Shadow Dance Read Online Free Page A

wouldn’t have given anything to return to Egypt. Or Greece, or any of the warm, sunny countrieswhere she’d lived with her rapscallion father, clambering over ruins as soon as she could walk, drinking goat’s milk, and wearing boy’s clothes from the time she was four. She could still remember the first time she’d worn a dress. She’d been all of sixteen, and her father had traded for it with an ancient Syrian.
    It had been made of silk, much too big for her slender, boyish frame, hot and stifling and decades out of fashion. And she’d put it on, and felt like a queen, like a creature out of a fairy story, listening to Black Jack’s extravagant and utterly sincere flattery. Until she’d looked up, into the eyes of MacGowan’s old friend Mark-David Lemur, and known the first tricklings of uneasiness.
    She should have trusted her judgement. Black Jack should have trusted it as well. She’d tried to explain her misgivings to him, but her father had brushed off her concerns with his characteristic lightheartedness. He didn’t want to think his daughter was less than safe at his side. He didn’t want to consider the possibility that his good friend and cohort couldn’t be trusted.
    Assuming people couldn’t look down from heaven and see the mess they had left behind, Black Jack MacGowan would never know what his actions had wrought. And Juliette, who still loved him dearly and missed him just as much, nine months after his death, as she had missed him the day he died, was content. As long as she never had to see Mark-David Lemur again.
    She sat upright in bed, pulling the rough blanket around her, cold and sweating at the same time. The rope bed sagged beneath her weight, but she paid it no notice. She’d slept in more uncomfortable places than this hot, airlessattic on the south coast of England. Doubtless she’d sleep in worse places still.
    She didn’t want to dream about the other man either. The tall, cynical man with the still face, the silver eyes, and the thin, sensual mouth. She didn’t like men, didn’t like their animal appetites and savage disregard of others. The fact that something completely irrational drew her to that man frightened her even more than the transparent threat of Sir Neville Pinworth, or the memory of Mark-David Lemur.
    Juliette climbed out of bed, padding barefoot to the open window. She could see the sea from that vantage point, and she stared at it longingly. England was the land of her birth, yet she felt more of an alien here than she had in any of the diverse foreign countries she’d lived in with Black Jack. If she could, she would stow away on the next ship bound for the warmer climates and never look back.
    But she didn’t dare. Her masquerade was already fraught with danger. On land she could find enough privacy to keep her secret intact. On board a ship it would be impossible. From what she remembered of the nightmarish journey back from Portugal with Lemur, there was no such thing as solitude or modesty. And a woman masquerading as a boy definitely counted both of those commodities essential.
    She needed to wait until she’d found enough money to book passage to France. At least that would ensure a certain amount of privacy, and once out of the country, she could wear skirts again. If she wanted to. She’d miss the blessed freedom of breeches.
    For the time being, she was better off staying where she was. The past three days had been full of hard work, but she was strong, stronger even than the two strapping serving maids who kept ogling her. Bessie was a motherlysoul and a wonderful cook, Mowbray was gruff and kind, and even the two silly girls usually found better things to chase after. In all, she was content to stay on in Hampton Regis until the proper opportunity came along.
    But right now she couldn’t stand another moment in this stuffy attic. She wanted to run along the beach, barefoot, and feel the salt spray in her hair. She wanted to breathe in the air,