This had become the routine of their evenings since her sisters had gone. The three of them would eat, would go into the sitting room. Her father would read to them from one of his current history interests, her mother would read any interesting letters and Evie would stitch on her latest project. Tonight it wasn’t enough. How could she go from the heat, the dust, the masculinity of the excavation site to her mother’s sitting room? To letters about someone else’s life? How could she, when her head was full of Andrew and a Russian Prince with a hot touch? Her life had suddenly become interesting on its own without any help from her sisters.
She made her excuses at the stairs. ‘I think I will go up instead. I am tired,’ she lied with a wan smile. ‘I might write a note to May before I go to bed.’ That part was true. May and Beatrice would know what to make of her mind’s tendency to compare the two men.
But it was difficult to concentrate on writing the letter. Her mind kept drifting back to the day and all she’d seen—a thousand-year-old comb and a white pavilion where even now, as the summer moon rose, a dark-haired man might be preparing for bed. It did not occur to her until she climbed into her own bed that she hadn’t once wondered about Andrew in his. Those feelings would come, she told herself. Of course they would come. How could they not? She’d been infatuated with Andrew for ages. It was entirely different with the Prince. Dimitri was exciting and new, she’d not had time to think about him, to adjust to him, to get used to him. She didn’t know what to expect, whereas her infatuation with Andrew was a well-travelled path.
There was likely no harm in finding Dimitri exciting and new. She might as well enjoy the novelty of such a fantasy while it lasted. He would leave and, besides, he was a prince and she was Evie. There was certainly no future there no matter how rousing his touch or how hot his eyes. But for a little while, Madame Fortune was finally smiling on her.
* * *
Fortune was finally favouring him. Andrew poured himself a brandy in the dark quiet of his study. He was treating himself to a glass of the good stuff tonight. He’d known from the start, uniting himself with Dimitri Petrovich would be a good idea and now he could turn that association into a cash crop of artefacts. The comb Evie had told him about was a good start, a sign of more to come.
He took up his seat in front of the cold hearth, content to sit in the dark and think. He’d been staggered by the amount of money a museum had paid the Prince for that mosaic in Herculaneum and again when the Prince had sold some of the artefacts from the excavation outside Athens.
The money was pocket change to a man of the Prince’s wealth, but Andrew had a broader vision in mind. If a museum would pay those sums, how much more would private buyers pay for the privilege to possess a piece of authentic history? That was the real market, in Andrew’s mind. The Prince was rankly opposed to that option. Private collections kept artefacts hidden from the public. In the Prince’s mind, museums were the public’s gateway to understanding and accessing their past. Andrew didn’t care. Everything had a price, even the past, and he would sell to the highest bidder.
History could be very lucrative, as long as the Prince dug up something of merit. That was the risk. But it was a risk that cost him nothing but time. The site might not prove to be fertile. He had great faith in the Prince. The Prince understood what to look for and the Prince knew why certain items had value, why they appealed to people. Once the Prince dug up something of merit, the next step would be to get the right clientele out to the site. That’s where Evie’s drawings came in to play. He could use them as advertising to the right clientele, powerful, rich men. After that, he had another plan for those drawings that would further line his pockets. All he had to do was flirt a little with Evie, keep her dangling, keep her willing to please, which shouldn’t be hard to do if the Prince was right about her affections—and he had to make sure the Prince didn’t find out about his plans until it was too late. Once the Prince returned to Kuban, there would be nothing he could do about it. Andrew just had to wait him out until October. Andrew smiled in the dark. This was turning out well, better than expected.
* * *
Things were going better than expected, but that didn’t mean they were easy. Dimitri stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders to get the kinks out of his neck. He’d spent most of the day on his hands and knees painstakingly brushing off what he hoped were tiles in General Lucius Artorious’s dining room. It was looking promising. Now that they’d made it to the centre of the room, an elegant mosaic was starting to emerge in the shape of a rose embedded in the floor and the team had found pieces of pottery that had been taken over to Evie with hastily scribbled notes for cataloguing.
