Chapter NineVentura entered the sitting room a little shyly.
She had lain awake all night wondering what she should say and do when she faced Lord Lynke again.
Looking back on the panic and terror that had driven her to make the dangerous leap from balcony to balcony and to fling herself unthinkingly into his arms, she wondered how she could have been so foolish.
Her fears now seemed out of all proportion to what she had risked in letting Lord Lynke guess that she was not the boy she pretended to be. Yet the alternative would have been to face the dwarf with his deadly dagger.
That, she knew, would have been impossible for her and she had neither the courage nor the stamina that a real boy might have had.
She tried to think of what else she could have done. Had she screamed from the b
