Ten
The following morning, Ahmad packed Miss Maltravers’s finished habit into a tissue paper–lined dress box and sent it off to Russell Square in custody of Doyle and Heppenstall’s ginger-haired delivery boy.
Ahmad would rather have taken it to her himself, but after what had happened yesterday, he dared not risk it. Being around Evelyn Maltravers conjured too many emotions. It affected his composure. Made him think things he shouldn’t. Feel things he shouldn’t.
How couldn’t he? By God, the two of them had kissed each other. And it had been a kiss. It didn’t matter how inadvertently it had begun or how short its duration. What mattered was that her lips had clung to his, sweet and soft and trembling. A blazing heat had torn through him like wildfire. It had taken every ounce of his control to draw back from her.
And what about afterward?
He’d come dangerously close to saying something. He didn’t know what. Some manner of foolish declaration, no doubt. He hadn’t been thinking particularly clearly at the time.
It would do him good to have a week to cool off. A week without seeing her or talking to her. It was time to refocus his efforts on Viscountess Heatherton.
Unlike Miss Maltravers, Lady Heatherton demanded that her order be delivered in person. He’d finished her evening dress last night and boxed it up this morning. All that was left was to put it into her hands.
Arriving at the Heathertons’ town house at half past eleven, he was met in the kitchens by her ladyship’s maid, Crebbs.
“You’ll mind your manners if you know what’s good for you,” she warned as she escorted him up the servants’ stairs to Lady Heatherton’s chamber. “My lady may think you good enough to dally with, but I see you for what you are.”
“And what’s that?” Ahmad inquired.
Crebbs only scowled. When they reached the viscountess’s wood-paneled door, Crebbs opened it to admit him. “Mr. Mah-leeky, my lady.”
Ahmad gave her a dry glance. English people were often inclined to make an exotic mincemeat of his name. In his experience, it was done as much as a sign of dominance as of genuine misunderstanding. Another way of illustrating that he was different—foreign, and thereby inferior.
In the beginning, it had grated. As a boy, he’d wanted so much to belong. Now he found such thinly veiled aggressions merely tedious. Tedious, and wholly unoriginal.
“Come in, sir,” Lady Heatherton called out from her dressing room. “And Crebbs? See that we’re not disturbed.”
Crebbs’s scowl deepened. “Yes, my lady.” She stood by, glaring at Ahmad as he entered, and then she withdrew, shutting the door firmly behind her.
Ahmad came to a halt inside the door. The viscountess’s boudoir was abnormally dark for this time of day. On his previous visits, the drapes had been opened. But not today. They were shut tight, blocking out the midmorning sunshine. What light existed was provided by a branch of candles on the mantel and a fire crackling in the grate below.
Across the room, the counterpane on her ladyship’s four-poster bed had been pulled back invitingly. And on a table nearby, a cut-crystal decanter and two glasses stood at the ready.
A flicker of uneasiness went through him. It was followed by a feeling of grim resignation. Calling on Lady Heatherton was never a pleasant proposition. But today it appeared it was going to be even less so. “Your evening dress, my lady.”
“Bring it to me.” The viscountess emerged from her dressing room, clad in an embroidered silk wrap and—he suspected—little else. Her feet were bare, her blond hair hanging loose about her shoulders. She padded to the table by the bed and unstopped the crystal decanter.
Ahmad put the dress box down on the silk-covered settee. “Would you like me to take it out?”
“The dress?” She laughed softly to herself. “Yes. Why not?”
Removing the lid of the box, he liberated the gown from its tissue paper wrappings and held it up for her perusal. He was quite proud of how it had come out. It was simple and elegant. A masterwork of seams and stitchery, made to showcase her figure rather than to camouflage it in a sea of fabric and furbelows.
She cast it an absent glance. And then she looked again. An expression of appreciation briefly warmed her coldly beautiful face. “Splendid,” she said. “I expected nothing less.”
“I’m glad you approve.” He draped the gown carefully over the tufted back of the settee. “Will you be trying it on today?”
“Not at the moment. I have other plans for us.” She poured out two drinks. “Come. I insist you join me for a glass of brandy.”
Ahmad stilled. Regarding her from across the candlelit room, he felt very much like a lone traveler who had reached a pivotal crossroads. An intersection he’d suspected was coming from the first time they’d met.
All that remained was to choose his path.
It would have been easy to accept her invitation. To drink with her, and thereby avoid souring their business relationship.
But he was no fool.
A drink wouldn’t be the end of this. It would only be the beginning.
“I beg you would excuse me, ma’am,” he said.
“I will not excuse you. My husband has gone to Berkshire for the remainder of the week, and I am completely at my leisure. You have no cause to refuse me.”
Ahmad didn’t move.
Her smile hardened. “You cannot claim you don’t drink, for I have it on good authority that you do.”
His brows lifted infinitesimally.
“Crebbs has been making inquiries. She’s rather protective of me.” Lady Heatherton crossed the room to join him, both glasses in her hands. She held one out to him. “I’m told you don’t adhere to any of that religious nonsense that so many of your people insist upon. Indeed, Crebbs informs me that you once worked in the most scandalous place imaginable. It seems you have no scruples at all, outside of those attached to ladies’ fashion.”
He silently took the glass from her.
She brought her own glass to her lips and drank deeply. “I trust you haven’t forgotten everything about your culture. Lady Godwin claims that Indian men are well versed in the art of love. You have sacred texts, don’t you? Books with lewd figures drawn in them. It’s all very titillating. And now that I know you’ve worked in a—”
He set down his drink, untouched, on a nearby table, next to an arrangement of flowers. The glass made an audible clink against the inlaid malachite.
Lady Heatherton broke off. “You’re being very uncivil.”
“If I am, I must beg your pardon.”