Four carriages pulled up and disgorged their passengers, their voices floating to Evie’s work station as everyone exchanged greetings. Dimitri’s voice stood out above the rest, with its hard ‘r’s and low tones, contrasting with Andrew’s enthusiastic tenor. Dimitri seemed polished, relaxed, while Andrew appeared over-excited.
Belvoir and Cecilia were the last ones out of the carriages. Evie had hoped that perhaps they’d not come after all. She should have guessed Cecilia would want to make an entrance. Her father handed her down and Andrew introduced her to Dimitri. ‘Your Highness.’ Cecilia’s lilting voice carried on the breeze as she dipped a pretty curtsy, flashing a beatific smile. She looked stunning with her gold curls and pale skin, both of which were set off to advantage in a pink summer gown, her signature colour, with a pert straw hat with matching ribbon to keep off the sun, even though she carried a lacy parasol too. Cecilia Northam took no chances with the alabaster perfection of her skin. Evie looked down at her own ink-stained hands. Not like her. She had freckles in the summer and ink was her constant companion.
Dimitri bowed gallantly over Cecilia’s hand and raised her up. Cecilia took advantage, tucking her hand through his arm and not letting him go. It was clear she was ready for the tour to commence with her on the Prince’s arm and in the lead. Dimitri smiled at Cecilia and Evie wished he didn’t look so pleased about it even if it was ‘just business’.
She glanced at her desk. Maybe she should draw after all. She couldn’t spend the whole day fuming and wondering. If she wasn’t among them, it was her fault. Dimitri had invited her, saying she was a vital part of the work they’d done, but she had declined. She didn’t want to spend the day waiting in trepidation for Cecilia to make a cutting remark or, worst of all, to bring up her most embarrassing moment in front of Dimitri. Distance would be her strategy today. With luck, she’d escape Cecilia’s notice entirely.
* * *
She was absorbed in the drawing of a goblet when the group came past her station. The goblet took a certain level of skill because it had to be drawn from all angles, even the bottom of the base, in order to show off the insignia stamped into it that denoted it belonged to Lucius Artorious. It was one of the most important finds they had that linked the villa to his ownership.
‘This is where the magic happens.’ Dimitri walked the group up to her table with a sweep of his free hand, one of his big gestures. Evie would have liked to have stopped him. She wished he’d taken her at her word last night when she’d said she’d wanted no part of the ‘festivities’ today. But he hadn’t listened, so now she pasted a smile on her face and set down her pen, rising to greet the guests.
Cecilia was still on Dimitri’s arm, but his eyes lingered on Evie as he made the introductions. ‘Some of you may already know her, this is Miss Evaine Milham, our resident artist, who is in charge of drawing and cataloguing each of our finds no matter how small. Thanks to her, our work is recorded.’
‘Oh, Evie! It is you,’ Cecilia gushed with a bonhomie Evie had come not to trust. ‘I hardly recognised you.’ She laughed and fluttered a hand. ‘One never expects to see someone out of context. Normally, you’re wandering ballrooms, but here you are, working away.’
Evie would have given anything for Beatrice and May to suddenly emerge. Beatrice knew just how to handle Cecilia but Evie was on her own now. All handling would be left up to her. She decided not to dignify Cecilia’s doubly-pointed jab with a response. Instead, she directed attention towards the goblet. ‘Let me tell you about one of our most important finds,’ she began, catching a flicker of approval in Dimitri’s eye and a flash of apology too. She was glad when they left, but Andrew lingered behind, fingering the goblet.
‘I wish you wouldn’t touch that,’ Evie snapped. ‘It’s at least a thousand years old.’
Andrew withdrew his fingers. ‘You’re waspish today,’ he commented, studying her carefully. What was he looking for? The way he watched her with Dimitri these days was making her uncomfortable. ‘I don’t suppose your temper has anything to do with Dimitri fawning all over Cecilia?’
‘It looks more to me like it’s Cecilia fawning all over Dimitri. Besides, what do I care who he fawns over?’ Evie replied coolly.
