‘I care if she’s being taken advantage of.’ Andrew stepped forward. ‘I am her neighbour, her long-time acquaintance, if not friend. I will not stand by and let her be seduced.’
Dimitri chuckled. ‘You have a very active imagination if you can get that much out of a single comment.’ He had no intention of telling Andrew why they ran out of time; that he’d been too busy spinning tales of Kuban so he could watch her face become dreamy in the candlelight, so he could watch her mind come to life behind those blue eyes.
He added as censure, ‘I don’t think the nature of your speculations do you or her any credit, by the way.’ Never mind that Andrew’s conjectures might be warranted in this case. He had kept Evie out too late, had put her to bed in his bed with all its silk and pillows, and that was after he had kissed her. Never mind she’d slept alone and fully clothed in his bed. Never mind that the kiss had kept him up half the night and had left him with no clearer answers this morning about the intensity of his response to Evie’s untutored kiss.
Andrew put a hand on his forearm, his grip strong, his voice serious and low. ‘Don’t mess around with Evie. A man like you could never make her happy. You should know that better than anyone. She thinks you’re a prince. How do you think she’d feel if she knew you were nothing more than a high-class sod sold to the highest bidder—your words, not mine.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Dimitri threw off Andrew’s hand. He’d been among the royal court long enough to recognise veiled blackmail when he heard it. He never should have told Andrew that juicy little secret. Back then, the revelation had been too new, too fresh, and their friendship had been new and fresh too when they couldn’t see the flaws of the other, only the commonalities.
‘Only if the truth is threatening,’ Andrew responded, his face hard. He took a step back and his expression softened. It was like watching a master thespian at work. More often these days, he wondered how much of Andrew was an act and, if it was, what lurked beneath the surface of that carefully crafted veneer? What did Andrew need to hide? The man had the perfect life in his grasp, a life Dimitri would trade his own for.
Andrew held out his hands in apologetic surrender. ‘I am sorry, old chap. I didn’t mean to pick a quarrel. I just don’t want to see Evie hurt.’ He shook his head, but his sincerity did not ring true, not when he’d been thoroughly denouncing any interest in Evie just a few days ago. ‘England is not Kuban, it’s not even the Continent, where a woman of a certain age might sit alone with a man. Our rules are stricter, especially when it comes to young, virginal women. I don’t want to see her or you forced to the altar for a marriage neither wants.’
Andrew pushed a hand through his blond hair, his brow knitted in a fairly good facsimile of consternation. ‘Good Lord, just think of what would happen? You would lose everything, your title, your home, your wealth, and that’s not even including what would happen to your country, your family, your beloved sister.’ Andrew shook his head to indicate the consequences were beyond his comprehension. He stepped forward once more, placing a congenial hand on his arm this time. ‘Can you just imagine what a disaster that would be for you?’
Dimitri could imagine it and while it would be a disaster, that wasn’t the first word that came to mind. ‘Disaster’ wasn’t precisely what he’d been thinking when Evie had walked out that morning, all fresh and sharp in that white muslin with the pink flowers, her hair down. He’d been speared by an errant thought: what if it could be like this every morning? Waking up with a lovely woman—no, not any lovely woman, that lovely woman. Waking up with Evie, sharing a simple breakfast before heading out to excavate, to discuss the site with her and what they had found or might find? And then Evie had smiled at him and he hadn’t thought at all. She’d stolen his breath with her wide smile, her natural beauty as lovely in the morning as it had been in the candlelight.
She’d looked at him with genuine delight this morning and he’d been reminded of how she’d watched him wash. Had that been the look on her face then too? She’d had plenty of time to retreat, but she hadn’t. Evie might be quiet, but she was curious too and bold as she’d demonstrated last night. He had no doubt now there was passion within her, waiting to be unleashed. He’d tasted a bit of that last night. Envy stabbed, sudden and unlooked for. He didn’t want Andrew to be the one to pick up where he’d left off in making that discovery. He wanted to be the one to take her on that journey.