Ah. Evie. She’d been a godsend. He let his gaze linger on her at a distance, her head bent over her work, her hand moving tirelessly, her concentration unbreakable. Did she know he spent far too much of his days watching her? Far too much of his time wondering about her—about her life in West Sussex? Aside from his growing intrigue with her, bringing her on to draw had been a good business decision. Her work was excellent, her attention to detail as focused as her drawings had led him to believe. And there were actually items for her to draw. Progress was being made that bore out his research. Andrew had not been wrong when he’d suggested a Roman general’s villa was here in the rolling hills of West Sussex and that information was paying off in spades.
His gaze found Evie at her table and he smiled. Evie’s pile of drawings grew by the day, drawings that would serve as illustrations in the book he would put together on the excavation, as well as drawings he would archive for the museum in Kuban. She made not just one copy, but three of the same item, each one a brilliant replica, each one a product of her patience. She had an aptitude for the art and for the organisation of it. Stefon, impressed, had told him how Evie had overhauled their usual organisation system and made it more efficient.
She made his own days more efficient too in ways she probably didn’t realise. Did she know how much he looked forward to their brief conferences that started and ended each day? He liked the routine of that—of looking forward to talking with her at the beginning of the day when everything was fresh and new. They would talk about the prospects for the day, what he hoped to find, hoped to do. To speak his hopes out loud gave his day structure. They would end the day much the same way: a brief discussion of whether or not those hopes had materialised. It was a good way to put the day to bed.
Bed wasn’t exactly the best way to conceptualise that thought. It brought on the idea of other things, other people that needed putting to bed. One person in particular. Evie was not immune to him. He’d noticed the way her eyes would follow him when she thought he wouldn’t see, the telltale leap of her pulse at the base of her neck when he was near. He’d been looking, of course, for the proof of attraction. He was a hot-blooded male after all.
But he also wasn’t entirely self-centred. He noticed how alive she became, how each day she relaxed a little further in his presence, how her eyes sparkled, how her words rushed out as she argued her point, how she teased him about his hurried handwriting on the little notes he sent over every day attached to potential artefacts. When she was with him, it wasn’t that she was a different person, but she became a real person. He wondered how long Evie Milham had projected only a shell of herself to the outside world and how it was that no one seemed to have noticed when he, a stranger, had noticed from the start.
The idea that her real self only shone in his presence carried its own intoxication. She was like a rare jewel, unveiled only on special occasion, shown and known only to very few. He liked being in that exclusive company even though he couldn’t pursue certain avenues. You can be her friend. You don’t have to seduce her. It was a convenient argument he’d been making with himself all week, an argument he’d been alternately winning and losing. Friends would be easy, convenient, but it wouldn’t change the chemistry brewing between them. They we
re both aware of it. Evie, with her leaping pulse and fade-away gazes that couldn’t quite meet his eyes, and he with his eyes drifting towards her work station more often than they should. It confirmed for him that it wasn’t Dimitri the Prince that made her nervous, she’d got over that once she’d had work to do. It was Dimitri the man that prompted her blushes and slide-away looks, proof that he was occupying too much of her time too.
Dimitri handed his brush to an assistant, issuing instructions to finish the corner. It was getting late. It was time to call it a day and take stock of what they’d found. He strode towards Evie’s table, eager for their conference, to see her exquisite drawings, to see her. In the distance, the dinner bell rang and workers put away their tools. Within minutes, the site was empty.
She glanced up as he approached, rising from her seat, already reaching for the day’s pictures, anticipating his questions. ‘There isn’t much to show you today,’ she said apologetically.
‘Of course not.’ He smiled easily. He hadn’t expected much. Today had been focused on the dining-room floor, hardly something that could be carted over to Evie’s station. ‘Tomorrow, when the floor is uncovered, I will need you to come out to draw it.’ He paused, noting how she kept herself busy, her eyes focused on the task of cleaning up her workspace. ‘May I ask you something, Evie?’
