Talk of the Ton (Free Fellows League 5)

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 skirts without 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 going to have to rely on large expanses of naked female flesh to drive him into a more amenable frame of mind.

Just as she began to unfasten the tiny buttons that held up her skirts, Gil apparently figured out her intent.

There was a distinct note of warning in his voice now. “I must ask you again. Please do not disrobe yourself on the stage of the Hyde Park Theatre.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Naturally I had hoped we would be at Grillon’s. I am partial to starched sheets, but a woman must b

e prepared for unexpected pleasures when they occur.”

There was something about the set of his jaw that made her think that possibly the village women had underestimated the strength of will of an earl when they talked of naked women. But she’d gone too far to stop now. She unfastened the last button, and the heavy, bejeweled skirts fell to the ground with a swish, taking her petticoats with them.

Now she was wearing nothing more than her little boned corset, the clever bit of undergarment that pressed her stomach in while pushing her breasts up. She raised her head slowly to look at him, feeling her hair slide down her naked back.

His eyes were black, half lidded, his jaw still set. He leaned there as if she were a circus exhibit that he’d happened upon, a naked woman on the stage, yet another Frenchwoman amongst the hundreds. It wasn’t going to work. She should reach right down and pick up those heavy skirts and pull them on so that she didn’t have to meet his uninterested eyes again. This was profoundly embarrassing. This was beyond humiliation.

But she was a woman with Tudor bloodlines in her, and a fierce enough character that she’d never allowed herself to feel dismal over the neglect of her betrothed. She was Emma. She painted stage sets. She had exquisite clothing. She could pick up one of those besotted, fish-lipped boys back at the masquerade and marry him in about twelve minutes, whether she had twenty-four years or thirty-four years.

The tightness in her chest eased a little. After all, the theater was warm, and the light of the gas lamps was flattering. She was a naked Queen Titania, that was all.

Still, disappointment was biting in her heart, welling up with resentment. Perhaps he was eunuched. Perhaps those six months in Paris had worn the man out.

She looked back at Gil again. His eyes were scowling, and his jaw set so tightly that he looked like a night watch-man waiting for a thief to descend a ladder. But—but—

“Damn it all,” he growled, and his voice was black with . . . rage? Resentment? Something else?

She gave him a smile. It wasn’t one of her full-lipped, passionate, I’m-a-Frenchwoman smiles. It was a smile with a bit of joy in it, an invitation, a secret, a laugh.

“Damn it,” he repeated.

“You swear a great deal,” she observed, crossing her legs as she stood and pretending to poke at the ground with her toes. She wasn’t used to being naked, after all. Of course, she wasn’t really naked. She had her corset and her mask. But she was painfully aware of the red curls showing just under the scalloped bottom of her corset.

“I am a conservative man,” he said. “A sober man.”

“I haven’t offered you a brandy.”

“I didn’t mean it in that sense. I don’t veer around corners, with my reins flying in the wind. I don’t gamble my fortune on the throw of the dice. I don’t—” The words apparently strangled in his throat.

Emma raised one leg slightly, meditatively, looking at the way the light cast through pink silk made her skin look even creamier. But when she looked at him, he wasn’t staring at the rosy shadows cast by the dancing silk, but at the curls between her legs.

“Ah well,” she said, sliding back into her French accent as if she’d never dropped it at all. “It is the way of the world, no? I shall have to find someone else to have my last affaire with before I marry the burgher.”

“Someone else?” he said.

“Well, of course,” she said, turning away from him and bending down to pick up her bodice. It was so heavy that she remained bent for a moment, trying to find the sleeves before she pulled it from the floor.

And then she felt the heavy, warm curve of a body tucking itself around the curve of hers. For a moment she froze. Gil was dressed, and the feeling of his linen shirt against her back, the rougher wool of his breeches against her bottom . . .

Her heart started to thud an uneven rhythm, as if a horse had broken from its traces and was veering into the woods.

Large hands swept through her hair, tossing it up and over her head so that it fell to the floor. His body stayed immobile, keeping her tucked in his curve, trapped by his weight, his body, the feel of him.