‘They are handsome together, two very good-looking people always are,’ Andrew remarked. She tried not to let it sting. How could she compete with beautiful Cecilia Northam? She’d never been able to compete, but she hated being reminded of it. Cecilia was the beginning of all her woes.
‘I have work to do, if you would excuse me?’ Evie sat down and picked up her pen, her dismissal obvious.
Andrew didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he squatted down level with the table, level with her. His voice was soft. ‘Evie, look at me. He’s going to leave. I don’t want you to throw yourself away on a man who won’t appreciate you, not when there’s a man who does, perhaps even a man who is very nearby.’
Only then did he leave her. She waited for her heart to pound, her blood to race. Andrew had all but declared himself. Coupled with his talk of restoring his grandfather’s estate, and all the time he dedicated to driving her home, this was as close to direct declaration as it came. And she didn’t want it. Didn’t want him.
Evie stared into the distance, seeing nothing but her own thoughts. So the world didn’t end with a bang after all, but instead a quiet whisper of truth, arrived at after years of consideration. She would have thought such a momentous truth would be heralded with more fanfare. She didn’t want Andrew. She wanted Dimitri. But it wasn’t just that Dimitri was a trade-off, a better substitute for Andrew. She didn’t want Andrew regardless. Dimitri had merely helped her see it. And in helping her, she had come to want him with an intensity that rocked her to her core. She’d not realised how intense until she’d seen Cecilia standing with him, a reminder of how unattainable he truly was, how he wasn’t the sort of man meant for her even if he had all the time in the world. And it hurt. She didn’t want to give him up, not to time, not to the Cecilia Northams of the world. There were a lot of things perhaps she could change, but she couldn’t change that.
A shadow fell across her desk, large and male. She looked up to find Dimitri standing there looking penitent. He’d taken his coat off and it was slung over his arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
Evie rose and smoothed her hands on her apron, feeling self-conscious for the first time in a while in his presence. ‘For what? There’s nothing to be sorry for.’
‘I disagree. I wronged you today. I didn’t respect your request.’ He held out his hand. ‘Would you come walk with me?’
* * *
‘Tell me about Cecilia Northam. Tell me what she did to you,’ Dimitri asked quietly as they strolled in the little copse of trees to the west of the site. The animosity between the two women had been palpable today and Evie had handled the situation like a champion, but he still regretted putting her in that position and he was furious with Andrew, who ought to have known better.
‘There’s not much to tell...’ Evie began hesitantly. ‘She came out the same year we did, we being my friends, the ones you met that day in the street. She went on to be popular and we did not.’
‘And yet she’s not married,’ Dimitri commented. All the girls had been out three Seasons. Popular or not, Cecilia was no further along in her pursuit of a husband than Evie was arguably.
Evie gave a small laugh. ‘That’s thanks to my friend Claire. They were both angling after the same gentleman, only Claire loved him and Cecilia did not. Cecilia just wanted him as a trophy on her arm. Her father even offered to buy him a diplomatic post.’
‘Ah—’ Dimitri chuckled ‘—that explains why she was so taken with me.’ He tried for some self-deprecating humour. Cecilia was lovely, but to a man who had been schooled in the royal court of Kuban, she was untutored in the true art of subtlety. She’d been angling for him the moment she’d stepped ou
t of the carriage and he’d known it. He was not interested.
Evie didn’t find it funny. ‘Of course she found you worth her attentions. She can’t stand for anyone to have anything more beautiful than she. She once copied a dress of Claire’s and wore it the same night to make sure everyone knew she was prettier in it.’
Dimitri went carefully here. They were getting closer to the heart of the matter. ‘And you, Evie? What did she do to you?’
Evie turned to face him, her sweet face set with a hardness he was not used to seeing on her and certainly didn’t like. The urge to protect surged strong as the simple sentence came out. ‘She exposed me, showed everyone what I was and that I wasn’t good enough for London society.’
