The Book of the Seven Delights Read Online Free PDF Page A

toward the steps.
    "That cincher. You can't wear that," he said, gesturing to a daintily embroidered garment dangling from the stack.
    "Really." She stuffed it out of sight, picked up the hem of her nightdress, and climbed the five steps to the deck. He followed and emerged onto the deck just as she dropped her garments onto her chair. "Need I remind you"—she inserted herself between him and the stays visible on top of the clothes—"that the captain has declared this part of the deck off-limits to all but me?"
    "You'll suffocate."
    "I have been dressing myself quite successfully since I was four years old."
    "Not in Morocco, you haven't." He widened his stance and crossed his arms. "You have to wear loose, breatheable clothing. Strap yourself into one of those things and you'll be keeling over on an hourly basis."
    "I appreciate the advice," she said irritably, realizing that this was a test of her recent resolve. "Now if you don't mind, I am trying to dress."
    When he continued to stand and glower, she snatched up her combinations, gave them a shake that produced a snap. Still no movement toward the hatch.
    "Fine." She hiked up the bottom of her gown. Modesty asserted itself, and she turned her back to him before raising her nightdress past her knees. Then, with the knickers at her waist, she realized she would have to make a tent of her nightgown in order to insert her arms into the straps of the attached camisole.
    Grumbling silently, she withdrew her arms from the voluminous sleeves to continue dressing.

Chapter Four
    Apollo Smith stood with his legs braced apart and his arms crossed over his chest. His gaze was fixed on an expanse of rumpled white muslin and on the silhouette of a naked female outlined against it by the rising sun He closed his eye to clear his vision, but the brightness had scored her image into the back of his exposed eye: a glowing light-shadow against the dark wall of his mind.
    Curved breast, waist, and hip… bared leg rising… He flipped up his leather patch and narrowed both eyes to filter the sunlight that was penetrating the fabric, skimming her bare flesh, and carrying stolen impressions to him.
    His fingers twitched as he watched her draw garments over that outline, blurring it. The sound trapped in his throat was part protest and part relief. Then she wrapped something around her midsection that began to define the curve of her waist in a way that was both foreign and familiar. Pink, he recalled. A boned, embroidered rectangle edged in lace and trimmed with ribbon roses.
    Until two months ago, he hadn't been close to a female in European dress for five long years. Corsets, petticoats, lacy knickers, silk stockings—the hallmarks of femininity imprinted in him during his formative years in England were utterly foreign to the rough and rugged world of Berber mountain tribes, desert Arabs, and French Legionnaires. The few women accessible to him and his comrades-at-arms were denizens of brothels or serving girls in taverns who, despite their adoption of European affectations, would never be mistaken for English women or ladies of any kind.
    In his long, tumultuous years of service to the Legion, he had all but forgotten the tantalizing swish of petticoats, the temptation of a tautly drawn corset, and the fascination provoked by a deeply cut neckline. Then he arrived in London just more than a month ago, took rooms in a comfortable West End hotel, and found himself plunged into a flood of forgotten titillations. For a month he stalked the streets of London in a continuous, adolescent-like state of arousal. It was a damned relief to learn of a quiet little house in St. James where he could purge that sexual tension for an affordable sum.
    Now. it seemed that fleeting indulgence had only roused old memories and focused his interest all the more on accouterments of Western femininity. And the annoying bit of muslin he'd been forced to rescue was determined to upholster herself with a full