Unmasking Of A Lady. Sophie Dash

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      Sophie Dash is usually found chained to a laptop in her David Bowie pyjamas, with a spaniel dribbling on her feet, a pen in her hair and biscuit crumbs across her keyboard. She has a cardboard cut-out of Spock in her basement, knows all the words to Disney’s The Little Mermaid and has seen Pride and Prejudice more times than you. Follow her on Twitter @TheSophieDash

       Contents

       Cover

       Blurb

       Title Page

       Author Bio

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Endpages

       Copyright

Chapter One

      A pistol snapped in the night, a glimmer in the darkness. A horse was covered in a sheen of sweat as it ploughed onwards, hooves hammering on the ground with such a force as could summon thunder. The cool air crept up the rider’s sleeves and under the collar of her ill-fitting jacket, nipping at any exposed skin, as Harriet Groves fled.

      She had not meant tonight to go as it had. The mayor’s carriage should have been an easy target, but there had been a man waiting for her, waiting for the highwayman who haunted the Wessex roads.

      It begun as it always did – protests, shock, fear and overdressed aristocracy forced to part with their jewels and finery. It was her maidservant, Mary, who sounded the alarm, before a stranger’s weapon was fired. Harriet felt the shot pass between inches of her concealed face, burying itself into a tree trunk at her side with a heavy thud. She turned to the man who had fired it, movements fast, catlike. No one had ever tracked her down before.

      From the coach’s swaying lantern she saw his strong, tall frame, the light casting shadows across his features – obscuring them from sight. There was no doubt that he had been waiting for them, had anticipated them. She could feel his eyes on her, boring through her skin, her heart skittering beneath her breast as though a sparrow were trapped behind it, shedding feathers in her lungs.

      Harriet brought up her own pistol, halting him in his tracks, stopping him from reloading. Ever since she had first begun this terrible business, she had dreaded this moment. The night she would have to kill a man. Somewhere nearby an owl shrieked, a fox cried out, the branches above raked one another in the night. It was all dulled to Harriet as the blood rushed in her ears, though her hand remained steady and her resolve was hard.

      “If you’re going to fire, damn you, fire,” the stranger growled, steeling himself for it, for death.

      Harriet never uttered a word in response, though she wanted СКАЧАТЬ