast when I woke. You should be asleep.’

‘I can sleep during the day. I am cat-napping now. Close your eyes and let go, Cleo, don’t be afraid.’

‘I am not at all afraid.’ She dropped the flap and slid back under her sheet. The loud slap of something large hitting the water had her sitting up again the next moment.

‘Fish jumping.’ A hand appeared under the hanging and touched her arm. ‘Sleep.’

* * *

As dawn began to break Quin had closed his eyes and let sleep take him. Half an hour, perhaps, he thought as he drifted down, ignoring the stiffness in his right arm. Cleo had gone to sleep holding his hand and he did not have the heart to risk waking her by pulling it free.

He surfaced again to find the sun just up and his hand empty. Small scuffling and splashing noises told him that Cleo was awake and washing in the bucket of water she had taken into the cabin the night before. When he sat up the goat bleated at him. Quin eyed the evidence that the creature was not boat-trained, dealt with it and then lifted the protesting animal over the side into the shallow water.