Dimitri nodded, saying nothing. Sometimes silence was the best encourager. He squeezed her hand. Silence and touch. Evie bit her lip. ‘I was eager to be friends with all the new girls I met in London. Cecilia and her mother came to tea one afternoon and I showed Cecilia my sketch book full of drawings for dresses. I had always shown Claire and Bea and May. We all grew up together. I thought nothing of it.’ She paused here, blushing. ‘My friends were always so complimentary about my drawings that I thought Cecilia would be too. I even offered to make her something, as a gesture of friendship. I was always making things for Claire and the girls. It was prideful of me. I had sought to impress her. Perhaps I got my just desserts.’ Evie looked down. ‘She took my sketch book. I didn’t notice it was gone until later. She showed it to the other girls out that Season and made fun of the drawings and then made fun of me, in public. At balls she’d ask me if I was wearing a dress I had made myself and it was never done in a nice way. She nicknamed me the “seamstress”. The best way to deter her attentions was to not call attention to myself. It was horrible.’
He could imagine. He didn’t need any more details. He could imagine too how Evie had made the choice to slide away, withdrawing month by month until she was only surrounded by what was comfortable to her. Dimitri saw the knee-jerk logic of that, and the pain. He hurt for her, for the Evie who was ridiculed for her talents and then shunned.
‘I am doubly sorry, then, that I allowed her to be here.’
‘It’s all right. She’s everywhere. I have to deal with her.’ Evie shrugged and offered him a half-smile. ‘It’s enough to know that Andrew was wrong.’
‘Wrong?’ Dimitri was wary.
‘He said you were interested in her.’
What was Andrew playing at now? Dimitri feared he knew. There was only one reason a man would say something like that. Andrew wanted to drive a wedge between him and Evie. This was the second time Andrew had tried to do so. This time he’d gone after Evie. But he knew better than to malign Andrew to her.
Dimitri turned to face her. ‘How could I be interested in her when all my interest is fixed on you? The question is, are you still interested in him?’
He held his breath. He hadn’t known how much her answer mattered to him. This had been on the periphery of his thoughts, a little haze of guilt. He’d been wrong to kiss her, wrong to introduce her to passion’s delights if she still cared for another. This was probably something that should have been resolved beforehand, but it had seemed not to matter to either of them in the heat of the moment. It had been, in fact, easily forgotten by them both.
Evie reached up a hand and stroked the long line of his jaw. ‘I want you.’
He smiled, releasing his breath, aware how much her words mattered. He turned his cheek and pressed a kiss into her palm. ‘Dear Lord, Evie, be careful what you say. You’d make a blancmange hard.’ To say nothing of a man already experiencing the stirrings of arousal. He should not let her want him. He had to try and warn her. ‘You know I can’t stay.’ And yet when he looked at Evie, he wished he could. Evie wanted him, Dimitri Petrovich the man, not the Prince.
He’d not ever been with a woman who had wanted that man, who looked at him and saw that man. It was wonderful and awful all at once. Women who wanted the Prince were easy to walk away from. They did not offer love in return, just their bodies. But Evie was on the brink of loving him.
‘I know.’ Their eyes locked and he read the unspoken message that passed between them. I want you for as long as I can have you. There was some hope here. Perhaps if they both understood the temporary nature of their association, they could find temporary happiness together. Maybe that would be enough.
‘What does wanting me mean, Evie?’ His voice was hoarse with hope and desire. She blushed. She understood what he meant. How far could the wanting go? Was it to be chaste if not pure? Holding hands, exchanging kisses, touches, or was it to be bold and illicit, involving his bed and naked bodies entwined in acts that could not be retracted? His body hoped for the latter while his code of honour knew he had to restrict it to the former. He would not ruin her for his pleasure or even for hers. She would come to hate him for it even if he would be a thousand miles away before she realised it.
She searched his face, perceiving the dilemma behind his words. ‘We’ll figure it out together,’ she whispered, rising up on her tiptoes to press her mouth against his, ‘one kiss at a time.’