It had been the devil’s own temptation to kiss her on the mouth, to see where a kiss and midnight vodka could lead. She’d been intoxicating in the candlelight, her soft words igniting him, prompting him to take advantage. One kiss had led to where he’d known it would and then to more exquisite liberties he’d fought hard not to take. He could give her nothing beyond those moments. Perhaps it had been that knowledge which had given him the will power last night to end it. Andrew was right about one thing: he knew better than to lead her on. And himself. Evie wasn’t the only one he’d be fooling.
Chapter Eleven
She was leading them on. Evie looked at her letter to Bea and May with disgust. It read like a romance. She knew better. Would they? Evie re-read the letter again. She’d given herself a three-day cooling period before she’d put her ideas to paper to avoid any misleading embellishment and yet it still seemed to be there behind her words.
She sighed and set the letter aside. Even the bare facts painted a certain picture replete with dinner on silken pillows, a night spent in a silk-clad bed and a hand-cooked breakfast over an open fire. She hadn’t even got to the part about the corundum. She glanced at the chunk sitting on her vanity. Her mind could still feel the warm intimacy of his hand when it had closed around hers. The memory was too personal. Maybe she’d leave that part out as she had the kisses.
Evie leaned out the open window of her room, letting the cool late evening air bathe her face. As vibrant as those images in her letter were, she knew with certainty the conclusion those images drew was preposterous. Dimitri was not courting her and he definitely wasn’t seducing her. Was he? Surely not. He’d been the one to pull away from the kisses and he hadn’t started them. But he’d also been the one to press the corundum into her hand and look at her so sincerely her heart had nearly stopped.
Regardless of his intentions, she could no longer deny that for whatever reason there was a slide towards intimacy between them, a closeness that had sprung up perhaps because of the work at the site, a closeness that might have sprung up anyway even if they hadn’t shared an evening. Common interest bound people together. Look what it had done for her and Andrew. For the first time ever, she had his attention.
She should include that in her letter as well. It was a startling omission given that Andrew had driven her home every evening that week since he’d come upon her and Dimitri at breakfast. What did it mean that she’d forgotten to include such a detail? What did it mean that she’d found herself kissing Dimitri of her own volition, initiating it even, when she’d had her heart set on Andrew for years? It was a rather significant development in the grand scheme of her hopes. Just a few weeks ago, she’d been angling for just such an occurrence. She had his attention, but what was she doing with it?
Evie rested her head on her hands and stared up at the stars. She could imagine Bea and May reading about that development and nodding sagely to one another, concluding that their plan must have worked. Andrew had merely needed a chance to see Evie in her element and the presence of another male to move him to action. Evie smiled to herself as she pictured her two friends tucked away together in a cosy parlour stitching baby items and talking over her news.
From her friends’ point of view, it would be all that simple. But Evie knew it wasn’t. She did not intend, nor had she ever intended, to use Dimitri as a foil for Andrew. Neither had she intended to be attracted to Dimitri Petrovich, but she was. The attraction of him was too potent to be denied. She’d be lying to
herself if she said she felt nothing for him. She’d be lying too if she limited that attraction to just his extraordinary looks. This attraction was rather multifaceted when she dissected it. She liked talking to him, liked his enthusiasm for his work, for history. She liked his enthusiasm for her. He praised her work, thanked her for her effort, enquired about her comfort. In short, he noticed her in ways people had not noticed her for a long time. As a consequence, it was hard to ignore him, hard to thrust him back up on the pedestal he belonged on. He kept climbing down and putting himself in her way.
