Page 6 of The Siren of Sussex

“I believe so. With any luck, he’ll settle her bill before he spirits her away.”

“Don’t say she hasn’t paid you yet?”

“Not for this season’s order.” In truth, Miss Walters had only just settled her bill for last year’s habits. Like most fashionable ladies, she saw no issue with letting her accounts go unpaid for months at a time.

“How much does she owe?” Mira asked.

“A substantial sum.”

“How substantial?”

“One hundred pounds.” Ahmad felt a bit queasy to admit it. It was no small amount, especially to a man in his position. When Miss Walters hadn’t paid, he’d been obliged to dip into his savings to cover expenses. The very money slated to open his dress shop.

“One hundred pounds?” Mira’s face clouded with outrage. She received only thirty pounds a year in her position as a lady’s companion, and that was considered a generous wage. “I knew you shouldn’t have accepted an order from her. She has a reputation for leaving creditors in her wake. I read only yesterday that—”

“Does Mrs. Finchley know about your penchant for reading the scandal sheets?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

He squeezed her shoulder as he walked past her chair on the way to the cabinet where he kept his liquor. “Have you eaten?”

She nodded. “Have you?”

“Not yet.” He withdrew a bottle of brandy and a single glass. “A drink,” he said. “And then I’ll see you into a hackney. I have an early day tomorrow.”

“Lady Heatherton again?”

He shook his head. “A new client, potentially.” Sitting down at the table, he told Mira about the peculiar young woman who had come into Doyle and Heppenstall’s today.

“Another soiled dove?” Mira asked when he’d finished.

“I don’t know,” he said, frowning. “She spoke and acted like a lady, but . . .”

“But?”

“She didn’t have a maid with her. And she didn’t have a carriage waiting. I suspect she must have walked to the shop from the omnibus stop.”

“Was she very beautiful?”

He stared into his glass of brandy. “Possibly.”

It had been difficult to tell. What charms Miss Maltravers possessed—if any—had been well hidden.

Still, he’d caught glimpses of potential.

Her eyes, behind the lenses of her spectacles, had been a velvet-soft hazel, wide and doe-like, framed by impossibly long black lashes. And the hair curling from beneath her dowdy flat-brimmed hat had appeared a lustrous brown, threaded with strands of red and gold that glittered in the gaslight. Auburn hair. A great, thick mass of it, twisted into a singularly unflattering knot at her nape.

As for her figure, it had seemed well proportioned beneath the shroud of her loose-fitting caraco and skirt. She stood at least five and a half feet tall, a respectable height for a lady, with hints of a generous bosom.

All the rest, at this stage, was so much guesswork. He wouldn’t know for certain until he’d seen her with her clothes off.

The prospect sent a rare flush of heat creeping up his neck.

Mira’s eyes twinkled. “You couldn’t tell? You must have thought her pretty enough to have agreed to make a habit for her.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything. I’m merely curious.”

“Why?”