Salome's Private Dance Goes Public

After more than six years since I began to write Private Dance, I've decided to publish it as an e-book series. Each edition will be edited and additional material will be added. Because my writing has improved so much in the past six years, expect a much more polished, complete story. Even though it's only an e-book, I'm pretty excited about having it out there. The first installment should be ready in just a few weeks. Here's the mock up of the cover, though it may be slightly modified before it actually makes its way into e-book stores.

I will leave the original versions of all the serial episodes here for anyone to read and compare with the revised, updated work. Thanks for reading since 2004.

Channelled Innocence

It struck me the moment I saw him. We had gone a bit mad with our grief over Gabriel's disappearance. Death, whispered a little voice in the back of my mind. Gabriel is dead.

I tucked my chin and blinked at M. Montiere from the corners of my eyes. Surely he would recognize me. At least he would know I was not Umay.

Once I had seen Umay and M. Montiere standing a few feet apart on the edge of the dance floor at one of the court dances Gabriel took us to. He was obviously completely smitten with her. She had kept her eyes turned down, only peering at him from under her lashes when he turned away from her to chat with another guest.

It was then I realized that my sister had left the harem before the Pasha had touched her. There was a pure quality about her that would be very difficult to affect. She froze under the attention of the monsieur, her mouth straight, the blood coloring the points of her cheeks as pink as a painter's brush would have done. An amused glint in her eye revealed her confidence, the faint flare of her nostrils and the quick, shallow movements of her chest, her excitement.

Thinking about that time, I looked quickly away from him. Behind me, Zera cleared her throat with authority.

"Allez, mais qu'est-ce que tu fait?" the Lady Juliette whispered in the direction of her brother.

I dared a glance at him. He offered me a sheepish smile as he turned to leave the room.

He had believed our ruse. I was sure of it.

The Red Dress

"Hold still, Salomé." Zera's fingers tugged at the laces of the corset--Umay's corset--a full size smaller than the ones I normally wore. "Can you still breathe?"

"Barely." The corset's iron grip on my ribcage squeezed my voice down to a whisper.

"Good," Zera said. Then she cackled like an old hen.

"Oh, you wait. I will someday find a way to get you back." I muttered and then spent a full minute taking slow deep breaths.

Corset on, I held up my arms and she slipped the bodice over my head, fastened it. I stepped into the petticoat and panniers and then the skirt. All the while, I was thinking about today's plan. More specifically, I was thinking about Gabriel. It seemed a long time since I'd seen him. A fortnight. I couldn't remember the last time more than ten days had passed without him appearing on our doorstep. Would I see him today, I wondered. So very unrealistic of me. I tried to let my mind consider that perhaps I would never see him again.

"Salome!" Zera broke into my thoughts."No daydreaming. Are you ready?"

I looked down at my feet--the shoes were the only thing that were my own--and ran a hand over my hair. Umay had set my hair in ringlets the way she wore hers, so that they hung down my back in a bunch, with little curls in front of my ears.

I glanced up at Zera and nodded, solemnly.

Thus I was armored when the carriage came to take us to the home of Gabriel Le Brac and his wife the lady Julietta Manniere. I say us--Zera came with me as an escort and Umay, well Umay came as my older sister, Salomé.

In the carriage, Zera made us practice. She said out loud on a few different occasions, "Umay," and when Umay would look over she frowned and swatted her. "No, you are not Umay. You are Salome!" Then she leaned over and swatted me.

"What?" I said, my voice shrill.

"You had better answer to Umay, girl. Otherwise there will be no point in any of this."

I was surprised when the carriage took us down a long road, past a gate, to the front of a lovely chateau. I don't know why, but I hadn't pictured Gabriel as living at such a high level. Though I loved him, there was something about him that made me think of him as common. As I looked at the house, I felt a deep pang of longing. I missed him and his foolishness.

I made an effort to get my head together as we pulled up to the manor house. I was Umay Bint Ahmed, sister of Salome. I was 17 years old. I was going to marry M. Montiere if all went as planned.

I had a stomach full of butterflies. For once, I was not the picture of calm as we stepped down from the carriage. The driver led us to the door, lifted the knocker and knocked us in. A gentleman butler opened the door, asked for our names and left us standing in the foyer.

Umay stood in front, as me. She would be the oldest. Zera stood next to me and patted me when she saw that I was fussing too much with my dress. Or maybe she noticed the wild look in my eyes.

"This was a terrible idea," I mouthed at her.

"Shush." She narrowed her eyes at me.

The house was grand, ornately decorated and extremely tidy. Near the door was a little table painted white with gilt etching on it. A blue velvet chaise lounge was visible from the next room. A wide marble staircase curved up and disappeared into a second level. There were arched doorways on the left and right. Of course, none of us would have been terribly impressed by this. It was nothing compared to the harem. The Pasha's palace was easily as big and twice as ostentatious. Still, it was the most beautiful home I had seen since escaping the seraglio and for the French, I knew,this was very posh indeed.

