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Quin shrugged, but she noticed he glanced towards the soldiers’ camp a hundred yards away. ‘The Cairo authorities may be restricting movement if they’ve heard about Baird’s landing, which they must have done by now. They won’t want large shipping down here to fall into his hands.’
‘I suppose that’s it.’ She stood and began to gather up the cups and coffee pot.
‘Have you sewing things I can borrow?’ Quin asked. ‘Scissors and needle and thread?’
‘Why, yes, but if you need anything mended, I will do it.’
‘I can manage. Is the sewing kit on our felucca?’
‘The light is too poor to sew now.’ Cleo dumped things into the bucket and straightened up, hands in the small of her back to rub out the slight stiffness of another day spent sitting on the boat.
‘I can manage,’ he insisted. ‘Can you get them now? And an old tob sebleh if you have one. I’ll replace it for you in Cairo.’
‘A tob sebleh? But why?’
‘I just need something dark blue,’ Quin said vaguely.
He was determined to be mysterious, she could tell. Cleo climbed on board using the box someone had set by the stern as a crude step and went to dig out her sewing roll and her oldest tob sebleh. She found a voluminous black habera and a long burko to veil her face and laid those aside. She hated the veil, but it was risky to draw attention to herself in a northern city, until she was within the walls of the French compound.
When she got back to the fire her father had gone and Quin was hunkered down amongst the boatmen, talking Arabic, low-voiced with a great deal of gesticulation. The men seemed to be listening intently, but they all fell silent as she drew near and dropped the bundle of blue cloth.
‘Thank you,’ Quin said with an obvious intonation of, And good night, to the words.
‘Good night.’ Cleo retreated, controlling the impulse to flounce. Trust me, Quin had said and she had agreed and had meant it. Now all the nagging doubts that had almost sent her to confide in Laurent came back. Foolish, she chided herself. By this time tomorrow they would be in a French-held city and all the powers that had protected her and her father before would be there. And this time she was the widow of a French officer, which would give her some status of her own.
Even if Quin was some kind of spy, on a mission she could not begin to imagine, it did not affect her. Trust me.
Chapter Ten
When everything was in order for the night, Cleo paused, her hand on the flap of the cabin hangings, and looked back to the shore. One of the younger men was unwinding his long turban cloth, the fabric glowing red in the firelight. He handed it to Quin, straightened the brown felt libdeh that formed its base and began to wind a new turban, white this time.
Cleo shrugged, went into the cabin, lay down and tried to sleep. There was too much to keep her awake, she thought, grumpy with tiredness, as her eyes refused to close or her mind to let go. She still had no concrete plan for what she might do when they reached Cairo, for so much depended on what they found there. She felt guilty about leaving her father and angry with herself for being so weak.
And then there was Quin and the undeniable fact that she desired him, which was embarrassing and uncomfortable. The man was as good as betrothed to some female he hardly knew... Which means he can have no real loyalty to her yet, an insidious little voice whispered. He could lie with you in good conscience.
He doesn’t want me, she argued back. He kissed me, but that was just for comfort. She had missed not only Quin’s slumbering presence on the other side of the hangings every night, she realised, but also the countless small contacts. He was a tactile man, given to a touch to the hand along with a word of thanks when she passed him food, a brush of his palm over the crown of her head when he swung past her on the boat to help with the ropes, a swift hug when he thought she looked tired. All that had stopped ever since the afternoon he had pressed her to trust him.
Cleo shifted again, restless and puzzled. And where was he now? She had been lying awake for at least an hour and yet the boat had not rocked with him boarding and neither had Delilah bleated a welcome.
Cleo opened the flap to look over the side. Quin was still by the fire, alone. He had built it up and, bathed in its light, he was bent over fabric spread across his lap. Cleo shook her head, defeated by its folds and the shifting light. Was he making himself some kind of disguise?
Thoroughly awake now, she went back to her bed and found her little knife and its sheath by touch. There was nothing to be done until they reached Cairo. If Quin was a spy, then Laurent could deal with him. If he was a danger to herself or her father then she knew how to protect herself. And if she was wrong to suspect him, then he would have her silent apologies.
