* * *
That same evening, only minutes before Doyle and Heppenstall’s closed and locked its doors for the night, Miss Maltravers entered the shop, accompanied by her maid.
Ahmad was in his shirtsleeves, a cloth measuring tape draped round his neck. He’d told her to come at closing time. He generally did his habit fittings after hours, when the cutters had retired to their rooms abovestairs and Doyle wasn’t there to loom over his shoulder.
Miss Maltravers stopped just inside the doorway. Her bespectacled gaze flicked from his face to his waistcoat and white linen shirt and then back again. Clad in a shapeless afternoon dress, she looked nothing like the dazzling vision she’d presented on horseback. She appeared nervous, truth be told. Wide-eyed, with a flushed face and trembling hands.
He felt a bit trembly himself. The damnedest thing. It made him gruffer than usual. “You’re wearing your spectacles.”
Her hand went immediately to her face, pushing the offending article further up onto her nose. “Shouldn’t I have?”
“You weren’t this morning.”
“I never do when I ride. I don’t require them for distance. Only for close up. Reading and talking to people and so on. Without them, your face would be a blur, and so would any fabrics you show to me.”
Outside, a rush of foot traffic passed in front of Doyle and Heppenstall’s glass window—customers leaving shops as they closed, and shopkeepers and their clerks locking up and going home for the day. One of the passersby caught the attention of Miss Maltravers’s maid.
“Oh, miss!” she cried. “That’s Sally, from my old employer in Green Street. May I speak with her? I won’t be a moment.”
“Of course,” Miss Maltravers said. “Take as long as you need.”
The maid slipped out into the street, the door shutting behind her.
“A new hire?” Ahmad asked.
Miss Maltravers’s mouth curved in a slight smile. “A parlor maid in my uncle’s house.”
Her uncle.
“I’m not permitted to go out unaccompanied during my stay,” she explained. “Not in the normal course of things. Though I must say I do prefer my independence. At home, in my village, I’m used to shifting for myself.”
He regarded her in silence for several long seconds. She was staying with an uncle. And she had a horse stabled here, and a groom along with him. And now, she had a maid as well. A full complement of respectability. “You’re not, I take it, planning to set yourself up in Miss Walters’s trade?”
The flush in Miss Maltravers’s face briefly darkened to crimson. “No, indeed. Is that what you thought?”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” he said.
Every day in London, pretty young women arrived from the countryside, hoping to make better lives for themselves and their families. They were always welcomed into the oldest profession—sometimes tricked or trapped into it, by canny madams or brutish brothel-keepers.
Ahmad had known enough of the type while working at Mrs. Pritchard’s. Among them, young women who could affect the speech and manner of a lady were much in demand. Many wealthy gentlemen preferred their mistresses to have a veneer of elegance. And those mistresses were well compensated for that quality, with town houses, servants, coaches and four, and monthly allowances greater than most people could earn in a year.
It was to that class that Miss Walters and the other Pretty Horsebreakers belonged.
Ahmad passed no judgment. He’d lived among working women for the better part of his life in London. Some were good and some bad, just as in every line of business. As for the morality of it, he had no fixed opinion. One did what one must to survive. Life was difficult enough without having to feel ashamed about it. Nevertheless . . .
On discovering that Miss Maltravers wasn’t aspiring to be the next grande horizontale, he owned to a distinct sense of relief. He didn’t know why. Her career choice was no concern of his.
“No,” she said again. “I’m not interested in becoming a courtesan. But I do recognize the power the Horsebreakers hold. Their particular allure. It’s that which I wish to emulate, not their profession.”
“To what end?”
“Why . . . the obvious one, of course. To find a husband.”
“Ah.” The mundanity of her goal was vaguely disappointing. Though he didn’t know what else he’d expected. Something grander? More ambitious? Something that would set the stars on fire?
“You disapprove?”
He shrugged. “Why should I?” A glance at the window revealed Miss Maltravers’s maid still talking animatedly with her friend.
Miss Maltravers followed his gaze. “We needn’t wait for Agnes. She’s only here to oblige my uncle.”
“As you wish.” He pulled back the curtain that separated the showroom from the work- and fitting rooms and gestured for her to precede him. “After you.”
She walked through, under his outstretched arm, leaving the faintest fragrance of orange blossoms in her wake.
His pulse jumped.
Stupid.
She was just a woman. One of the many who frequented Rotten Row attempting to ape Miss Walters and her fellows. Wealthy, spoiled young ladies with their expensive horses and their close-fitted riding costumes. Pale imitations of the courtesans, tiresome in their ordinariness.
But no. He was being unjust. And merely because Miss Maltravers provoked a reaction in him. The sight of her and the scent of her. The way she’d extended her hand to him yesterday, as if he were an equal. Addressing him not as a dark-skinned man beneath her notice, a servant to do her bidding, but as an artist—a person worthy of respect and admiration.
“It’s a sort of magic, I believe,” she’d said. “To create clothing that can do that for a person. That can transform them into something extraordinary.”
He’d been thinking of that—of her—ever since leaving the park this morning. Seeing her ride had inspired him like nothing in recent memory. He’d spent half the afternoon sketching designs for her.
“Is no one else here?” she asked as he led her past the empty workroom.
“Not this evening, no.” He showed her into a large gaslit fitting room. A cheval glass was arrayed in front of a raised platform. Bolts of cloth were stacked on a narrow table against the wall. And in the corner stood a wooden horse, equipped with an old leather sidesaddle.
Miss Maltravers gave it a wary glance.
He moved to block her view of the offending contraption. “Are you certain you don’t need your maid to assist you?”