All three of us turned in synchrony when from one of the rooms off to the right, a man's voice called out, "Umay?"

I'm not sure how in all our planning we hadn't thought of the one thing that could bring it all tumbling down so easily. Stepping out into the foyer came a well-dressed gentleman. Of course I had seen him before, but it was Umay who had spent the most time with him. It was M. Montiere.

Sisters

It was Zera who came up with the idea, though Umay and I both agreed to it almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

"Umay, how much time did you spend with Juliette de Lorca?" she said.

From the end of the divan, Umay answered. "Only a few minutes. We were standing at the edge of the ballroom, in a crowd of women."

"Do you think she would recognize you if she saw you again?" Zera's fingers twisted a few strands of my hair into a curl, her arm draped around my shoulder.

"Well, who's to say, but I'd think so. She knows her brother's intentions toward me."

The salon was eerily silent, the kind of silence that only exists in the wee hours of the morning.

"I was just thinking," Zera said, "about Marie. The way she reacted when she saw you, Umay. About the two of you, how much alike you look."

I lifted my head off Zera's shoulder and turned to stare at Umay, my lips parted.

"Of course, Salome speaks better French than you do, but that's--"

"--easily faked," Umay finished.

"Salome?" Zera asked.

"Yes. Yes, I'm right with you. Umay, what were you wearing when she met you?" I looked into my sister's eyes for a long moment.

"Zera is a genius," she said.

Plots and Schemes

"You actually met her?" Zera leaned forward under the blankets.

"Yes. We were at court together, one of the dances that M. Montiere invited me to attend." Umay looked like a child in her white night snift, her eyes enormous in the dim light and her full lips pouty. "She's a lovely person, though..."

"Though what, aziza?" I asked. It was hard to read her face in the near-darkness.

"Nothing. It's trite of me to say anything. But why are the two of you up so late talking about the Lady Juliette?" She looked from one of us to the other.

"Juliette de Lorca is the wife of Gabriel Brillant Le Brac," Zera murmured, barely audible even to me, but Umay heard her.

"What? No! But what about that woman who came to the house?"

"His mistress, we think," I said.

"His mistress? But..."

I nodded. "Yes."

Umay came over to kneel in front of the divan. "I thought you knew her, the wife."

"We'd seen them together, with a child, a boy who resembled Gabriel. We assumed." Zera flopped back against the arm rest and let out a sigh. "Salome doesn't think Gabriel is dead and I'm not so sure either."

"And you know his wife, Umay. Could you call on her, do you think?" I put a hand on her wrist.

"I could do, but what would I say? My sister is your husband's second mistress and she wants to know if he's all right?"

"Nothing so obvious," Zera said. "Couldn't you just talk about marriage? Isn't her brother about to ask you to marry him? Wouldn't it be a natural topic of conversation? How does she like marriage? What's her husband like? What sort of work does he do? Surely if he were dead, she would tell you straight out."

I couldn't help blurting out my feelings. "I am his first mistress! She's his second mistress. If she's his mistress at all. Perhaps there's some other explanation."

Umay avoided my eyes. "Well, I don't see why I even have to talk to her. If she's his wife, then M. Montiere is Gabriel's brother by marriage. Surely he would know."

Something struck me strange about what she was saying though I couldn't quite sort it out at first, but then I realised what was bothering me.

"Umay, doesn't M. Montiere know that Gabriel and I...?"

"Half of Paris knows about you and Gabriel. He hardly keeps it a secret."

"Something is going on," I said. "I'm suddenly concerned that M. Montiere may have some part in this.'Marry off your sisters,' Marie said. If I were to take her advice, M. Montiere would be the likely candidate for Umay. The brother of Gabriel's wife. And how is it that we didn't know this before? Doesn't it seem strange?"

"And," Zera added, "what was Marie doing in that carriage if she is not Gabriel's wife?"

"What?" Umay frowned."Don't you think you're grasping at straws?"

"No, she may be right." It was all too much. Too many confusing strands, too late at night. A sob welled up and poured out of me before I had a chance to prepare.

"Salome! No, no, my love!" Zera put her arm around me, "What's happened?"

I managed to stop crying for a moment. "I was just wishing Gabriel were here to help us sort this out."

Two Heads Together

Zera smoothed one eyebrow with her index finger and stared up into the darkness.

"You know," she hesitated before sontinuing, "I didn't want to say anything, but I had the same feeling."

"You did?" I breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, Zera. Tell me what made you think so."

"I'm not sure," she said. "That's why I didn't mention it. I thought perhaps it was just how impossible it seemed that someone could be with you one day and vanished from reality the next, as if they never even existed. I felt the same when my mother died."

