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‘Realised what?’
‘That it was time to stop being a little girl and become a woman. To stop expecting what he cannot give.’
‘Love? Is that why you married Capitaine Valsac?’
‘But of course.’ She turned those mysterious greenish-grey eyes on him and smiled. ‘Why else would I marry, save for love?’
Chapter Five
‘Why marry other than for love?’ Quin Bredon fell into step beside her. ‘I can think of many reasons. For protection, for money, for status.’ She sensed his gaze slide sideways for a second. ‘For lust.’
Cleo winced, then hid the reaction with a slap at a fly. To escape, she added mentally. And for lust, let’s be honest. You desired Thierry, he was big and handsome and active. Alive. He looked at you and saw something beyond a drudge, so you thought.
‘I married my husband loving him,’ she answered honestly. And by the time I was left a widow three months later I hated him. Pride kept her voice light and her lips firm. She had been a fool to marry a man she hardly knew. And she must still be a fool, because she could not work out why he had married her. But she was not going to admit any of that to this man who was also big and handsome and active. And worryingly intelligent and curious.
‘I’m amazed you found a priest to marry you all the way down here,’ Quin remarked. ‘Or did you wed in a Coptic church?’
‘We married in Cairo. Father and I were there when the French took the city in July ninety-eight.’
‘Good God,’ Quin muttered.
‘It was not amusing,’ Cleo agreed, with massive understatement. It took an effort not to let the memories flood back, filling her nostrils with the stench of smoke and blood and disease. She had only to close her eyes and the screams of the sick and dying would drown out the sound of the river and the cries of the hawks overhead. ‘Fortunately there was no prolonged siege. Father made himself known to the new French authorities at once—he had heard about les savants, you see.’
‘And they allowed him, an Englishman, his freedom, even after their defeat at the Battle of the Nile?’
‘They saw he was harmless, I suppose. He talked to the governor and must have convinced them he was exactly what and who he said. They gave him protection and even facilitated his correspondence.’
‘Why are you not still there?’
‘We stayed for a year, then the next July they found the Rosetta Stone and brought it to Cairo, but they wouldn’t let anyone but the French savants look at it. Father was livid. Napoleon left for France to stage his coup and things began to fall apart in Cairo—the generals were arguing, there was very little money or food and the plague got worse. Father said he wanted to go south and they said he could if we went with a party of troops that was going too.’
‘And luckily Valsac was one of the officers? You must have been delighted.’
‘I did not know him before. We were introduced when the plans were being made. Thierry began to court me. Then Father and the general said it was awkward me being the only woman, and unmarried. So he proposed.’
‘How fortunate that a marriage of convenience should turn out so romantically. And how sad it lasted such a short time. How did he die? If you don’t mind talking about it.’
There was no hint of sarcasm in his words and Quin sounded genuinely sympathetic. It must be her own nagging unhappiness about the whole marriage that was colouring her reaction to his words.
‘He was killed in a skirmish when we came up against Murad Bey’s rearguard on his return south. It has been peaceful since, which is why we live apart from the troop now. They have found a better base for themselves and Father wanted to be close to the temple.’
‘And you returned to your father’s tent.’
‘I was always there when Thierry was away from camp.’ Who else was going to look after him? she thought and bit back the words. There was no point in bitterness, she was the only one it hurt. ‘Look, here is our village. I must arrange some help tomorrow to carry our things to the boats.’
There was no problem here, she was known and trusted even though the villagers thought her father was most strange and the women sympathised with her lack of a husband. Cleo negotiated with the sheikh’s senior wife for men and donkeys to carry their baggage to Shek Amer in return for her own little donkey and everything that would not fit on the boats.
Quin did not enter the village with her, perhaps sensing that his presence as a strange man might be an embarrassment. He was quite sensitive, quite unlike what she imagined an engineer to be like. He was more suited to being a diplomat, Cleo decided as she stopped on the river bank to cut some greenery for the donkey’s evening feed. When she looked round for him Quin had climbed the piled sand around the temple and was standing in the shadow of one of the great pillars.
