And yet, that was precisely how he had spent the entirety of his afternoon and a goodly portion of his evening. He had been investigating bookshops and the massive Bellingham and Co. and every other corner of London where he might find suitable gifts to woo Lady Tansy.
He had yet to work out just how he would secret ten books, a fur, an ivory fan, a pair of gloves, a sapphire parure, and a dashing hat inside the sickroom. But that was a problem for later, when he wasn’t trapped in a room of death with the only two men in the world he trusted.
“You could have been killed,” Nando said, looking as if he might crumple at any moment.
“Ye gods, Nando,” he grumbled. “Are you going to swoon like a woman?”
“Might we talk elsewhere?” he asked faintly. “Whilst Felix takes care of…the rest?”
Sometimes it was easy to forget that Nando had not witnessed the atrocities of war as Maxim had. His brother had been young, so very young, when the Great War had begun. By the time he had been old enough to fight at Maxim’s side, the ugliest years of the war had already been behind them, and victory had been on the horizon. Cognizant of the need for the House of Tayrnes to carry on, Maxim had been intentionally careful about Nando’s position on the battlefield; he had always been far from enemy soldiers, secured in a field tent.
Maxim cast a glance back at Felix. “You will see the mess cleaned up?”
Felix bowed. “Always, Your Majesty.”
He nodded. “Thank you.” Maxim turned to Nando. “Go before I’m forced to fetch hartshorn.”
He was being unkind and he knew it, for he was every bit as affected by the death and blood as his brother was. But for Maxim, it was different. There was a certain hell that lived inside him, one he would never be able to banish, and sometimes, it reared up to claim him.
They left the study in silence, reaching the outer hall where Maxim could breathe again. His cravat remained a constriction,his lungs still seized, but he no longer felt as if he needed to scratch his way out of his own skin.
“What did you need to speak with me about?” he asked Felix as they settled into a familiar marching pattern, their feet moving in rhythmic beats that began to help soothe the ragged pieces inside him.
Gratitude hit him like a blow. Nando was a scapegrace, but he knew Maxim so well. Better, perhaps, than he knew himself.
“I’ve forgotten,” his brother said, his voice weak.
“Not another cuckolded husband?” he asked sharply, thinking of the blasted duel that had only narrowly been avoided.
They marched neatly to the rear of the town house, past the staircase, and then pivoted, returning from the direction they had just come. Servants moved about in a flurry of activity, guards slipping in and out of the study at Felix’s direction. The town house was a beehive of activity and people.
“No,” Nando reassured him. “I’ve learned my lesson.”
That remained to be seen.
“One would hope,” he drawled, trying not to think about the lifeless forms in the study.
About the blood.
About the obvious proof that he had yet to snuff out the entirety of the loyalists fomenting rebellion in the name of Charles.
“Ah yes,” Nando said, his voice sounding less peculiar now as they marched back toward the staircase.
Step, step, step, step.
There was comfort in the familiar, in the regimented, the routine.
He could breathe again.
He cast his brother a sidelong glance when he didn’t continue. “You’ve remembered?”
“I have,” Nando said lowly. “It’s about Lady Tansy Francis.”
His shoulders tensed. “What of her?”
It was all he could do to keep from roaring that she was his. That his brother should keep his rakish, philandering ways far from her. But then he remembered that he was scarcely any more worthy of her. He needed to marry another, after all.
“I was thinking that perhaps I ought to court a lady who is unattached. And who better than Princess Anastasia’s lady-in-waiting? She is lovely, and it will be a furthering of the alliance. Naturally, I wanted to ask your permission first.”