That got direct eye contact. He’d used her name for precisely that reason. Dimitri enjoyed the rise of colour that came to her cheeks. Whenever he looked over here during the day, she was a paragon of efficiency, always busy, her head bent just so as she drew. Then, he’d approach and she would not meet his eyes. He wanted her to, though, not just because he wanted to see her desire clear, but for her sake too. He wanted her to own her feelings, to declare them without hesitation. Desire was nothing to be ashamed of. It took courage to own one’s feelings and it took confidence to stand by those convictions. Evie had those things even if she didn’t know it. Yet. ‘I would like you to show me your cataloguing system. Stefon has been bragging about it.’
‘What? Now?’ She looked about, maybe taking in for the first time how empty the site had become, the long purple shadows on the site making it difficult to see much. They would need a place with light and she was probably hungry. He could satisfy on both accounts.
Be careful you don’t do this for selfish reasons, his conscience warned. It would be too easy to convince himself he did this for purely objective reasons—this would be a working dinner, nothing more. That wasn’t quite true. He did want to learn about her cataloguing system. But he also wasn’t ready to let her go for the day. Perhaps he was merely lonely. In that case, anyone’s company would do. He could ride into town and drink a pint at the tavern or drop in on Andrew. No, to be honest, it was Evie’s company he wanted and he was willing to use the cataloguing system as an excuse to help himself to her company. She wouldn’t come otherwise.
‘We could go over the system in my tent. I’ll send for dinner. This way we won’t be interrupted. During the day there are a hundred things demanding my attention all at once. I’d never be able to digest a cataloguing system with all the distractions.’ He had to stop talking. He was rationalising too much. She’d think he had other motives and maybe he did if he was honest with himself. He wanted to spend some time with her. He saw her hesitate. At least she hadn’t refused him out of hand. In this case, hesitation was good. She was considering it.
He offered her a persuasive smile. ‘You’re not worried for your reputation, are you?’ he teased. ‘We’re discussing how to catalogue artefacts with a veritable herd of assistants around, hardly the best circumstances for ravishing.’
She smiled, revealing a hidden dimple along with the inner daredevil; the woman who would risk dinner alone with a man in his exotic tent. ‘Well, when you put it like that, how can a girl refuse?’
Chapter Seven
She should have refused. One step into the pavilion and she knew this had been a mistake. Now, here she was about to eat dinner with a prince, in his pavilion, alone, no matter how he tried to argue to the contrary. His team was across the site, eating at long wooden trestle tables. They would come back and retire to their own tents within shouting distance of an alarm, but no one would actually be inside the Prince’s pavilion with them. Not that one person would be all that noticeable.
The pavilion was enormous, as luxurious, as decadent as any eastern sultan’s. Her original idea that the Prince was camping on site was definitely erroneous. No one ‘camped’ like this. There were no deprivations here. The long dining table, with elegantly curved legs complete with matching chairs for twelve, running through the centre of the pavilion, dispelled any notion of deprivation. Just in case it didn’t, the chandelier of Venetian glass hanging overhead did. Every inch of the pavilion was furnished expensively. One corner housed an active workspace with a polished walnut desk and a matching glass-fronted bookcase that rivalled any gentleman’s study in England. Those things might draw the eye, but it was the heavy damask curtain, partially drawn back with thick gold rope partitioning off the pavilion and the curved Venetian divan set in front of it, draped in silk throws and rich-hued pillows, that held Evie’s attention.
‘The fabrics are magnificent...’ Evie breathed, unaware she’d moved towards them until her fingers brushed the silken surfaces. Lovely. They felt like rose petals beneath her touch. She fingered the damask of the curtain, noting the quality of the weft. ‘Italian?’
‘Yes, I had the curtain done in Florence several years ago. The silks are from China.’ Her mind was interested in the answer, but her gaze was already drifting beyond the damask, catching a peek of a sleigh bed heaped with silk and pillows.
