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Quin took it with a murmur of thanks and settled down in his usual place, back to the mast. ‘Laurent is picking up rumours,’ he said without preamble after a few mouthfuls. ‘The British have landed a force from India under General Baird at Coseir on the Red Sea, due east of here. They will be marching on Kene.’
‘But that must be well over a hundred miles of desert.’ Cleo stared out at the edge of the dunes, lapping against the green, fertile strip of farmland, half-expecting to see the British redcoats breasting the summit.
‘They are used to hot climates and there are established caravan routes across from here.’ Quin wiped the crust of flatbread around the remains of the egg. ‘It has made Laurent anxious to reach Cairo.’
He seemed to find that mildly amusing, but perhaps his antipathy for the other man accounted for that. ‘But there will be fighting,’ she said, answering his mood rather than his words.
‘There will. I expect Baird will march down the river to Cairo. Général Belliard must look to his fortifications.’
‘Perhaps they will meet with the Mamelukes and that will hold them up,’ Cleo said hopefully.
‘Perhaps. Look, Laurent’s barges are casting off.’ Quin pitched his voice to the boatmen who were talking in the stern. ‘Are you ready, my friends? Let us give chase to the soldiers.’
* * *
Cleo watched the river banks slipping past, her pleasure in the journey turning to apprehension. Cairo, when she had known it before, had been hellish, but she had hoped that almost three years of French rule would have restored the streets to order so that daily life could resume. Now she was fleeing from not one but two armies and straight into a city that would be preparing for a siege.
‘Don’t worry.’ Quin came and sat beside her in the prow. ‘I’ll look after you.’ He must have read the scepticism in the look she gave him, for his mouth curved in a wry smile. ‘Trust me.’
‘To do what? Make the war go away?’
‘To do the best for you.’
‘You know what that is? I am glad someone does.’ She had stoically endured the time in the desert, not daring to dream when there was no escape possible. Now she was moving towards the city, towards the sea, and she still did not have a plan of any kind. In the place of numbness was fear, a fear she dared not voice or allow to show, or she thought she might give way to it.
She braced her shoulders, afraid that Quin would give her one of his comforting hugs. If he did that, she thought she would probably burst into tears and the prospect appalled her. But he did not touch her and she breathed out the air she had dragged down into her lungs.
‘I think you need security, comfort, the normal life of a baronet’s daughter or an officer’s widow. I know a city under imminent threat of siege may not be the best first step, but we’ll sort it out as we go along. Trust me,’ he repeated.
Cleo looked at his confident face, the jut of his nose, the set of his jaw. He’s a man, she thought, with all a man’s failings—but I do trust him. Am I a fool? ‘Very well, I will trust you.’
And then Quin did catch her in a one-armed hug and dragged her against his side for a moment. Cleo blinked hard and the tears did not fall. Inside a small, fragile flicker of something began to burn. At first she did not recognise it and then she realised what it was. She was looking forward with hope, curious about the future. This man, with all his flaws, had given her that.
* * *
Seven days brought them to Benisouef, one day, the boatmen agreed, from Cairo. It also brought the news that Murad Bey had died of plague on the march north and his men under their new leader had sided with the British.
‘I doubt that makes them any more or less dangerous to us,’ Quin said as they sat around the fire on shore that evening. Her father was grumbling that they hadn’t needed to leave Koum Ombo after all and Quin was showing far more tolerance than Cleo was feeling with her parent.
Cleo swirled her coffee around in the cup, her attention not on the thick grounds in the bottom, but on Quin’s profile in the firelight. As Cairo approached he seemed tenser, more focused on his own thoughts, which seemed strange when she would have thought that he would have been relieved to be free of the burden of looking after her and enduring her father’s bad temper.
He had even taken to sleeping as far from her makeshift cabin as possible on the small boat. When she questioned it, making a joke that her snoring must be driving him away, he smiled faintly. ‘Delilah is more nervous at night than you are. She needs me more.’
‘It is strange we have had no news from the north,’ she said now as she tipped the dregs of her coffee into the embers. ‘Did you notice, the past few days we have seen nothing large coming south, only local fishing boats.’
