Dancing in the Shadows Read Online Free

a romantic. It would please Mama. It would unite two old families and two family businesses. Isabel’s family are also wine merchants. Carlos won’t marry her for that. He has not officially asked for Isabel. He’s always teased her and told her that he’s waiting for her to grow up, but that’s not the same, is it?’
    â€˜Don’t you want Isabel for a sister-in-law?’
    â€˜No. How blunt that sounds. Don’t misunderstand me, she is a dear girl, no one could wish for a sweeter friend, but I feel it in my heart that she is not right for Carlos.’ Impulsively, Feli reached forward and touched Dorcas’s hand. ‘Now that we’ve met, do not slip away. Will you spend part of your holiday with me? We have too many empty rooms, and my Jaime will be delighted to meet you. He likes me to have company.’
    Dorcas felt the silken thread of fate very gently pulling her in. It would have been so easy to say yes. She genuinely liked Feli, and if she were honest with herself she didn’t want to lose touch with Carlos’s family. But there was something too planned about the whole thing. Something that caught like a scream in the throat. Something as frightening and forbidding as the thing we don’t understand, like the storm she had lived through last night. It had drawn her and terrified her, so that while every nerve craved to huddle under the illusory safety of the bedclothes, she had squared her chin and gone out to meet it. She was not a coward.
    She shook her head to clear it. This wasn’t the same thing at all. And so, for the second time, she denied fate.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she informed Feli, smiling regretfully, ‘but I must say no to your kind offer. There is so much of Spain that I’ve promised myself to see that there won’t be any time to squeeze in a visit to you.’
    â€˜It was just an idea,’ Feli said wistfully. ‘You must follow the dictates of your heart.’
    Dorcas thought that if she did that she would be accepting the invitation, not declining it.
    The sky darkened with terrifying swiftness. It was as if some enraged power, showing its displeasure, had contemptuously flung a cloak over the earth.
    Feli shivered. ‘We’re going to have another storm. I hate storms.’
    The baby absorbed her mood and began to whimper.
    â€˜Now, now,’ said Dorcas in brisk, jollying round tones. ‘We mustn’t look on the—’
    â€˜Dark side?’ said Feli, casting her frightened eyes up at a sky that was getting blacker by the second. ‘There have been reports of tornadoes seen off the southern coastline. Weird tunnels of wind sucking up everything in sight.’
    â€˜Now stop that,’ Dorcas admonished sharply. ‘This is just a storm. Most likely it will die out as quickly as it started.’
    The sky was now so black it was the colour of pitch. The rain started to fall like some terrible vengeance, ceaselessly beating and flattening the vineyards and olive groves, tormenting the deepening spread of trees and a lone farmstead that valiantly clung to the side of a hill.
    The rails sliced down into a valley where there were more vineyards, and the wind rivalled the rain until there was little to see of the whipped, tossed, wet countryside. Thunder rolled down the mountains. A blue light, like the blue-white flash of a camera flashgun, illuminated the carriage, picking out Feli’s stone-tense features and those of the whimpering child.
    Aggressively cheerful, Dorcas reached into her handbag.
    â€˜Have a mint.’ Anything to snap Feli out of her frozen inertia. ‘Not you, sweetie.’ Pressing a finger against Rosita’s button nose. ‘Can the little one have some chocolate?’
    â€˜What?’ Feli’s eyes were as blank as her voice.
    â€˜Chocolate. Can Rosita have some? Inclined to be messy.’
    â€˜Yes of course. I’m not one of those fussy