Beguiled by Her Betrayer

* * *

‘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.