She could hardly drag her eyes away from that tantalising glimpse of bed. Worse, he caught her staring. ‘My private quarters,’ he answered her wandering gaze and Evie flushed.
The Prince came up behind her. She could feel the heat of his body at her back, making her entirely aware of him. His private quarters. Yet another reminder of how foolish she’d been to accept his invitation. What had she been thinking? They were entirely alone except for his silk pillows and decadently dressed divan.
‘Please, come.’ His hand skimmed her back, ushering her forward through the curtain, and she nearly jumped from the contact. Surely he didn’t mean for her to go into those private quarters? And do what? ‘There’s water for washing if you’d like to refresh before dinner.’
It took a moment for her to drag her mind back from a more prurient train of thought. Washing up. Of course. ‘Water would be lovely,’ she managed. The colder the better. The silk had really got to her. Dear Lord, her cheeks were going to start a fire if she blushed any more.
The water did help. She splashed some on her face, but its cooling effects were offset by the dominating presence of the bed, which was more magnificent up close and fully revealed. It begged the question: what sort of a man slept in such a bed? Her rather fertile imagination knew the answer: A tactile man, a sensual man who would want the slide of silk, the caress of fine cotton, against his bare skin. A man who would do more than sleep in that magnificent bed.
Evie reached for a cloth, the fine quality of the linen a matter of fact. Dimitri Petrovich was surrounded by the best of everything. She ran the damp cloth down her neck, heat flaring low and sudden in her belly with intimate insight. The Prince did not come to that bed clothed. Neither would he come to that bed alone.
She swallowed hard, her imagination running riot about what might happen in such a bed, with such a man. To be that woman! It made her previous fantasies of sipping lemonade and talking over the day with Andrew appear positively lukewarm, insipid even, when there was such passion to be had in the dark, to lay naked, entangled in silk and man—that was decadence at its finest. Such images begged the question: were they inspired by silk or by the man himself?
Evie laid aside the towel and smoothed
her skirts, checking her face for smudges in the small mirror. Ink had a rather regular talent for showing up in the most inopportune places like cheeks and chins. She pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it down, running her hands through its tangles. It had become messy over the course of the day. She twisted long auburn lengths into a simple bun at the back of her neck and re-pinned it. There. She looked as neat as she could after a day of sketching in the August heat. Did it really matter how she looked? She needed to keep a practical head on her shoulders even if her imagination wanted to run away with her. This was only dinner for the express purpose of discussing her catalogue system, not a grand ball, and the Prince had already made it abundantly clear the dinner was strictly business. She hoped thinking of him as the Prince would help take the edge off the butterflies. Thinking of him as Dimitri only encouraged them and a host of other hot emotions.
Evie stepped into the main room, butterflies fluttering just a bit anyway in her stomach. May would say, ‘Business or not, a girl didn’t have dinner with a prince any night of the week’, and Evie’s stomach agreed. The main room was empty, no sign of the Prince. But the flap at the entrance was drawn back and there were sounds of someone outside.
Evie moved towards the noise, but she’d barely stepped out of doors before she wished her curiosity hadn’t been so insistent—or not. Dimitri stood with his back to her—his bare back, that was. Washing. She was entirely unprepared for the sight of a half-naked prince, especially this one, although perhaps she shouldn’t have been. Common sense should have been her first warning. She should have guessed he’d want to get clean as well. The sounds should have been her second. Water usually meant washing.
Evie knew what she ought to do. She ought to step back before he noticed her. But her feet, her eyes, the rest of her, had other ideas. They were determined to stay. Even performing this simple act, he was beautiful to watch. Water streamed down the lengths of dark hair; back muscles flexed, rivulets slipping over muscled planes as he raised his arms and ran a cloth over his body, wiping away the dirt of the day. Oh, those arms! How she wanted to be that cloth, how she wanted to run her hands over that body, feel the ripple of muscle beneath her fingers, trace the breadth of those shoulders.
AWAKENING THE SHY MISS Page 6