“No. Not at all.” She dashed a tear from her cheek. “Rather the opposite.” A rueful smile curved her mouth. “You see, the day we met, I meant it when I said that I loved fashion. The problem is, it’s never seemed to love me back. Not until this moment.”
Understanding dawned. With it came a swell of affection for her so powerful that it closed Ahmad’s throat. “Then you approve.”
“It’s perfect.” She resumed looking at her reflection. “It’s . . . it’s beautiful.”
He came to stand behind her. “You’re beautiful.”
A delicate flush tinted her cheeks. “If I appear that way, it’s only because you’ve made me so.”
“I’m not a magician.”
“You are. I believe you must be able to turn lead into gold.”
“It wasn’t any kind of alchemy. You gave me a great deal to work with.”
She looked at him in the glass, her eyes glistening. “Thank you for this, Mr. Malik. I knew you would amaze me.”
His chest tightened. He felt the sudden urge to touch her. Not as a habit-maker but as a man. To cup her face in his hands and kiss her soft, voluptuous mouth.
Heat crept up his neck.
“Come,” he said, “before you put me to the blush.” Taking her arm, he guided her to the wooden horse that stood in the corner. “If I may?”
She nodded, her color heightening by a slight degree. Likely no one else would have noticed. But he did. He was painfully conscious of her, registering the subtle changes in her mood and breath as keenly as a tuning fork.
It wouldn’t do. These burgeoning feelings, or whatever it was they were. It was one thing to be physically attracted to a customer. It was quite another to be developing some sort of tendre for her. Neither had ever happened to him before, but he was acutely aware that one was inherently more dangerous than the other.
He couldn’t risk any missteps. Not now. Not with his whole future hanging in the balance.
And Mira’s future, too.
She was depending on him to make a success of things. Which he couldn’t do, not if he became entangled with some bluestocking Sussex equestrienne no one had ever heard of before.
It was time to refocus on his work, and only on his work.
Encircling Miss Maltravers’s waist with his hands, he lifted her up onto the old sidesaddle that was strapped to the wooden horse.
She settled her leg over the pommel, exposing a brief glimpse of her dark silk petticoat and snug-fitting riding trousers. “Will this do? Or do you need me to—”
“You’re fine.” He arranged her skirt over her legs and down to her stirrup, and then stood back to study her.
Long seconds passed.
“I wonder what it is you see,” she said, “when you look at me like that.”
Her question jolted him. Their eyes met, and he very nearly answered her with unfiltered honesty. Possibilities. That’s what he saw when he looked at her. Not only the possibilities she presented for his designs, but the possibilities of her. Of what she might mean to him if circumstances were different. If they were of the same race and class.
But possibilities were just that. Things that might be, not things that were. And right now, in this moment, Ahmad couldn’t afford to dwell on fairy tales.
He forced himself to remain detached. Professional. “I’m not looking at you, Miss Maltravers,” he said. “I’m looking at your habit.”
* * *
His words felt very much like a setdown. If they were, Evelyn supposed she deserved it. She’d become too emotional when she’d seen herself in the looking glass. Even tearing up, for heaven’s sake. No doubt she’d made Mr. Malik keenly uncomfortable. “Yes, I know,” she said. “That’s what I meant. That I wonder what it is you’re looking for.”
Mr. Malik’s expression was inscrutable. Though, she thought she detected a flicker of emotion at the back of his dark eyes. As if he was relieved her question no longer strayed toward the personal.
“A habit skirt is longer than the skirt of a day dress, often by more than a quarter of a yard. I’m always conscious of how I use the fabric.” Returning to her, he arranged the folds of her skirt. “It must fall gracefully around a rider, even at a gallop. And it shouldn’t be so much material that she’s unable to manage it.”
“I can manage anything when I’m on Hephaestus,” Evelyn said. “I’m more concerned with the appearance of the habit than its functionality.”
Mr. Malik’s mouth tilted up at one corner. “By the time I’m finished, you shall have both.”
She sat still as his hands moved over her, adjusting not only her skirts, but the fit of her bodice and sleeves. “I always feel a little foolish,” she confided, “sitting up on these wooden horses.”
“Don’t. It allows me to properly gauge the fit before I pin the hem. You don’t wish your skirts to fall unevenly, do you? Or your jacket to bunch up at your waist or under your arms as you’re riding?”
“No, indeed. I hope my new habit will look as handsome when I’m mounted as it does when I’m standing in front of the glass.”
“More handsome.” He straightened one of the gauntlet cuffs at the end of her sleeve. “I chose the color to flatter both you and your horse.”
A smile sprang to her lips. “Did you?”
Mr. Malik withdrew from her to collect his pincushion and thread case from the fitting room table. “The bay stallion is the only horse you’ll be riding this season, is he not?”
“He is. But I hadn’t realized you’d taken it into account.”
“Naturally. This shade of green wouldn’t have been as flattering on a chestnut or a gray.” Returning to her, Mr. Malik knelt and began to pin her hem.
Evelyn looked down at his bent head. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. His thick black hair was as glossy as a raven’s wing. Cut in the prevailing style, it was short above his ears and at his nape. His close-cropped sideburns were equally short, ending halfway beneath the harshly hewn lines of his cheekbones.
When she’d seen him in Hyde Park last week, she’d thought he resembled a fallen angel. She still thought so. It was something about his commanding height and strength. The brooding set to his mouth, and the equally brooding look in his eyes. It should have served as a warning. Stay back. Don’t come any closer.
Instead, it inspired her curiosity.
“You know so very much about it all,” she remarked.