The gesture was crude, far more worthy of the battlefield than a private tête-à-tête with a woman as regal and refined as Lady Tansy.
Color blossomed, pale pink in her cheeks, and he belatedly realized the double entendre in the invitation he had just issued. If he were a better man, a polite man, he might have hastened to correct his words. Or to apologize. Since he was neither of those, he did nothing.
“Why have you come, Your Majesty?” she asked quietly.
The reminder was unwanted.
“To pay a call upon my betrothed.” Holding her stare, he took another pull from the flask.
A polite smile curved her lips, and he couldn’t shake the notion that it was forced. “Perhaps you should return tomorrow.”
Was shedismissinghim? Did she dare to reject his presence here? Emotion stirred deep inside him. Not lust. Not mere admiration. But something else, something far more dangerous.
Slowly, he lowered the flask, taking great care to replace its lid. “Mayhap I should. When would be a better time to pay her a visit, Lady Tansy?”
They were dancing about the truth, unable to speak it. Princess Anastasia was presently seeking her long-lost, exiled brother. When she would sneak back into the chamber was a mystery to which he hadn’t an answer. But he wondered if the clever lady-in-waiting did.
Her pause and the flick of her pink tongue over her lips just before she answered him told the tale well enough. Lady Tansy was nervous. And she didn’t know when to expect the princess’s return.
Damn it, he needed Princess Anastasia. Without her, his chances of finding her brother Prince Theodoric were grim. To say nothing of persuading the man to aid his own cause, should he locate him. The princess—and her welfare—was priceless to him.
“Tomorrow evening,” the lady-in-waiting suggested. “After your obligations.”
He tucked his flask back inside his coat, knowing it would be far better to finish drinking its contents later—alone. “I’ll return then, my lady. Be certain to tell your princess just how much I value her health when shewakes.”
The last was said for the benefit of Gustavson’s guards, should they be anywhere in the vicinity. But the warning within it was purely for Lady Tansy. A great deal was resting upon the shoulders of Princess Anastasia. And she had damned well better prove her usefulness to him.
Or else.
“I will be certain to extend your felicitations,” Lady Tansy said, utterly imperturbable as she rose and smoothed her skirts, all the intimacy they had shared in those stolen moments effectively obliterated.
Grinding his jaw in irritation, he rose, towering over her. “Until tomorrow, madam.”
She dipped into as fine a curtsy as he had ever seen at court. “Your Majesty.”
She had once more reverted to pure, icy reserve. If he hadn’t heard those perfect lips of hers uttering such vulgarities earlier at his entrance, he wouldn’t have believed her capable of it.
But he had, and now he knew that there was far more to Lady Tansy Francis than he had previously supposed.
May the gods rot his cock for it.
CHAPTER 3
Maxim was pacing the entry hall when his brother swept in from the mews with a dripping greatcoat and a half-sotted grin.
“The hour is late,” he told Nando curtly in their native tongue, for although English was as familiar to him as Varrosian, when he was in a state, he preferred their language.
“Too late to be marching, brother,” Nando said, removing his hat and sending a shower of water droplets to the polished floor.
“Is it raining again?” he asked needlessly, ignoring his brother’s pointed remark.
Nando knew him too well. Only Mina had known him better, but he had been a vastly different man then. In the fifteen years that had passed since her death, Maxim had changed so much that he doubted she would recognize him. The thought was not without the omnipresent bitterness that haunted him, along with the stinging lash of blame. For what had happened to his sweet, lovely Mina was Maxim’s fault alone.
“It is always raining,” Nando remarked with a devil-may-care shrug. “One only need fret over it when one ventures out of doors. And why venture beyond four comfortable walls when there is so much beautiful entertainment to be found within?”
“Within the walls of some countess’s bedchamber, no doubt,” he muttered, his foot tapping on the floor to the rhythm that soothed him.
If he ceased his measured pacing, then he had to movesomethingor else his cravat choked him and his skin felt too tight and his entire body felt as if it were crawling with insects. But that was only when his fits took hold of him. He had been doing his utmost to battle them, waging an inner war.
