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‘What are you going to do about it then?’
‘Avoid him,’ Cleo said grimly. How appalling if Quin guessed. She would sink with mortification. She had her pride and sometimes that had been all that had kept her going.
‘But you’re a lady,’ Maggie protested. ‘I know you’ve been living a bit...rough, but you aren’t—what’s the word?—ineligible.’
‘He needs a hostess, someone who knows all about society. I have no idea who is who and I didn’t even know which piece of cutlery was for what when I had dinner back in the camp. My parents eloped and made a scandal and my English relatives do not want to know me. And I do not have any money and certainly no influence and Quin needs both in his career. He’s a younger son.’
Somehow it was important to convince Maggie that it was absolutely impossible, because if she could convince her, then perhaps she could also extinguish the small glimmer of hope that persisted despite all the cold water she poured on it.
‘If he loved you, none of that would matter. Grab what happiness you can, I always say, life’s short enough.’
‘It would matter to me,’ Cleo discovered. ‘I couldn’t allow him to throw away his career because of me.’
‘That’s all very fine and noble.’ Maggie did not look convinced.
‘No, it isn’t. We’d be miserable, I would feel guilty, everything would go wrong. I am just being selfish.’
‘Well, what I think is—’
Maggie’s thoughts were cut short by madam’s maid bustling in. ‘Madam’s up and feeling a lot better and asking for you. Ma’am.’ She always added the title as if it was an afterthought.
She can see I am not a proper lady, Cleo thought as she stood up and began to unpin her tousled hair. I would never fool anyone in London society for a moment. ‘Please tell her I will join her just as soon as Maggie has done my hair. Such a breeze on deck.’
* * *
It took them three days to reach Gibraltar on smooth seas and with a favourable, light wind. Cleo stayed with the other women and avoided being alone with Quin. He made no move to speak with her apart and his manner at meals was polite yet distant. She fixed a smile on her lips and made a careful point of neither ignoring him nor of seeking him out. Her heart might be aching, but she had her pride.
‘Such elegance of manner, Lord Quintus,’ Madame da Sota pronounced as they sat under an awning on deck one afternoon. ‘Such a gentleman. Typical of the English aristocracy. I have had the most interesting discussion with him about the politics of Greece this morning.’
‘Indeed,’ Cleo agreed in a colourless tone as she finished a seam in the gown she was sewing.
‘Did you see Gibraltar when you sailed to Egypt, Miss Woodward?’ madam enquired with one of her rapid changes of subject.
‘No, madam. I think we must have gone overland to Italy, which I can recall as a child, and then we moved to Greece and into the Balkans later.’
‘So you do not remember England?’
‘I have never been to England, ma’am.’
‘My goodness! And who will be chaperoning you when you arrive, Miss Woodward?’
‘Er...’ She had given it no thought. Presumably there were agencies where one could hire a respectable duenna.
‘Me,’ said Maggie firmly.
‘But there is your son and your parents,’ Cleo protested. She had assumed it would be impossible for Maggie to stay with her.
‘Freddie’s better off where he is. I’ll visit, of course I will, but he’s spent more time with them than with me. I won’t drag him away from where he’s settled, just so I can have him to myself.’
Cleo was beginning to know Maggie now. The bright smile and the determined tilt of her chin were hiding an aching need to see her son and an equally strong-willed determination to do what was best for him.
‘He could come and have a holiday in London,’ she said. ‘He would like that, I imagine. Most big cities have lots of things children enjoy and you could be together.’
‘Forgive me, Miss Woodward. Maggie is an excellent maid, I am sure, but you will need a lady companion.’
‘Yes, of course.’ A lady companion, as far as she could see, would be a complete nuisance, and an expensive one at that. If she had Maggie, then surely all the proprieties would be observed.
‘Shall we try the gown on and then I can pin the bodice to the skirt, Miss Woodward?’ Maggie said, the perfect lady’s maid.
‘Yes, we had better check it. If you will excuse us, madam?’ She hustled Maggie and her armful of fabric into her cabin. ‘Would you really consider coming to live with me? I don’t know what the wages are like in London, but I am sure I can pay you the right amount as well as what I owe you for this voyage.’
