AWAKENING THE SHY MISS Read Online Free PDF Page A

would be a mother. Alone. Evie glanced at May. No, not alone. ‘You’re going with her?’
    ‘Yes.’ May’s eyes met hers in a silent plea for understanding. Evie nodded. Beatrice needed May more now than she did.
    ‘I’m glad you’ll be with her.’ It was the truth. Beatrice shouldn’t be alone. If her family refused to be there to help her through the birth, then her friends definitely should be. She wasn’t sure how May had arranged it, but it did bring her a sense of comfort to know May would be there.
    Beatrice reached for her other hand. ‘We are sorry to leave you, Evie. But I think May has set you on a path towards success.’ The words offered a new light to May’s bold gesture. It had been a parting gift. May had pushed her towards her future with the invitation to the Prince.
    The import of that didn’t escape her. They weren’t the Left Behind Girls Club any more. Claire had Jonathon. Beatrice would have May and the new baby. Everyone was moving forward. For the first time since their childhood days, Evie was on her own.

Chapter Four
    D imitri strolled promptly down Evie’s drive at half-past one the next day, admiring the haphazard compilation of bricks and time that was the Milhams’ house. Definitely Elizabethan, he concluded, in its initial construction. He could make out the symmetry of the era in the roofline. He squinted up against the sun to take a more professional interest in the house. An archaeologist was part-historian, part-architect and part-expert in a host of other subjects as well. He picked out a few themes with his keen eye. There was a nod to early Georgian in the pediment above the front door.
    That pediment was likely the most recent addition to the house’s eclectic architecture. From the state of the front gardens, the latest generation hadn’t paid much attention to the external state of the house. He strode along a gravel drive where flowers grew in wild anarchy alongside, having long ago given up any adherence to the limits of the beds they’d been planted in. There were no boundaries here, none of the order of the organised, ornamental gardens of Kuban, modelled on the tamed excellence of Versailles. There were no pruned hedges or carefully shaped bushes. Yet, the look suited the place much better. Many back home would disagree with him, would give such wild nature a disparaging glance. He found it charming, a peaceful haven. He wondered what the Kuban nobility would do if he replicated such a style at his home.
    The housekeeper answered his knock and he stepped inside, his senses taking it all in with the astute eye of an archaeologist trained to look for patterns and behaviours: books stacked on consoles in the hallway, books lining shelves in every room the housekeeper took him past, some books lying open. The interior matching the exterior perfectly. The occupants of this house had far more important priorities than landscaping. They lived an internal life of the mind.
    ‘I’ll let Miss Milham know you’re here.’ The housekeeper left him in a cheery yellow sitting room, where more books populated the walls and a small, cosy cluster of furniture upholstered in yellow-and-rose chintz resided in the wide bow of the windows.
    A housekeeper. Dimitri smiled at her departure. No stodgy butlers here. A housekeeper had received a Prince of Kuban and had no true notion of who had just walked into the house. He liked the novelty of that anonymity. Everyone fussed over him as if he were more special than the next man. But here, in the Milhams’ household, he sensed he might be able to move past that. Andrew’s words drifted back to him: She’s not rich enough. The Milhams did not keep a full complement of staff, perhaps for multiple reasons. Perhaps it was financial, or perhaps they understood every servant was another responsibility, one more acquired burden, an anchor against freedom. Dependents were both a blessing and a curse.
    ‘You came.’
    He turned,