British and Turkish force. No one, French ally or not, would want to be in the path of the lethal mounted Mameluke militias under Murad Bey. He’d intended to persuade the Woodward and Madame Valsac to take a boat north with him, not telling them they were heading straight into the arms of the British.
Now he had to deal with French soldiers who would know there were no engineers in the area and who might even have received the news that General Abercrombie was harrying the French out of Alexandria. And there was a strong probability they would also know there were no Americans amongst the motley group of scholars, scientists, engineers and artists who had found themselves stranded with the army when their beloved Napoleon abandoned them almost two years before. Bonaparte had returned to France and staged the coup that gave him complete power and the title Emperor, and had left his generals to manage as best they might.
Quin eyed the woman he was rapidly coming to think of as his adversary as she stood and began to clear her instruments away. Nobody’s fool and apparently cool to the point of frigidity, she was not going to be easy to panic into flight. If the worst came to the worst, he was going to have to steal a boat, kidnap her and leave her father to his fate.
Madame Valsac turned at the doorway, the light behind her, and looked back over her shoulder, her figure outlined through the fine linen of her robe. His body, cheerfully ignoring the looming presence of nearby French troops, heat-stroke, fever and his feelings about the woman’s personality, stirred under the weight of wet sheet.
‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked. ‘I thought I heard you moan. I have opium if the pain is very bad.’ From her tone it sounded as though she would as soon hit him over the head and render him unconscious that way, if it caused her less trouble.
‘No, nothing at all,’ Quin lied as he closed his eyes. ‘Everything’s just perfect.’ I really, really did not join the diplomatic service for this...
He had actually joined it because sitting on his courtesy title as a marquess’s fifth, and very much unwanted, son did not appeal, despite a modest estate and an equally modest competence to maintain his style. His four elder brothers—the wanted sons with the real names—they all had their roles. Henry was the heir, learning to be a marquess. James was the spare and learning to be a marquess’s right-hand man in the time left in a packed schedule of wenching, gaming and sporting endeavours, Charles was a colonel in the Guards and looked so good in his uniform that one forgot that he was as dense as London fog and George was a clergyman, clawing his way up the hierarchy towards a bishop’s throne with unchristian determination.
‘It will have to be the navy for you, Quintus,’ Lord Deverall, Marquess of Malvern, had announced on Quin’s fourteenth birthday. It had been a convenient conceit, naming him for a number. It meant the marquess could always remember his name.
‘No, my lord.’ He was not used to contradicting the marquess, simply because the man did not speak to the cuckoo in his nest if he could avoid it, so the opportunity rarely arose. ‘I do not excel at mathematics and it is essential for a naval officer,’ he explained.
The Marquess of Malvern, five foot ten of slender, sandy-haired refinement, the model that Henry, James, Charles and George matched exactly, had glowered at him. Quintus, already as tall, blond and, most inconveniently, the spitting image of his mother’s lover, the late and unlamented Viscount Hempstead, had stared back. ‘Then what the devil am I to do with you?’ the marquess demanded.
‘I am good at languages,’ Quin stated. ‘I will be a diplomat.’ And that had been that. An appropriate tutor, a degree from Oxford, a few favours called in at the Foreign Office and Lord Quintus Bredon Deverall was neatly off the marquess’s hands. And he was just where he wanted to be, on a career path that would, if he applied himself, see him with an ambassadorial post or a high government position, a title of his own and an existence entirely separate from his family.
And here I am in the middle of this God-forsaken desert, a war breaking out north and south and plague sweeping the land in a most appropriately Biblical manner. If I’d wanted to be a soldier, I’d have learned to shoot better, if I’d wanted to be a doctor, I’d have paid more attention to my science lectures and if I’d wanted to march across hundreds of square miles of sand, I’d have been a camel, he grumbled to himself, then grinned. It was, despite everything, an interesting change from endless negotiations, diplomatic dinners and decoding correspondence in six languages. Madame Valsac was going to be a thorn in his side, but he was confident that he could handle Woodward. How difficult could one scholar-turned-inept-spy be to manage?
* * *
‘No,’ Sir Philip said flatly without looking up from the letter he was reading. ‘You are not gadding off to flirt with officers. Who will look after that damned man? You seemed to spend all day today dodging in and out attending to him. Who will cook my dinner? And I need you to take notes when I measure the courtyard of the temple.’
‘I am going to the next village, Father, not Cairo. I have no desire to flirt with French officers, one was more than enough. I will be back in time to cook your dinner, for I will leave after breakfast, and if Mr Bredon is still not fully himself tomorrow I will leave food and water by his bed.’
Surely after twenty-four hours he would soon recover and she could get him out of her bed space? It had been tiring, rising every hour to sponge his face and get water between his lips and, however tired she was, it had been strangely difficult to get back to sleep each time. Mr Call-Me-Quin Bredon was a disturbing presence whilst semi-conscious and in a fever. Goodness knows what he would be like in his full senses. She was not looking forward to another night with him.
Cleo finished sweeping the sand from the mat around her father’s trestle table and gathered his day’s paperwork into a tin box. He would want his supper soon, but there was the remains of the spit-cooked kid and some flatbread and dates, so that would take little time. Then, when he retired to his bed with a book, she’d clear up, water the donkey again, feed it, secure the tent flaps, check on her patient and, at last, go to bed herself.
‘Mr Bredon can visit the officers himself,’ a deep, slightly husky, voice remarked. Cleo dropped the lid of the box, narrowly missing her fingertips. The American, draped in a passable attempt at a toga, was leaning against the tent pole. He was white under the tan and he was supporting his left wrist with his right hand, but his blue eyes were clear and there was a faint, healthy, trace of perspiration on his skin.
‘You must excuse me, sir, but I failed to ask Madame Valsac your name,’ he continued with as much smooth courtesy as a man entering a drawing room.
Cleo got a grip on herself. This was becoming untidy and she disliked untidiness. Mr Bredon should be lying down so she knew where he was and what he was doing. If he made himself even more ill, she was stuck with nursing him that much longer. ‘This is Mr Quintus Bredon, who should be in bed, Father.’ Mr Bredon merely smiled faintly. ‘He is an American and was set upon by Bedouin raiders,’ she reminded him. ‘Mr Bredon, this is my father, Sir Philip Woodward.’
‘Sir Philip.’ The blasted man even managed a passable bow while keeping control of his toga. ‘I must thank you for your hospitality. May I ask, which day this is?’
‘You arrived here yesterday at about this time,’ Cleo said as she picked up her broom. ‘And you have been feverish ever since. I suggest you go back to bed.’
Her father grunted and waved a hand at the other folding chair. ‘Nonsense. He’s on his feet now, isn’t he? You’re a scholar, sir? What do you know about this stone they’re supposed to have dug up at Rosetta eighteen months ago, eh? Can’t get any sense out of anyone, couldn’t get to see it in Cairo.’
‘I’ve
