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Introduction
Extract
August 10th, 1821
Evie Milham desperately wanted to get into his trousers. Judging from the extraordinary amount of females crammed into Little Westbury’s assembly-room-cum-lecture hall this warm August night, she wasn’t the only one. Although, Evie doubted the rest of the female population wanted into them for the same reason.
Regardless of female motive, there was no disputing this was the most well-attended archaeological lecture in the history of West Sussex, perhaps in the history of England. Not even the Elgin Marbles had engendered such an enthusiastic response in retrieving the past. Then again, the Elgin Marbles didn’t look like him, Dimitri Petrovich, Prince of Kuban. Evie was certain he could talk about pickled herring and still draw a crowd. He was tall, with sleek dark hair that flowed over his shoulders, his face chiselled with strong lines that hinted at exotic antecedents. Women would travel miles to stare at those cheekbones with their high slant. And his clothes, oh, those clothes! He wore them like a god’s own mantle. Evie’s fingers started to twitch in anticipation. How she wanted to get her hands on those trousers! If she could just study them up close for a few moments! Whoever his tailor was, the man was a genius.
Evie craned her neck, trying for a better glimpse. If she’d known he’d be so exquisitely dressed, she would have sat closer to the front. She’d not chosen this particular seat near the back for him, but for another him. Andrew Adair sat just two convenient rows ahead of her, his golden head a beacon for her eyes except, apparently, when those eyes were looking at Prince Dimitri Petrovich, which was more frequently than she had anticipated. It was hard not to. When one wasn’t looking at his trousers, one could easily stare at his hands. He didn’t gesture like an Englishman. There was a loose fluidity to his gestures that made him appear all the more foreign.
She might as well look, Evie reasoned. It wasn’t as if Andrew minded or was even aware of her visual perfidy, more was the pity. She often thought she could dance naked on a stage and Andrew wouldn’t notice. Not that she would. Evie Milham might entertain such wild notions, but she never acted on them.
Tonight was supposed to change that. Tonight was her chance to claim Andrew’s notice after six years of anonymity. Admittedly, for two of those years, she hadn’t been ‘out’, hardly eligible for his attentions even
