Page 78 of The Siren of Sussex

A lowering thought!

“I do trust you,” she said. “I know you’ll make me look my best. That doesn’t stop me from worrying about every detail.”

He nodded once, seeming to comprehend her fears. “When we meet for your next fitting, I’ll bring my sketches. Will that help?”

Her shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t realized how much tension she was carrying in them. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Not at all.” He moved to set the bolt of silk on the fitting room table. “I should have brought them today. You could have seen what I have in mind.”

“That’s all right. We only made our agreement two days ago. I don’t expect you’ve had time yet to think of very many designs for me.”

He looked at her from across the fitting room. There was a brooding glint in his dark eyes. The same expression that had often put her in mind of a fallen angel. “You’re all I’ve been thinking of.”

Evelyn’s pulse beat heavy at her throat. He didn’t mean it. Not in the way she imagined. It was about fashion, that was all. It was nothing personal. Certainly nothing romantic. Even so, she couldn’t help but stare at him.

An ironic smile edged his lips. “I told you that you were my muse. You’ve been keeping me up at night.” Returning to her, he smoothed the line of her sleeve. It might almost have been a caress. “The trouble won’t be that I don’t have enough ideas for you, it will be that I have too many.”

Ahmad spent the next several days cutting and sewing Miss Maltravers’s ball gown. There were early mornings and late nights. Moments when he feared his vision may have outpaced his skill. Never in his life had he made something that meant so much to so many people.

Hunched over his worktable, he unpicked stitches and reworked seams, constantly checking what he was creating against his design.

His rough sketches depicted a silk dress with a formidable set of skirts. The lower skirt was edged in box pleats, while the upper skirt was made of embroidered gauze, drawn up on both sides with ribbon bows. The same delicate gauze framed the dramatic neckline of the bodice. Cut low both at the front and back, it was made to expose a daring expanse of bare skin.

And not just anyone’s bare skin.

Evelyn Maltravers was in his mind constantly as he worked, never leaving his thoughts for even a moment. This was her dress as much as it was his, all the way to the hidden pocket he placed at the seam of the skirts.

“You’re exhausted,” Mira said as he accompanied her back to Half Moon Street on the evening before Miss Maltravers’s final fitting. Unlike Becky, who slipped away from his lodgings early in order to make it back to the East End before nightfall, Mira always waited for him to escort her home, no matter how late the hour.

“And you’re not?” He cast her a distracted glance. She was seated across from him in the hired hackney cab. The carriage lamp shone a weak light over her face. “You have shadows under your eyes, bahan.”

“It will be worth it in the end,” she said. “I only wish I could be there to see her wear it.”

“You’ll see it tomorrow.” He was expected at Russell Square in the morning. Mira was set to accompany him. As for Becky, she’d be turning her attentions to some of the other dresses Ahmad had in mind for Miss Maltravers.

There was work enough to keep the three of them busy for weeks. Sketches for day dresses, evening dresses, and carriage gowns. Colorful skirts and Garibaldi shirts. The fashionable garments of a young lady making her debut, all of them informed by his taste for elegant lines and sensual silhouettes, and by Evelyn Maltravers herself.

“It’s not the same as seeing it in a ballroom,” Mira said, “when the candles are lit and the gasoliers are glowing. She’ll shine like a star when she’s waltzing. Like a moonbeam.”

Ahmad expected to feel a sense of satisfaction at the thought. It was his dress, after all. His design. But imagining Miss Maltravers waltzing in the arms of some nameless, faceless Englishman brought him no pleasure at all. Not even if she was shining as brilliantly as a star. Not even if she glowed so brightly that every lady in London came calling at Doyle and Heppenstall’s, demanding that he make them a gown just like hers.

His timing was execrable. These feelings he was having for her. His muse. His auburn-haired equestrienne.

He wanted her for himself.

The next morning, he and Mira set out together for Russell Square, the pieces of Miss Maltravers’s ball gown boxed up in their arms. On applying at the kitchen door, they were shown up the servants’ stairs to the morning room. The drapes were open, and the fire alight.

Miss Maltravers stood by the window, sunlight gleaming in her hair. A smile suffused her face as she came forward to greet them, shining first in her eyes before spreading to the soft curve of her mouth. “Mr. Malik. How do you do?”

His chest tightened as she approached.

This damned physical reaction!

And they hadn’t even touched yet.

He’d done nothing more than look at her. Nothing more than register the gentle sway of her skirts and the way an auburn curl had fallen loose from her chignon to brush the elegant curve of her cheek. His fingers itched to tuck it back again.

A lover’s prerogative. Or that of a husband.