I swallowed. "I'm sorry, aziza. I didn't know you'd lost your mother."

"No, don't be sorry. I try never to talk about it. It happened before I came to the harem."

I sat still for a moment, thinking that maybe she was right. Maybe that was all it was. The impossibility of death. A whole complex human being who existed on more than the level we could see. How could such a profound thing as life really ever end? But it did. People died all the time.

"There is something else about this, though." Zera sat up and offered me some of her blankets.

I slid over to sit next to her in a little heated cocoon, only our heads outside the covers.

"What woman would come to the house of her husband's mistress days after his death and offer her continued shelter? I thought it was awfully generous of her at first. But then she kept insisting that you should get married.That was the suspicious part to me. It did cross my mind that perhaps Gabriel was only ill and that she was taking the opportunity to get rid of the competition. It was like the harem, if you see what I mean. The Pasha's wives always trying to give away the prettiest, most desirable girls to keep them from becoming the Pasha's new wives." Zera squeezed my hand as she said this.

"Yes, there is a certain similarity." I considered the possibilities. "But how did she know so much about me? Gabriel most have told her."

"Well, he is a storyteller. How many stories has he told us about people he knows? A clever girl could have put together who they were about with just a mention of your name."

"Perhaps. But where does that leave Gabriel? Marie pieced together who I was and where to find me? Is it because Gabriel is too sick to stop her coming here? Or is he really... gone?"

"Maybe he left her bed. Maybe she needs you now."

"Oh but surely that would come to light before she could talk me into getting married. What would be the point?"

"You said his wife's name was Juliette. Can you remember anything more about her?"

I racked my brain. When had he told me about his wife?

"We were at breakfast. It was just after I first met him. Have I told you how he took me out of the boarding house, luggage and all, and installed me in a Paris apartement?"

Zera smiled and nodded.

"We were having tea in beautiful china cups and little cakes on tiny plates. Lumps of sugar and orange marmalade with good baguettes. And Gabriel with his shirt open. I had never seen such a beautiful man. His green eyes, his dark hair and pale skin. So tall and masculine. And French was still an exotic language to my ears."

"You were very lucky," Zera murmured.

"Yes, I've been extraordinarily lucky all my life."

"Was it the first day he made love to you?"

I felt the blood creeping into my cheeks. Strange that I could still be embarrassed so easily in front of Zera.

"No. he didn't make love to me for a long while. He just pampered me. And told me stories."

"What stopped him?" Zera wondered aloud.

"I'm not sure. Decency, I think. I had been ill and had gone through a lot, and I was missing you and Umay. Perhaps he was waiting to make sure it was what I wanted."

"And he told you about his wife?"

"Yes. That she was a lady. From a good family. That she supported him while he wrote. Juliette de Lain? de Lorque?"

"Juliette de Lorca Manniere." It was Umay's voice from the doorway into the salon.

"Yes. that's right. But how did you know?"

"She's M. Montiere's sister. I met her when we were at court. But why do you speak of her?"

By Dark

I lay in bed alone that night, staring up at the ceiling. To my surprise, I didn't cry. Though I'd wept in the garden with Marie and Zera, it had been more at seeing them cry, at feeling their sadness. Now I wondered at my lack of tears.

Perhaps it was unbelievable to me. So many nights I'd spent alone in this same bed, knowing that in a day or two or ten, Gabriel would be with me again. Perhaps this one night of absence seemed unremarkably like the rest.

Had I really stopped loving him? No, the words had been a sort of threat, an empty threat, my only way of making sure he didn't repeat what he had done with Umay. I could no more stop loving him than I could stop using my right hand. And as I had loved him, I had imagined that should anything befall him, I would know it intuitively, would feel his absence from the world as a pang, a shock, a dimming of the light. I had felt nothing. No sign, no hint, no glimmer of any sort that he had passed out of this plane of existence.

I threw back the bed covers and got out of bed. I left the bedroom and found Zera where she lay stretched out on the divan.

"Zera, wake up."

"What is it? Are you all right?"

"I've remembered something about Gabriel."

"Come here, love." She reached for me and pulled me under her comforter, trying to put her arms around me. I resisted.

"Zera, Gabriel's wife's name is Juliette. A lady. I can't remember exactly, but she's no common girl."

"What? But you know that was his wife. We both saw them together two years ago, with their son."

"We saw them together, yes, but I never asked him about her. I assumed she was his wife. He never told me he had another lover, but he must have done. That girl was no fine lady. She was as common as--" I stopped for a breath. "As I am."

"What are you saying, Salome?" Zera frowned at me.

"I don't know exactly, but... I just have a feeling that..."

"You don't think Gabriel is really dead."

"No," I said. "I don't."