But the attraction was uncomfortable for them. In the three days since he’d given her the corundum, they’d been careful with each other, limiting their interactions to their morning and evening discussions about the site. Those had been brief and she sensed Dimitri was deliberately keeping himself in check, holding himself back from her. She had only two answers for such a behaviour. Either he was embarrassed that he had kissed her and feared inviting another incident, or he’d liked kissing her and was too much of a gentleman to engage in such an activity again. She didn’t need to be a genius to know there was nothing he could offer her. No matter how he tried to forget it, he was a prince—that alone made him unattainable. He’d leave and go back to his kingdom. Evie laughed a little at that, playing with words. Prince Impossible—that was Dimitri Petrovich.
Maybe that was another layer of her attraction. He was safe. She could expect nothing from him and she’d known it from the start. He would leave, he would require nothing from her; not her heart, not her soul, not even her affections. He couldn’t hurt her. She could only hurt herself where Dimitri was concerned and that was something she could control.
Evie yawned. The long days at the excavation site made sleep easy in the evenings. She would add the part about Andrew tomorrow before she sent the letter. Tonight, there was one more task she wanted to do before she went to bed.
Evie pulled out the drawing tablet where she sketched her patterns and her box of embroidery silks. She wasn’t quite done with the pattern yet and she still had to map it on thin tracing paper, but it was coming along. She wanted to make Dimitri a piece of needlework depicting Kuban in exchange for the corundum. It would be something he could hang in his pavilion wherever he went and, selfishly, maybe it would be like sending a piece of herself along on his journeys. He would look at it and remember Evie Milham of Little Westbury, who had come to life for a short while.
She’d based the drawing on his descriptions and tonight she wanted to check her colours. Evie laid out a vibrant cerulean blue, a rich dark brown, a deep forest-green and an emerald-green and then rummaged for a red. She discarded them one by one. This one was too orange. That one was too pink. The third one might be right. She studied it, unable to make a determination. Evie turned towards the mirror on her dressing table, holding the little skein next to her hair and then next to the chunk of rock. Ah, victory! The match was perfect. She’d found corundum. She smiled, feeling silly and pretty all at once, remembering the brush of Dimitri’s hand at her ear as he’d held up the rock, the close of his hand around hers. But the remembrance only served to bring her thoughts full circle.
If he’s not seducing you or courting you, what is he doing? came the naughty little thought. Evie piled the threads back into her box, trying to ignore the question, but it wouldn’t go away and she couldn’t answer it. She didn’t know what Dimitri was doing. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps she was reading too much into it because she was so intent on winning Andrew’s attentions. Not everyone thought about romance. Not everything between a man and a woman had to have romantic overtones.
Maybe the better question to ask was, what was she doing? Was she developing another impossible infatuation? First, Andrew, and now that he wasn’t so unattainable, she’d turned her attentions to a prince. A prince of all people! If anyone was unattainable, it was he. After all, he would be leaving at some point in the near future. She couldn’t hold him even if she somehow managed to catch him.
He wouldn’t be here for ever. When the excavation was done, he’d move on and she’d still be here. Both thoughts made her sad. She had to remember Andrew would be staying behind too. He’d made it no secret in London this past spring that he was home to stay and home to marry. It was time he picked up the reins of his grandfather’s estate. A few months ago, the news had alternately thrilled and panicked her to no end. Tonight, it was starting to feel like a consolation prize: she and Andrew left behind together while Dimitri Petrovich pitched his pavilion in a new, exotic location.
Evie climbed into bed and blew out the light with a determined breath. She needed to focus on the successes of the week. Andrew was driving her home and tomorrow he’d even offered to pick her up in the morning. They had twenty minutes each way to converse. In those twenty minutes, she had all of his attention. During those drives, he told her his plans for his grandfather’s estate: plans for crops, plans for the gardens, for redoing the inside of the house, which hadn’t been decorated for sixty years since his grandmother had come there as a bride. He’d smiled at her when he’d said that, his blue eyes twinkling with intimate implications. His bride would have the pleasure of doing the house to her tastes.
