Page 29 of The Siren of Sussex

She was already woefully behind schedule. And now she’d gone and purchased the wrong color gowns!

“Should I not wear shades of rose or magenta?” she asked when Mr. Malik returned.

His tall, broad-shouldered frame was clad in black wool trousers and a single-breasted waistcoat. He’d discarded his coat. The crisp white linen of his shirt stood in stark contrast to the healthy bronze of his skin. “Never.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected him to answer so definitively. “Then what colors—” She stopped short at the sight of her new habit draped over his arm. “Goodness. Is that it?”

“The beginning of it.” Mr. Malik set the unfinished garment down on the fitting room table. Turning back to her, he offered his hand.

She took it, her attention still fixed on the habit as she climbed up on the raised platform in front of the fitting room’s cheval glass.

Shopping for gowns had been a pleasure—choosing patterns and fabrics and trimmings. But it was nothing to equal her excitement at the prospect of a new habit. Especially this habit. It was the linchpin of all of her plans.

“I suppose green is acceptable,” she said.

“Not every shade of it. Not with your coloring.” His eyes dropped to her riding stays.

Made of fine linen coutil, the modified corset was cut high over her hips, with a short busk and no shoulder straps to impede her movement. Just the style he’d prescribed.

He stilled to examine them.

Evelyn felt his quiet regard all the way down to her marrow. As if every brush of his gaze over her tightly bound bosom and midriff was a touch. A bold caress that heated her blood and tied her stomach in impossible knots.

She moistened her lips. “I trust you approve.”

“Wholeheartedly. These will do nicely with my design. So long as you can breathe?”

She couldn’t at the moment. Not very well. He was still holding her hand. Holding it as naturally as if he’d always done so. And she was letting him. Permitting what would otherwise have been an impertinence for the very same reason. Her hand fit so well in his grasp. As if it was made to be there.

Which it most certainly wasn’t.

She slowly slipped her fingers from his. It was impossible for him not to notice. Impossible not to draw attention to the sheer awkwardness of it all.

A faint flush of red appeared on the strong column of his throat, just above the line of his black cravat. “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly.

“It was my fault. I—”

“You were distracted. As was I. Anticipation, no doubt.”

Anticipation?

“You must be as anxious to see it on as I am.” He moved back to the table to retrieve the first piece of her habit.

“Yes,” she managed. “Most anxious.”

“I must ask for your patience. For future orders, things will go quickly, but today, I must mark all four pieces.”

“Four?” The dressmaker in Combe Regis had only ever made riding costumes that were three pieces: a skirt, a jacket, and the close-fitting riding trousers one wore underneath.

Mr. Malik seemed to read her mind. “I’ve added a silk petticoat, the same color as your habit.”

“Why silk?”

He returned with her riding trousers. Made of a thin chamois leather, they were dyed the same dark green as her habit. “Silk won’t bunch up under your skirts,” he explained. “My design requires a smooth line, and no unnecessary bulk beneath.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” She usually just wore one of her everyday white cotton petticoats under her habit. The lumpiness of it had never been a concern. Not when riding in the country.

No wonder Mr. Malik’s habits looked so dazzling on the Pretty Horsebreakers. He seemed to account for everything.