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‘I like the motion,’ Cleo said. She seemed full of a natural perversity since they had boarded ship and was ready to disagree with any opinion Quin expressed. ‘It is wild and different. We are going somewhere at last and I feel almost free. Soon I will be, completely.’ She untied her hat and let the wind take her hair, whipping it into a banner of brown silk.
‘Almost?’ Quin queried as he turned back to his position at the rail. Think about the here and now...
Chapter Fourteen
‘Madame da Sota does her best to shackle me. These clothes.’ She made a sweeping gesture at the skirts of her high-waisted gown. ‘The shoes. Wretched stockings and garters! Everything pinches or needs holding down in the wind. And I am not allowed to complain because that is unladylike and of course I must wear them. I do not expect I should have mentioned stockings and garters to you. It was much easier when I could wear what I wanted and put a tob sebleh on top.’
Quin tried to imagine Cleo at Almack’s in Egyptian dress and found it was all too easy. He disciplined the smile that was tugging at his lips and made room for her when she spun round and joined him at the rail. Her elbow poked against his, a sharp pressure he could not ignore. Just like her.
‘But you get on all right with madam?’ he queried. ‘She is not of the ton, of course, being a merchant’s wife, but she is undoubtedly a respectable chaperon.’
‘She is kind,’ Cleo agreed. ‘But she never stops talking and I am not used to that. You are much more restful.’ The point of her elbow was removed as she threaded her arm through his and leaned against his shoulder. She trusts me. ‘Where should I buy a house to live?’
‘In London? It is usual to rent, but even so, a whole house in a good area would be very expensive. There are houses where one can rent an entire floor as an apartment though.’ He was careful not to say you. Even so, it was hellish, spinning this web of make-believe for her when the first thing he must do when they reached London was to put her in a carriage and take her to her grandfather. Where did honour lie in all of this? Was there something flawed in him because of his birth that he could not see the honourable path clearly, as his superiors so obviously did?
‘London is so very expensive, then?’ Cleo snuggled against his side without the slightest self-consciousness, using him as a windbreak, he supposed.
How the blazes she managed to forget those moments of shared physical intimacy back in the camp outside Cairo he had no idea. He certainly could not, yet Cleo appeared airily unconcerned about past kisses and caresses.
‘Very expensive,’ Quin said, dragging his mind back to her question. ‘Lodgings, servants, provisions.’
‘Oh. Do you have a London house?’
‘I have an apartment in Albany, which is apartments mainly used by gentlemen needing a pied-à-terre. It is just off Piccadilly in the St James’s area.’
‘But you will have one when you marry?’ He nodded. ‘A whole one? Then you are rich.’ Quin shook his head and she laughed. ‘Ah, you will marry a rich wife!’
‘Perhaps.’ Lady Caroline was certain to be very well dowered and a London house might come as part of the settlement. Her father, the Earl of Camden, owned one that was diagonally across the square from his own father’s house. Quin grinned wryly at the thought of his father’s reaction if he set up home there. The cuckoo in the nest ending up with a promising career, a lovely wife, noble in-laws—that would chafe.
‘Thinking about her makes you smile.’ Cleo leaned forward to look at his face properly. The wind had whipped up the colour in her cheeks, her eyes were bright and her hair whirled around her like the wild locks of a creature of myth.
‘I was thinking that you look like a maenad with your hair like that.’
‘A crazed follower of Dionysus?’ she said and laughed. Of course, she would know all the classical myths and legends. ‘Is that flattering, I wonder? Would I enjoy being driven into a frenzy by strange rites? Iron would not wound me, nor fire burn me. I would subdue wild bulls and tear men to death with my bare hands, draw wine and honey and milk from the rocks.’
Spray flew up as the ship plunged into the trough of a wave, showering them in droplets. Quin drew Cleo against himself in an instinctive gesture of protection and found he was lost in her beauty and her fierce spirit. Against the backdrop of deep blue sea, her hair streamed out like a living thing. Her eyes were wide and wild and she was laughing with the sheer joy of the elements. Free, unique.
Maenads lured men into the woods with their wild dances, then they turned on them, rending them until their blood drenched the earth. Caught in the exhilaration of the wind-swept, sea-soaked moment, Quin could understand why a man might take that risk.
