Free To Wed a Rake by Eloisa James

had already covered that ground. Just to prove it, she kicked off one of her silk slippers. It curved into the air, a jewel flashing as it went, and disappeared onto stage left.
    “I suppose I can carry you back to the carriage,” Gil said with mock despair.
    Emma kicked her other shoe into the air. This one thumped against one of the sets and set it trembling.
    Then she danced behind the rosy transparent silk. “Are these easy to turn?” she asked.
    “Of course,” he said. “The boys who play the fairies love to make them twirl.”
    “I see why,” Emma said, awed by the cleverness of it. For with a pull of her fingers, the stretched silk whirled on its pivot, and rosy gleams danced around the room, flashing over Gil’s dark hair, on his lean cheeks and high cheekbones, on that wickedly seductive lower lip of his.
    He swept the hair out of his eyes as she watched.
    “You’re quite beautiful,” she said, startled to hear the huskiness of her own voice.
    “Do you say that as a queen, or as Emelie?” he asked, smiling.
    “A woman would walk a mile for a touch of that nether lip,”
she said dreamily.
    “Tsk, tsk,” he said, and there was laughter in his voice. “You’re mixing your plays.
Othello
, and in such a sad context.”
    “Titania would never travel even a yard for the touch of a man’s lip,” she said, pushing the pink silk flat sideways so that it turned just enough to make a barrier between the two of them.
    “Perhaps not,” he said, amused, and then she saw the words die in his mouth. For she had pulled up her hand-brocaded skirt and was holding one leg out as she slowly,slowly unrolled her silk stocking. It was a lovely stocking, of the softest gossamer silk.
    He made a strangled growl in his throat. She pulled off the stocking, pointed her toes, and took a moment to admire her leg. She had always thought that her legs were most attractive.
    Emma peeked at Gil. Clearly, he thought so, too. She gave him a secret little smile.
    “Emelie!” he said, “Stop what you are doing. This is nonsense.”
    In answer, she reached under all her petticoats and slipped her second stocking from its garter. A moment later, that stocking slipped past a slender, pointed toe, and she tossed it over her shoulder.
    “I insist that you do not disrobe yourself on the stage,” he said, but Emma ignored him. It was good for a man to know straight off that there were times when he might—
might
—be obeyed, and there were others when he should understand his place.
    “I shan’t,” she said, casting him s, cd the a sparkling, mischievous glance. “I’m overheated.”
    “Overheated!”
    It was the work of a moment to unlace her tight bodice and push it off her shoulders, slipping her wide sleeves down her arms. He made another sound, like a beast in the darkness, when her bodice fell to the ground. Of course, she shouldn’t be the one to say so, but her breasts looked rather magnificent. Her little corset was the kind that aimed to levitate, rather than confine, and she had neglected to wear pantalettes…. It was a delicious and strange experience.
    She shook her hair free again; it swirled around her shoulders with a touch like
fire.
A slow blaze eddied in her belly. “Lord Kerr,” she called, “I cannot remove my skirtswithout some help. This gown is constructed in two parts, as you can see.”
    She looked up, and Gil was leaning against the pink silk screen, laughing silently. She blinked at him. He wasn’t supposed to be laughing at her. He was supposed to be transfixed with lust, driven to the extremities of his self-control, turned to a satyr. Or something akin to it.
    “Have I told you that I begin to feel more and more sympathy for that worthy burgher, your future husband?” he asked.
    Emma started trying to pull her skirts around to the front so that she could undo all those little buttons herself. Since Gil wasn’t inebriated—and apparently he would never be inebriated again—she was