Chapter Sixteen
One kiss led to dinner. At Evie’s. With her parents. A bucolic temptation if ever there was one. An English summer dinner surrounded by reminders of what was possible if he turned his back on Kuban, on his family and Anna-Maria. Andrew called such a choice a disaster. Dimitri called it inevitable. He had no choice except to go back but that didn’t stop him from dreaming and this—sitting across from Evie, her father presiding over the table at one end, smiling at her mother at the other end—was the dream.
This was life in ordinary time. No royal court to navigate, no bride of convenience waiting in his royal apartments, no fear. He was starting to realise that his life was full of fear. Fear for Anna-Maria, for his family if he failed to fulfil his Kubanian-ordained destiny.
He sipped cool white wine from his glass, Evie flashing him a covert smile over the candles as her father went on about his latest book. ‘It will be a legacy to Little Westbury. In this area, we can trace our origins back to the Domesday Book,’ Sir Hollis said proudly. Dimitri liked Sir Hollis Milham. He’d enjoyed their talks the very first day Sir Hollis had visited the site. This was a man whom he could come to respect the more he got to know him. Dimitri understood the pride Sir Hollis felt for his work. He understood the magnitude of such a gift to a community. To understand one’s heritage was an integral part to understanding one’s self. Evie’s mother had beamed at her husband, proud too of what he’d accomplished.
Evie’s mother was a fluttery woman, who tended towards nervousness over the littlest thing in her effort to please, but anyone could see her efforts were honest and well meant even if those efforts bordered on stifling. She’d asked him three times if he had enough vinaigrette for his summer greens. Evie might take after her in looks, but she took after her father in temperament. Sir Hollis Milham was level-headed and quiet, perhaps because her mother wasn’t. Between the two of them, they counterbalanced Isobel Milham perfectly. He learned that Evie had sisters, two of them. Already married. It explained, perhaps, why her parents were content to have her stay with them, unwilling to have their nest emptied entirely.
There could be more evenings like this if you stayed, whispered the very temptation he’d spent most of the evening trying to avoid. More evenings of cold meats, bread, a salad of sweet summer greens with a tangy raspberry vinaigrette—of which there was apparently an abundance—evenings of listening to Hollis’s insights, being fussed over by Isobel and Evie flirting with him across the table, her eyes promising him pleasure once they were alone. Did she know she did that? He shouldn’t even allow himself to think such traitorous thoughts, shouldn’t allow himself to conjure up such temptations.
To stay meant he had to admit certain truths to himself—one truth in particula
r: He was falling for Evie Milham. He had to be careful with his words. ‘Falling’ was as close as he’d let his vocabulary get. He didn’t dare describe what he was falling into. He didn’t dare use the word ‘love’. He knew what love was. Knew he should guard against it as much as possible. Loving his family came with duty, it came with fear. A man could only live with so much of that before it crushed him. He’d seen it happen to his father. Love, protection, fear, duty—they were all intertwined. Loving Evie would be more of it, a different version of it. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough. If love had broken his fortress of a father, surely his own odds weren’t any better. And yet, the urge to tempt fate was strong.
‘Sir—’ the housekeeper bustled in, addressing Sir Hollis ‘—Mr Adair is here. Shall I tell him to join you?’
Sir Hollis raised his eyebrows at the surprise. Dimitri wasn’t sure if Sir Hollis thought it a good surprise or a bad one. Dimitri shot Evie a look, but she was as perplexed as her father. ‘It’s quite the night for unexpected guests,’ Sir Hollis joked in friendly tones. ‘Send him out and bring the cheese. He can join us for dessert.’ Then in low tones, he said something to the housekeeper that sounded remarkably like, ‘No seed cakes, though, or the man will never leave.’ Ah, Dimitri thought. Not a good surprise. Sir Hollis Milham didn’t like Andrew Adair as much as everyone else in Little Westbury. Interesting.
The atmosphere around the table changed with Andrew’s arrival. The relaxation seeped away. But Andrew didn’t notice. He was too busy dominating the conversation, full of easy smiles. ‘We had a splendid day at the site today. The visit with Lord Belvoir and his friends was excellent. They were impressed with what we’ve done at the site.’
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