Felix was not wrong. Maxim halted in his single-minded pursuit of the woman whose kisses had been haunting him since his lips had last left hers.
“What does she look like?” he demanded.
“She is small of stature,” Felix said, “with dark hair.”
“Gray eyes?” Maxim pressed. “A face so lovely it hurts to look upon it?”
The last question fled him before he could think better of it, his tongue no doubt loosened by the whisky he’d been using to drown himself.
Felix coughed, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I’m sure I didn’t look that closely, Your Majesty.”
“Let me pass,” he ordered curtly, for there was his answer. Felix simply didn’t want to admit that he had admired the lady in question.
If it wasn’t Lady Tansy, Maxim would eat his fucking banyan for breakfast.
“Your Majesty.”
“Let. Me. Pass.”
His bellow was likely unwise, given the fact that Felix had saved him from murderous assassins no fewer than three times this week. However, he was nettled. He wouldn’t be stopped from seeing her.
He needed to find out why she had taken such a risk, placing herself in great peril to call upon him in the darkest dregs of the night.
Felix obliged him, stepping aside. “Of course, Your Majesty.”
“Where is she?” he asked, even though he was moving in the direction most likely, the front of the house.
“In the entry,” Felix called after him.
He moved with lightning speed, finding her waiting at the door enshrouded in a dark cloak, her beautiful face pinched with worry. She started forward when she saw him and then belatedly appeared to remember herself, dropping into a curtsy.
“Your Majesty.”
He wasn’t interested in ceremony with her. Not tonight, not ever.
“Rise, Lady Tansy.” Maxim took her arm in a gentle hold and started down the hall past Felix.
“Your Majesty,” Felix protested.
“Lady Tansy is welcome at any hour,” he told his bodyguard.
The only danger she posed to him was a decidedly different sort than the men who wanted him dead. More perilous as well, but Felix couldn’t protect him from it. No one could.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Felix said. “Forgive me my caution.”
His bodyguard was entirely forgotten when Felix pulled Lady Tansy into the library with him. Her scent wrapped around him, utterly intoxicating. He wanted to take her in his arms and carry her to his bed so that he could make love to her all night long.
But he also wanted to know why she was here at this hour.
“What has happened?” he asked, not releasing her, even though he knew he ought to. “And why are you out at this hour of the night, my lady, paying a call upon me alone? Have you no notion of how perilous it is to wander London at this time of night?”
The softness of her was too good to resist.
“Princess Anastasia has been wounded,” she blurted without preamble.
Ah, hell.
His gut clenched. “How? When? Where is she?”
