“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Maxim,” he corrected, giving her the name he preferred for himself.
The name that only his closest friends and allies were permitted to use. But then, he was marrying Princess Anastasia. Lady Tansy would become a part of his family. Like a sister to him.
If only his body reacted to hers in a brotherly fashion. That could come with time. He was well accustomed to privation, when necessary.
“I could not presume to be so familiar.” Lady Tansy was already denying him.
Maxim was not a man people denied. He had spent more than half of his forty years making certain of it.
“Maxim,” he repeated sternly. “In private, it is what you will call me.”
A stirring of pink rose to her cheeks. He wondered why. Because he spoke of privacy between them?
Two more steps, and he was upon her, the fresh scent of her perfume invading his senses. He had noted it before, when he had laid his finger over her philtrum in an effort to keep from touching her lips and yet stay her further speech. Floral, just like her name. He leaned incrementally nearer, inhaling discreetly to catch more of it.
“I shouldn’t think there will be many occasions for privacy between us,” she said, her dark lashes impossibly long as they swept over her eyes to hide her thoughts from him.
He wanted, quite suddenly and irritatingly, to press his lips to the hollow at the base of her throat. To discover if that was where she applied her perfume. To know the warmth of her silken skin beneath his mouth.
“Within these four walls, and within any other walls of my choosing, you will call me Maxim,” he commanded.
Because he was king, damn it. And she ought to remember it.
The title had never appealed to him because it had been his by birth and then stolen mercilessly from him. Rather, it was the power of the throne, the might of his armies, the trepidation with which everyone viewed him, that imbued King Maximilian with the right to rule. And he had earned all of those things with his own spilled blood and the blood of thousands of men far better than he.
“I do not?—”
“Silence,” he interrupted in a harsh bark, because he didn’t like her insolence.
She needed to know her place, even if he regarded women far more highly than the court from which she hailed. The highest, in fact. His own mother had been a damned saint. But that was neither here nor there.
“Forgive me, Your?—”
“Woman, do you try your hardest to displease me?” he broke in again, tempted to take her chin in hand and force her to holdhis gaze when she looked away, and yet hesitant to tempt himself by touching her. “You will be in my court soon. You will be treated with care and respect there. No man shall raise his hand against you, nor cause you any harm. But you will, by God, do as I say. And I say you will call me Maxim and that you will not curtsy or otherwise lower yourself before me when I do not wish it. Am I understood?”
He couldn’t say why this was important to him. Why he wanted her capitulation every bit as much as he wanted her to defy him. It was maddening.Shewas maddening. He wasn’t meant to notice her. His union with Princess Anastasia St. George, coupled with the revolution he intended to set in motion in her homeland of Boritania, would give him the position of strength he required for his own small island kingdom. Together, Boritania and Varros could be magnificent.
But the only magnificence he was thinking about as he awaited Lady Tansy’s response was that which belonged to her alone.
He thought she said something beneath her breath in Boritanian. But that couldn’t be—surely she knew he comprehended her language by now, after he had overheard her vulgar curse earlier and made her aware of it. She was not a stupid woman. Rather, he suspected she was far too intelligent. There was a lively light burning in her gaze.
“Am I understood?” he prodded.
“It is wrong of me to be so familiar,” she said, her eyes searing his with such bold, unwavering daring that for a moment he could do naught but stare at her, dumbfounded.
Maxim crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her, mostly to keep from touching her as he wanted, for this woman wasn’t his, even if his meddlesome cock had other ideas. “It isn’t wrong when I command you, Lady Tansy. I am your king.”
“Not yet, Your Majesty.”
Such spirit. Incredible that it hadn’t been extinguished in Boritania beneath the king’s vile rule. Perhaps it was only her role as lady-in-waiting that had rendered it possible.
“Your audacity is foolhardy,” he said, impressed and annoyed in equal measure.
“You are marrying Princess Anastasia. My first loyalty is, as ever, to her. She will be your queen.”
Lady Tansy’s dulcet voice was quiet and yet it carried a firm strength. She wasn’t wrong either; he appreciated that she was loyal. In his experience, few people were, particularly when motivated by greed. He had known more than his fair share of vipers who had been willing to smile to his face and feign a true kinship or friendship, meanwhile hiding the dagger behind their backs, waiting to plunge it between his ribs.
