Louise Allen - Beguiled by Her Betrayer

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 heard of it, of course, Sir Philip, but I did not see it in Cairo either.’ Bredon raised an eyebrow at Cleo and gestured towards the chair. She shook her head, flapped her hands and mouthed sit. He was too heavy to have to pick up again if he collapsed. With a frown, he sat. ‘But I am an engineer, I fear I know nothing about it, nor about hieroglyphic symbols.’

‘Yes, but are they symbols?’

Cleo rolled her eyes and left, abandoning her patient to his fate. He would not be able to beat a strategic retreat as Thierry had used to do by pleading military business and she had no time to wait around while her father lectured a new victim. On top of everything else she supposed she had better get his garments clean and mended if he was out of bed. The conceit that Mr Bredon might descend on the French camp, toga-clad like a latter-day Julius Caesar if she did not, almost stayed her hand. It was an amusing thought, but perhaps not practical.

She dropped the galabeeyah and his cotton drawers into the wash tub, grated in some of her precious store of soap and pummelled until they were clean. Once they were hanging up on a tent pole where they would dry within the hour she found a new cord for the drawers and a length of white cotton for a turban. Mr Bredon obviously did not know he needed to keep his head covered in the intense sunshine.

‘Magical symbols...’ Her father’s voice reached her from the other end of the encampment. ‘Don’t agree. Obviously a secret priestly code...’

She could almost feel sympathy with Mr Bredon. Almost. Cleo dragged his bed frame into the furthest section of the tent and found room for it next to the storage boxes. If he was well enough to talk to her father, he was certainly not in need of nursing all night in her own bed space, thank goodness. Her privacy was a precious and deeply treasured luxury. She removed the wet cotton quilt he had been lying on and made the bed up afresh, then went back to her own space to tidy it. She hated disorder. Hated it. And sand. Most of all, sand.

‘Chinese?’ That was Mr Bredon. Father must have got on to the theory that Egyptian writing was a form of Chinese. Or was it the other way around?

Cleo watered the donkey and tossed it the last of the wilting greenery she had gathered that morning by the waterside. She would fetch more tomorrow on her way back from the military camp. Her back ached and she leaned for a moment against the dusty grey rump of the little animal, scratching the spot on his back just where she knew he liked it. ‘Your work is finished for the day,’ she informed him. Now for supper.

* * *

Quin found Madame Valsac spooning honey from a jar into a dish with the concentration of someone who was bone weary, but was keeping going by a dogged attention to every detail. He had found his robe, clean and sun-dried, his mended underwear, a turban cloth and his sandals neatly piled on a bed that she must have dragged into the other room and made up by herself.

The donkey was mumbling the remains of its feed, the encampment was tidy in every detail and the trestle table was laid for a simple meal. And he had spent an hour or so doing nothing more taxing than listen to Sir Philip lecture on Egyptian antiquities and try to stay awake in the evening heat.

Quin changed into his clothes, made a sling out of the length of cloth and went back out, steadying himself against the momentary flashes of dizziness and cursing his weakness under his breath. There was a basket of bone-handled cutlery on the end of the table and he began, one-handed, to lay three settings.

‘No need for you to do that. You should be resting.’ There was no hint of weariness in the cool, unemotional voice, but she did not attempt to wrest the basket from him.

‘I have been resting while I conversed with Sir Philip.’

‘I doubt it was a conversation. A new audience always opens the floodgates. Here, sit down.’ She poured liquid into two beakers, pushed one across the table to him and sat carefully, as though her bones ached.

They probably do. How old is she? Quin wondered as he took the drink with a word of thanks and sat opposite her, trying to recall his briefing. Only twenty-three. He sipped. ‘This is good.’

‘Pomegranate juice.’ She sat for a while, her fingers laced around her beaker as though she had forgotten what it was there for. Then she took a long swallow and called, ‘Father! Supper.’ She lowered her voice. ‘It will take several reminders before he comes, you may have your peace until then.’ That faint dimple ghosted across the smooth, sun-browned cheek and her tired eyes narrowed. He had not seen a real smile from her yet.

‘How do you bear it?’ Quin asked abruptly and watched all trace of amusement fade from her face. The sooner he got her out of here and back to the sort of life she should be living, the better.

‘The heat?’ She was quick, for he could have sworn she knew exactly what he meant. How do you stand this life, that man, the loneliness, the constant labour? ‘I am used to it, we have been in Egypt for five years now and one learns to live with it when there is no alternative.’

Was she answering his real question after all? ‘What is your given name?’