Free Lady Rogue by Suzanne Enoch Page A

advanced stages of undress, and in far less innocent poses. But perhaps it was the innocence of the scene that was so riveting, after all. Kit was not trying to seduce him, but merely to gain herself a new set of clothes. She obviously had no idea what the combination of her body and that damned measuring tape was doing to him—and thank God for that.
    The tape slunk downward, tightening again about her waist. Another pencil-scratch of a note followed, and the tape lowered again, settling about her rounded hips. Alex exhaled, remembering the feel of those hips against him when he had first begun to suspect that Kit Riley was a female. The tape slipped a little, and with nimble fingers the tailor slid it back in place. Alex groaned silently. She was stunning, Aphrodite in breeches, and he wanted her. Badly.
    Finally Mr. Lewis took a step back, cleared his throat, and knelt. “If you please,” he murmured, and attached the top end of the tape to her waist. Swallowing, his hands shaking a little, Alex lowered the paper as the tailor slowly stretched the length of the cord down toher ankle. He made another notation on his pad. As the tailor shifted again, raising the tape toward her inseam, Kit’s cheeks colored to a deep rose. She flinched like a wild deer, catching Alex’s eyes with a pleading expression.
    “Lewis!” Alex bellowed instantly, lurching to his feet, the paper crumpled in his hand.
    Startled, the little tailor jumped back and turned to face him. “My lord?” he asked, pushing his spectacles back onto his nose.
    Alex took a breath and shook himself. It would do no one any good if he charged the poor tailor like a bloody wild boar. “Use the damned breeches she’s got on to measure the rest,” he ordered, and motioned Kit toward the dressing closet. “There’s a robe in there,” he grumbled.
    She favored him with a swift, grateful smile as she hurried into the tiny adjoining room. Alex briefly shut his eyes and leaned back against the sill again. The breeches flew out of the closet, and the tailor retrieved them, measured the inseam and the cuff, then, with a hesitant glance toward the earl, tossed them back again. “Thank you,” came the chit’s muffled voice, and a few moments later she reemerged.
    Mr. Lewis made a few last notations, then put away his tape and wet the end of his pencil with his tongue. “All right, my lord. What would you like?”
    Something he couldn’t have, because of a damned debt of honor. “I think something in gray, though I leave the details to your discretion. Plus a new shirt and a half dozen cravats, all for tomorrow.” Feeling slightly more composed, Alex placed his hands behind his back and eyed Kit speculatively. “By the end of the week I want two more suits, in blue and a dark green. No brown. And nothing dandyish, for heaven’s sake.”
    Kit looked over at her brown coat. “Why not brown?” she asked defiantly.
    “I’m bloody tired of seeing you in it. That’s why not,” he answered. “For the evening, a black and a dark gray, I believe. With sufficient shirts and waistcoats andwhatever else my cousin desires to accompany them.”
    “Very good, my lord.”
    Both of the chit’s eyebrows lifted. “ Five suits?”
    Alex sighed. “I suppose this means you’ll want five hats and five pairs of boots, as well?”
    Kit delayed a moment before she answered. “Could I?” she asked with a delighted laugh.
    He snorted, finally giving in to his urge to chuckle. “No.”
     
    Stewart Brantley sat at a table shoved against the back wall of a small tavern on Long Acre, just north of Covent Garden, and finished a glass of port. The innkeeper had thought him high in the instep for ordering a gentleman’s drink, but he had at one time been a gentleman, after all. And at the moment he was a former gentleman who felt in the mood to celebrate.
    Some damned lord might have stepped into his affairs once, but he would see to it that it did not happen again. And the