Was she supposed to have read something more personal into that message? Had he meant to imply she might consider herself in the role of being that bride? Why didn’t that bring a certain thrill to her stomach? Why hadn’t that made it into her letter? Surely, such a disclosure meant she was attaining not only his attentions, but his affections too. Why wasn’t the realisation of that goal more exciting to her when it was what she’d wanted so much? It was one more thing she’d have to ask Bea and May before she closed her letter.
A gust of wind blew open the window and she got out of bed to latch it, leaning out once more to smell the air. They’d have some wet weather by tomorrow afternoon for certain. The scent of burgeoning rain was on the air and perhaps more. There was a summer storm coming.
* * *
Thunder rumbled, closer now than it had been half an hour ago. Dimitri pushed his hand through his hair and cast a frustrated glance overhead to the sky. They wouldn’t get much work done this afternoon with the storm moving in. Ominous grey clouds had loomed all day in portent. Rain, heavy rain, was imminent but he was prepared. He’d sent the English work crews home after lunch. There were only his men left now and they were busily covering up key parts of the site with tarps, something that was becoming a struggle as the wind came up. Dimitri was eager to see the tarps secured. There was nothing more damaging to excavations than mud, the usual result of dust, dirt and water. There’d been a flash flood in Herculaneum that had nearly destroyed weeks of work.
A fat drop of water fell on his nose followed by another as the skies officially announced their opening. Dimitri strode across to help settle a tarp over the carefully dug-out mosaic floor of the dining room. They were close now to verifying the authenticity of the villa as Lucius Artorius’s. He secured his end of the tarp with a firm rock and then added another. Not a moment too soon. Lightning flashed in the sky, followed by an immediate boom of thunder. There were shouts as the loud noise took his men by surprise, a horse whinnied in fright over the sound of men, its fear loud enough to rival nature’s brontide, loud enough to draw Dimitri’s attention.
He shaded his eyes from the rain drops and searched the site for the horse—it was probably one of the horses used to pull the wagons. He couldn’t see it at once, but he could hear it. Hooves pounded, generating thunder of their own. Dimitri turned in a circle, trying to sight the sound. He found it; the heavy draft horse had got loose from the rope corral and was plunging through the site, scared and heedless.
Dimitri scanned ahead, gauging the horse’s trajectory, and caught the movement of a muslin skirt, a glint of corundum hair—Evie! His heart was in his throat. Good Lord, what was she still doing here? Why hadn’t she gone home with the rest of the English? New
fear gripped him. The horse was headed for the cataloguing department, for her. It wasn’t concern for the precious, fragile artefacts that gripped him, but concern for Evie. She was in the horse’s path and oblivious.
‘Evie!’ he shouted futilely and began to run. He hoped to cut off the horse, hoped he could turn the crazed animal from his path towards the open space beyond the canvas. He shouted her name as he ran, waving his arms, but it was no use. All of her attention was fixed on securing the papers and boxes beneath the billowing canvas. If the horse reached the workspace, he’d tear right through it, not caring if Evie stood in his way. One strike from those hooves would finish a grown man. Even if she escaped the horse, there would be collateral danger in the form of falling boxes and overturned tables left in the horse’s wake. Dimitri ran faster, vaulting half-walls and altering his path, no longer concerned about swerving the horse. He had to get Evie out of there.
He closed in on the workspace, coming from the left as the horse came on the right. ‘Evie! Evie! Run!’ Surely she could hear the horse by now, even over the wind.
She looked up, saw him and then as if in slow motion, turned to look behind her, back at him and then down at something on the table. Her face was pale, her body paralysed with indecision. ‘Evie, run!’ he called again, but she reached for a stack of drawings instead, determined to save the work.
It was a race between him and the horse, Evie the prize. Running wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t make it in time by foot. He needed to fly. At the last moment, he launched himself the remaining distance, taking Evie to the ground, pushing her out of the way of the horse, covering her with his body as they landed in the newborn mud, filthy and safe. An upturned table just feet from them emphasised how close their call with true disaster had been as the horse ran past.
AWAKENING THE SHY MISS Page 9