All of last week, as she’d heard various society ladies remark on having placed orders with “that handsome Indian tailor in Conduit Street,” Evelyn had been faced with a warring sense of triumph and misery. She’d pictured each of those ladies—many of them more beautiful than she was herself—standing just as she was now on the fitting room platform. She’d imagined Ahmad measuring them. Touching them and talking with them.
And worse.
Being inspired by them.
She’d feared it wouldn’t take much for one of them to supplant her in his affections. She wasn’t even certain of her own place there, not when he’d told her in no uncertain terms that this thing between them—this romance—couldn’t work.
“My ball gown looks lovely,” she said. The pale amber silk spilled over the edge of the fitting room table, revealing an overskirt of pale amber crepe and a bertha of lace and tulle. It would have fresh flower trimmings, too, on the night of the ball at Cremorne Gardens. Roses and frosted leaves to adorn the skirts and the bodice.
“You’ll look lovely in it,” he said. It was a compliment, to be sure, but one delivered in a state of distraction. He was entirely focused on finishing her dress.
Which was as it should be.
She nevertheless felt a flicker of frustration. “I didn’t know what sort of dress was appropriate for an outdoor ball. I’ve never been anywhere like Cremorne Gardens.”
He continued pinning. Either he hadn’t heard her, or he was too consumed by what he was doing to render a reply.
She stood quiet for several minutes as he worked, letting the heavy silence unspool between them. Her frustration gradually transformed into a muted anguish, heavy as a boulder in her chest. Didn’t he know this was their final moment together?
She made another effort at conversation. “Lady Anne tells me you’re making wonderful progress on her ball gown.”
“I am. I thank you for sending her to me.”
“She and Miss Hobhouse were glad to come.” Indeed, Evelyn’s friends had been heaping praise on Ahmad for days. They thought him wondrously talented—and outrageously good-looking. “They’re, ah, great admirers of your work.”
Ahmad bent to adjust the seams of her bodice. “There have been other ladies, too.”
“I’m aware.”
“I thank you for that, as well.”
“You don’t need to thank me. All I’ve done is wear your clothes. I daresay they’ve helped me as much as I’ve helped you.” She was possessed by the urge to rattle a response from him. A childish impulse—and a desperate one, too. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. “It’s what we intended when we formed our partnership, isn’t it? The both of us getting what we want.” Her airy tone was belied by the trembling in her stomach. “And now we have.”
His hands stilled at her waist. “You’ve acquired a suitor?”
“Several,” Evelyn said.
It wasn’t a lie. Not if one counted the aged Lords Trent and Gresham, and the dreary Mr. Fillgrave. The latter had even called once in Russell Square. She’d spent a painful ten minutes with him in the drawing room, listening to him drone on about the bloodlines of his Spanish mares. An interesting enough subject to her mind, but Mr. Fillgrave never gave a woman room to speak. He’d talked at Evelyn rather than to her.
As for younger gentlemen, they seemed content to admire her from afar. Even Stephen Connaught. He’d been appearing in Rotten Row with regularity, always stopping to bid her good day.
“I’m pleased for you,” Ahmad said.
But he was no longer pinning her gown.
He was looking at her and frowning, his shoulders visibly taut beneath the lines of his black cloth waistcoat.
“And I you. I hope your new customers . . . that all of them . . .” Evelyn trailed off. She didn’t know what she hoped anymore. This was all so confusing.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Her vision blurred. “Only . . . I wonder what I am to you in all of this.”
His brow creased. “Evie . . .”
“Just another customer?”
“I’ve told you what you are to me.” His voice went gruff. “You’re my muse.”
“Yes. Well. That’s splendid.” She removed her spectacles. “But I suppose I want to be more than that.”
“You are.”
“Then tell me so,” she whispered.
His jaw tightened. Taking her spectacles from her fingers, he withdrew a clean handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and cleaned the tear-fogged lenses. “There’s no point.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing can come of it.”
She refused to accept it. “Just because you say that doesn’t make it true. I believe—”
“What you believe is irrelevant.” He settled her spectacles gently back onto her face. His fingers traced the thin metal earpieces over the curve of her ears. “I know how it is from actual experience.”
And there was the rub. She hadn’t any experiences to weigh against his. Only her heart and her determination. Proceeding from a position of strength, like her mother had taught her. It had to be enough.
But it wasn’t.
Evelyn saw it plainly on his face. Despite how tenderly he touched her. Despite how his voice deepened and his body loomed so protectively over hers. Despite all of that, he’d set his mind against their being together.
Her throat squeezed with unexpected emotion. “I realize I don’t know anything. Living in Combe Regis, the rest of the world feels very far away. I spent every day there worrying over my own family’s troubles. There was precious little opportunity to think of anyone else’s. No doubt it makes me seem small-minded and countrified, but I’m trying to do better. To listen and to learn. If you would but give me a chance—”
“You’re not small-minded. You’re innocent. You can’t imagine what my life is like from day to day. The suspicious looks and the muttered remarks and innuendo. They come with such regularity I scarcely notice them anymore. But you would. You’d be hurt by them.”
She felt a swell of frustration. He was trying to protect her. It was at once endearing and infuriating. “Ahmad—”
“You can’t come here again without a chaperone,” he said. “We can’t be alone together like this anymore. It’s too dangerous.” He turned to walk away from her.
Evelyn placed a staying hand on his forearm. His bare skin was impossibly warm beneath her fingers. It sent a quiver of awareness through her.