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.
Crouching down in front of her, he moved to help her into her riding trousers. Evelyn was obliged to rest a hand on his shoulder to balance herself.
He had exceedingly muscular shoulders.
She briefly closed her eyes against the sensation. Good gracious. He might have been chiseled from granite.
He tugged the trousers up her legs and over her hips.
“They seem to fit nicely,” she managed.
“Very well.” He sounded pleased with himself. “They only want a few minor adjustments.”
Taut moments followed, during which Evelyn reflected that having Mr. Malik pinning and marking her trousers provoked very different sensations than when her riding trousers were fitted by the village dressmaker in Combe Regis.
He took no liberties. His touch was brisk and efficient; nevertheless . . . it was everywhere. He marked adjustments to be made on her hips and rear, and even along her inner thigh.
She began to wonder if it was possible to spontaneously combust from repressed blushes. Indeed, by the time he’d finished, the two of them must have begged each other’s pardons half a dozen times.
And it wasn’t over.
The silk petticoat came next, and then the habit skirts.
Mr. Malik rose, sliding the waist-opening up over her hips. Their eyes met, and he gave her a sudden smile. It was as fleeting as it was sympathetic, seeming to acknowledge their mutual discomfort, even as it dismissed it. “We can’t keep apologizing.”
Her mouth trembled on a faint smile of her own. “No, indeed.”
“A little familiarity can’t be helped in these circumstances. I have to touch you.”
“Of course you must.” She cast about for something else she might say. Something to put an end to this strange intimacy developing between them. “Er, it hasn’t much shape at this stage, has it? The skirt, I mean.”
“It will have.” He slid a pin through the partially open side seam, securing the fabric at her waist. “This part will take a bit longer. If you don’t mind standing perfectly still?”
Evelyn nodded. How many times had she been required to stand motionless for the village seamstress? Or for Aunt Nora while she let out the seams of a hand-me-down dress? How many times, when fidgeting, had she been stabbed with an errant pin?
“I won’t move,” she promised.
And she didn’t, for all the long, silent minutes that followed.
Mr. Malik alternately stood and knelt, pinning darts and seams and making marks on the fabric with the piece of tailor’s chalk he kept in his waistcoat pocket.
“You asked about colors,” he said at last. He was pinning the skirt fabric behind her, far out of her line of sight.
“Yes?”
“Shades of rose and mauve are never suitable for ladies with auburn hair.”
“And not greens either, you said. Not all shades of green, anyway.”
“Darker greens, like this one, will always suit you. Bottle greens and invisible greens. But steer clear of lighter shades—apple or moss. They’ll drain the life out of your face.” He folded the fabric of her skirt very slightly over the curve of her rear, securing it with another pin. “What colors do you wear at home?”
“Blue, mostly. Dark blues and grays.” They were subdued, inoffensive hues, suitable to a young lady of her station—and her pocketbook. Colors that could withstand regular washing. She paused, expecting him to make a sound of approval. None was forthcoming. “Are those wrong, too?”
“Yes.”
She huffed a short laugh. “What do you recommend, then? I can’t always be wearing green.”
Standing up from his work, he stepped back to look at her, his brow drawn into a contemplative frown. “Black will suit you. Indeed, it would be quite striking. Also, claret, stone gray, and shades of gold and amber. And white, of course. Not bright or blue-white, mind, but creamy white.”
“Creamy white,” she repeated. “Ivory, do you mean?”
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.”