“You should accuse me of adultery next,” he said huskily. “Titania accuses Oberon of having a mistress, a warrior love.”
Emma shook her head. “That must be anther Titania. My husband will never have a mistress.”
He began to walk toward her, all slow and easy but with purpose. Pure exuberation raced up and down her limbs.
“And just how do you intend to stop Oberon from his seductive habits?”
But Emma had just realized that there were more side flats, stretched with different silks, waiting to emerge. She pulled at one, and it slid smoothly along its groove onto the stage. Gil’s large arm reached over her head and pulled the flat all the way, then spun it on its pivot so that gold silk cast its radiance on the fairy forest. The gold flecks looked closer now, dancing free of the trees.
“It fools the eye,” Emma said, awed. “They look like fairy lights.”
Her Oberon knew his Shakespeare. “Didn’t thou not lead Theseus through the glimmering night,” he asked, bending his head and brushing his lips across hers, “from Perigenia, whom he ravished?”
Ravished. Emma suddenly discovered she loved that word. She let her neck fall back as he kissed her. His mouth came to her cheek and her chin, leaving small fiery trails in his wake. Her mind fogged, and her arms wound around his neck, when suddenly she remembered her next line:
“These are the forgeries of jealousy!” she said, breaking free and dancing across the stage in a swirl of skirts. She glanced back over her shoulder and gave him the smoldering glance of a fairy queen bent on scolding her mate. On scolding and ravishing her mate.
He laughed. “You don’t seem to know your Shakespeare as well as one might hope from a well-brought-up young lady. That line does not follow.”
“Ah, but I’m not a lady,” she pointed out, feeling that they 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 cheek-bones, 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 a sparkling, mischievous glance. “I’m overheated.”
“Overheated!”