The Elusive Bride by Stephanie Laurens

Arab robes, we’ll be able to waltz right past the cultists.”
    “We don’t need to get that close, but…” He looked down and met her eyes, brimming with enthusiasm. Nodded. “Let’s take a look.”
    Collecting Mooktu, Bister and Mullins with a glance, he followed Emily into the narrow, winding alley.
    It didn’t take her long to discover a shop selling all manner of outer robes. She tried on a burka—a long robe that completely covered a woman from head to toe, with only a small, lace-filled panel across the eyes to see out from.
    The instant the burka fell over her head, she became…utterly indistinguishable from all the other women clogging the streets.
    “This is wonderful!” Her voice, muffled, came from beneath the black folds. “I can see perfectly well.” She turned this way and that, surveying the small shop. “But no one can see me.”
    In a flurry of material, she pushed up the front of the robe and fixed the shopkeeper with a direct glance. “I’ll take this one, and”—she pointed to another in brown—“that one. How much for both?”
    Leaving her haggling, spurred on by just how well disguised she’d been, Gareth applied himself to finding robes for himself, and urged Bister and Mullins to do the same.
    Initially reticent, they were soon caught up in the transformation. Gareth was pleased with the end result. With any luck, they might—just might—escape the eyes of the cultists. If they could, it would be well worth this small effort.
    Leaving the shopkeeper with instructions that there would shortly be some others of their party calling, and that he was to show them similar garments, they left the shop, all now in Arab guise.
    No one so much as looked their way.
    From beneath her burka, Emily studied the other Arab women, watched how they behaved. She quickly adjusted her position in their party so she was walking a pace behind Gareth. Given Mooktu and Mullins were walking behind her, Gareth made no demur; he, too, must have noticed the local practice.
    When he paused at the corner of the souk and glanced back, checking that they were all behind him, she blinked, then smiled delightedly behind the concealing veil of her burka. In his flowing white robes over loose trousers, with a long, loose scarf wound about his head and another dark band cinched about his waist, he looked every inch the desert sheik—a man of mystery, dangerous power, and untold sensuality.
    The others…simply looked dangerous.
    As he started forward again, she meekly fell into step behind him, still smiling happily to herself.
     
    Once back at the tavern, they sent Mooktu back to the shop with Watson, Jimmy, Dorcas, and Arnia for the others to buy suitable disguises.
    While they were gone, Emily, with Mullins’s, Bister’s, and Gareth’s help, reoganized the luggage, packing their recent purchases into two large hemp bags they bought from the tavern owner.
    “Arnia said she would cook for us, and Dorcas offered to help.” Emily stepped back from the bag as Gareth and Mullins worked to lash it closed. “I can cook, but I’m afraid I’ve had little experience with these sorts of ingredients.”
    Gareth glanced up at her. “I doubt we’ll need to call on your culinary skills.” He suspected he could cook better than she, and he wasn’t any great chef. “Both Mooktu and Bister are passable over a campfire.”
    Mullins snorted as he straightened from the now secure bag. “Just as well. If Watson or I had to help…well, you’d probably rather not eat.”
    The others returned in good time. They all stood in the, thankfully, still empty tavern and admired their ingenuity. Dorcas, too, was taken with the burka, although for Arnia, who normally wore a scarf wound about her head with a long end she often pulled across her face, the change wasn’t all that remarkable.
    “No one saw us,” Mooktu reported. “I saw two of the cultists through the crowd, but that was after we’d left the shop. They didn’t