Page 31 of The Siren of Sussex

He shook his head. “It’s a lighter shade than ivory. Clearer, with a richness to it. A softness. Regrettably, I don’t have a sample to show you. The shade would make a stunning ball gown for someone of your coloring.”

“I thought only debutantes wore white.”

“This is your first season, isn’t it?”

“My first and my last,” she said. “I’m three and twenty, Mr. Malik. Not a young girl. If I can’t make a success of my time here . . .”

He regarded her in silence for a long moment. It was unnerving, that silence, fraught with a palpable tension. A part of her longed to fill it up. Anything to diminish this attraction she was having to him.

A tailor, of all people!

Not even a gentleman. Certainly not one who could see her family right.

Was she no better than Fenny at heart? Willing to throw her reputation to the wind for a handsome face and figure?

“It was my sister who was supposed to do all of this,” she blurted out. “The clothes and the season—the husband hunting. And she did, three years ago. But she didn’t finish the job.” Evelyn cast a glance at herself in the glass. “She was much prettier than I am.”

“So you’ve said.”

“It’s true. She had a dainty retroussé nose. And she didn’t require spectacles. Not that she ever admitted.”

“Is she dead?”

Her gaze jerked back to his. “What? No. Why would you ask that?”

“You speak of her as if she was. In the past tense.”

Evelyn’s mouth tugged into a frown. “Yes, I suppose I do.” She ran a restless hand over the front of her skirt, narrowly avoiding being stabbed by a pin. “No. She isn’t dead. She’s simply gone. If you must know, she ran off with a man during her first season and caused a terrible scandal.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“No more than I am. Had she done her duty, I’d never have been obliged to come to London, or to enact this reckless plan.”

Mr. Malik’s brows lifted a fraction.

Evelyn belatedly registered that she’d said too much.

“What plan?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip, worrying the plump flesh between her teeth. Her plan for the season wasn’t a secret. Not entirely. And even if it was, why shouldn’t she tell him? He was her ally, after a fashion.

“To make my debut in Rotten Row,” she said.

“That’s your plan?”

“Well . . . yes. I can hardly impress people in a ballroom.”

“Even if that were true, which I take leave to doubt . . . young women don’t make their debuts on horseback.”

“Some do.”

“Not ladies.”

“Just because they haven’t done yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible. I’m an excellent rider.”

“You are,” he said.

Her insides pooled with unexpected warmth. He’d acknowledged it so quickly, and with such matter-of-factness. As if there were no argument to be made against her skill. “Yes, well . . . My mother always told me that, in a difficult situation, one must proceed from a position of strength.”